Court Blocks Use of Death Penalty Execution Drug

Death Row inmates in three states have won one round in a fight over a drug used as part of lethal injections.

FOX News Radio’s Lisa Brady reports:

A federal judge says the Food & Drug Administration abused its discretion by allowing unapproved imports of a lethal injection drug, after U.S. makers of sodium thiopental announced it would no longer produce the anesthetic, which is used to put inmates to sleep before other legal injection drugs are administered.

The judge, siding with lawyers for inmates in Tennessee, Arizona and California, is blocking the FDA from allowing the drug into the country, and ordering that any states with foreign-made thiopental be told to return it to the FDA, also noting that many death penalty states have switched to a different drug.

Lisa Brady, FOX News Radio.