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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Alabama switches key drug for execution next month

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Alabama announced Tuesday that it was switching out a key drug used in lethal injections earlier than expected, a move that will be challenged by a condemned inmate scheduled to die in less than a month.

Like several other states, Alabama has turned over its supply of sodium thiopental to the Drug Enforcement Agency after questions were raised about how and where the states received the drug. The drug pentobarbital will now be used as part of the state's 3-drug execution cocktail instead of sodium thiopental, Alabama prisons spokesman Brian Corbett said.

The change comes after attorneys for death row inmate Jason Oric Williams wrote U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, asking the federal government to investigate whether Alabama's supply of sodium thiopental was illegally obtained from Tennessee. That states supply of the drug has also been seized by the DEA.

At least 10 states have switched to pentobarbital or are considering a switch as part of their three-drug methods because of a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental, a sedative that states used for more than 3 decades until its only U.S. manufacturer stopped making it in 2009 and then dropped plans to resume production earlier this year.

Alabama has used sodium thiopental since switching from the electric chair in 2002.

An attorney for Williams said he will ask the courts to stop Williams' May 19 execution because the state is changing the drug.

"The state should not be able to make up on the fly how it is going to carry out executions," Bryan Stevenson said.

He claims pentobarbital works differently from sodium thiopental.

"The reliability and legality of the death penalty requires clear and carefully documented execution protocols which the state of Alabama has not developed," Stevenson said.

Williams was sentenced to death for killing 4 people during a 1992 shooting spree in Mobile County.

Prisons officials had previously said they would switch drugs after the 2 executions currently scheduled. Corbett said pentobarbital will be used for Williams and Eddie Duval Powell, whose execution is scheduled for June 16. Powell was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of an elderly widow during a burglary of her home in Tuscaloosa County.

Source: Associated Press, April 27, 2011
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