Missouri threat to use gas chamber due to lack of lethal-injection drugs

The American state of Missouri is threatening to resurrect the gas chamber for executions, as an alternative to its dwindling supply of lethal-injection drugs.

Its attorney general, Chris Koster, has warned that unless Missouri is allowed by the state supreme court to press ahead quickly with pending executions under its lethal-injection protocol, its drug supplies will expire. In that case, the state might have to turn to the only other option open to it - the gas chamber.

"Unless the [supreme] court changes its current course, the legislature will soon be compelled to fund statutorily authorised alternative methods of execution to carry out lawful judgments," Koster said. Under Missouri law only two forms of execution are permitted - by lethal gas or by lethal injection.

The possible return of the gas chamber is a sign of the increasing fall-out on the 32 death-penalty states of the boycott of sales of medical drugs for use in executions. Drug companies in the US, Europe and Asia have refused on ethical grounds to sell their products to corrections departments, and the European Commission has imposed tough restrictions on the export of anaesthetics to the US.

As supplies became harder to find, Missouri switched to using just one drug in lethal injections, which death row inmates then challenged as unconstitutional because it risked exposing them to excruciating pain during executions.

In the wake of the legal challenge, the Missouri Supreme Court has refused to schedule any more execution dates.