Emmanuel Hammond
The anti-death penalty group Reprieve is claiming that drugs used to execute three inmates in the United States failed to properly work. These executions all utilized sodium thiopental imported from Dream Pharma, a wholesale drug distributer in London. Sodium thiopental is used by many states to put an inmate to sleep before he or she is killed using a paralyzing drug and a heart-stopping drug. Since it became known that states, including California, were importing the anesthetic, there has been controversy over its quality–particularly since the FDA has declined to get involved and either approve or disapprove the foreign drug. Those advocating for death row inmates have said that if the anesthetic doesn’t work, that an inmate can experience excruciating pain while dying, a possible violation of the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Now, Reprieve claims that the drug in fact did not adequately put Jeffrey Landrigan of Arizona, and Emmanuel Hammond and Brandon Rhode of Georgia to sleep. According to the UK Daily Mail, the group will launch a legal campaign against the British equivalent of the FDA, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority, tomorrow in an attempt to recall the drug. In an effort to verify Reprieve’s claims, the Mail interviewed three witnesses to the execution of Hammond, who raped and murdered Julie Love in 1988:
