Utah Officials Backtrack on Untested Execution Drug

Plans to use an experimental three-drug combination in an upcoming execution in Utah — a cocktail that critics said could inflict serious pain — have been scrapped after state officials said in court documents released Saturday that they would be able to seek an alternative.

Taberon D. Honie, who was convicted of aggravated murder in 1999, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Aug. 8. It would be the first execution conducted by that method in the state in nearly 25 years. The Utah Department of Corrections recommended using an untested three-drug cocktail of ketamine, fentanyl and potassium chloride when it could not find sodium thiopental, the drug required by Utah law, or other alternatives.

That drug has been challenging to obtain for more than a decade, after Hospira, the only American producer of sodium thiopental, announced it would stop selling it, citing concerns about producing the drug in Italy. But many states across the country where the death penalty is legal have struggled for years to obtain and properly use suitable drugs for lethal injections.

A lawsuit filed last week by Mr. Honie’s lawyer against several Utah prison officials expressed many concerns about the proposed drug cocktail, including that it would not create the anesthesia Mr. Honie needed to be “unconscious, unaware and insensate to pain,” when the potassium chloride, which stops the heart, is administered. The drugs carried the risk “of serious pain and unnecessary suffering,” the lawyer, Eric Zuckerman, wrote in the complaint.

On Friday, Brian Redd, the executive director of the Utah Department of Corrections, agreed instead to obtain the sedative pentobarbital for Mr. Honie’s execution, a drug that is now used by other death penalty states. Mr. Redd also vowed to abandon the idea of using the three-drug combination in any execution if pentobarbital could be supplied.

“We still believe that the three-drug combination would have been effective, but we also recognize we could’ve been caught in a lengthy court battle,” said Glen Mills, a spokesman for the department.