Agence France-Presse, November 14, 2010 by Lucile Malandain
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“The reason the first drug matters so much is because… if properly administered, it will put the inmate in a state of unconsciousness where he does not feel the second and third drug,” University of California, Berkeley professor Elisabeth Semel told AFP. “If you use a different drug, an unknown drug, then you don’t know whether or not it has been mixed differently, whether or not the staff has the expertise to administer it properly.”
The issue “becomes one of transparency,” Jen Moreno, another legal expert, told AFP. “The state shouldn’t be allowed to just switch drug in secret, without any sort of inquiry into whether or not it’s going to perform as intended,” she said.