The on-going saga of the out-of-stock lethal injection drugs continues (I’ve written about them previously here and here).

Yesterday, after a 5-4 Supreme Court vote, the people of Arizona used drugs of mysterious provenance to successfully kill Jeffrey Landrigan to avenge the 1989 murder of Chester Dean Dyer:

In a 5-4 ruling late Tuesday, the US high court said a lower court wrongfully blocked Landrigan’s execution after officials refused to reveal where they got the necessary drugs and as questions remained about their safety.

“There is no evidence in the record to suggest that the drug obtained from a foreign source is unsafe,” the Supreme Court said.

“There was no showing that the drug was unlawfully obtained, nor was there an offer of proof to that effect.”

As Brian Evans tells us over at the Amnesty International USA blog, “Arizona’s Attorney General Terry Goddard has reportedly confirmed that his state’s stash of non-FDA approved sodium thiopental came from Great Britain.”

To my mind, though, the award for Most Intriguing Question goes to Clive Stafford Smith, writing in The Guardian:

One question that immediately springs to mind is whether it is criminal for the British corporation to profit from such a killing: while the language is loose, EU Council Regulation 1236/2005 takes a step along this path, making it illegal to “trade in certain goods which could be used for capital punishment, torture, or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment …”

While Arizona has so far refused to release the name of the company that provided the drugs to kill Landrigan, I suspect we’ll know the identity before too long. And then it will be very interesting, going forward, to see if this currently-unknown British company will face any penalty for having done so.