BOISE, Idaho (CBS 2) — Idaho has joined the growing number of states that have run out of the drugs used in lethal injections, a shortage prompted by major pharmaceutical companies refusing to sell drugs to states if those drugs will be used in executions.
While no executions are imminent in Idaho, the Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC) confirms it currently has no chemicals in its possession to carry out any execution at this time.
Eight offenders are on death row in Idaho, according to the IDOC. Seven of them are men, incarcerated at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution south of Boise.
The one woman, Robin Row, is incarcerated at Pocatello's Women’s Correctional Center.
Three inmates have been executed since Idaho enacted a new death penalty statute in 1977.
The last person put to death in Idaho was Richard Leavitt in 2012.
LaMont Anderson, chief of the Office of the Attorney General’s Capital Litigation Unit, says the state can't say who may be next as death penalty cases can go for a long time.
"There's no answer to that," Anderson said. All I can tell you is where the respective death sentence murderers are at as far as the legal process. And it could be anywhere and it could be in multiple courts."
But what happens if an execution is slated and the Department of Correction has no chemicals?
A spokesman for the IDOC said the department is confident that when a death warrant is issued, "it will able to lawfully procure the chemicals necessary for an execution".
The shortage of drugs leaves capital punishment states with two choices: they can either suspend executions until they replenish their stocks, or they can go back to older methods such as the electric chair or firing squad.
But lethal injection is the only form of capital punishment permitted in Idaho by state law so it would take the legislature to change it or a referendum initiative.
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