Barack Obama,  Death Penalty,  Sodium Thiopental

Arizona Sidesteps Obama Justice Department Over Sodium Thiopental and Executes Murderer

Donald Edward Beaty

Despite the Obama Administration’s best efforts to prevent it, Arizona last night executed Donald Edward Beaty.

Donald Edward Beaty, 56, died at 7:38 p.m. local time at a state prison in Florence, Arizona, officials said, in an execution delayed for more than nine hours by a legal dispute over one of the drugs used to kill him.

Beaty, convicted of killing newspaper carrier Christy Ann Fornoff, had won a temporary stay from the Arizona Supreme Court after his lawyers objected to the last-minute substitution of a drug to be used in the lethal-injection mix.

But the court lifted the stay after conducting a special hearing on Wednesday morning, rejecting arguments that the state breached Beaty’s constitutional due process rights and protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

Petitions to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court were unsuccessful.

So, a lesson to the other states, including California – use pentobarbital rather than sodium thiopental and executions can continue.

I still don’t think there will be any executions in California within the near future. anti-death penalty activists will come up with another excuse and litigate it.