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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.

Ohio to execute inmate with 2 drugs never tried before in a U.S. execution

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Ohio will use a dose of two drugs never tried before in a U.S. execution to put to death a condemned inmate who raped and killed his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter, the state prisons agency said Monday.

Lawyers for death row inmate Ronald Phillips immediately sued to put off his Nov. 14 execution, saying Ohio delayed the announcement so long it didn’t leave enough time to fully investigate the new method.

The agency made the decision because it couldn’t obtain a supply of its former execution drug, pentobarbital, from a specialty pharmacy that mixes individual doses for patients, prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said. The agency had considered using a compounding pharmacy after its supply of federally regulated pentobarbital expired last month.

Instead, the state will use an intravenous combination of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a painkiller, in the Nov. 14 execution of Ronald Phillips of Akron.

Those drugs already are included in Ohio’s never-tried backup execution method, which requires them to be injected directly into an inmate’s muscle. No state has put a prisoner to death with that combination of drugs.

Source: AP, October 29, 2013
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