Why is sodium thiopental used as part of a lethal injection execution?
Sodium thiopental was chosen to render the person deeply unconscious and unable to feel the paralysis brought on by the pancuronium bromide, which causes the person to lose the ability to breathe. And the potassium chloride is extremely painful. Some people have said that three to five grams of sodium thiopental alone should be enough to induce death. [In December 2009 Ohio became the first state to use a single dose of sodium thiopental to execute death-row inmates.] We looked at whether inmates died reliably after the sodium thiopental, and it’s not clear this is the case. We also determined that the doses of sodium thiopental used are not always as “massive” as claimed. It’s not even clear how much a massive dose is in this context. We found that, at most, the highest doses were two times the lethal dose for animals, regardless of the inmate’s weight. It has been reported that in addition to a shortage of sodium thiopental, the doses that some states stockpile are set to expire befo
