A Swiss pharmaceutical company is asking Nebraska officials to return a drug the state plans to use to execute death row inmates. Earlier this month, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services announced that it had obtained a new supply of sodium thiopental, one of three drugs needed to carry out executions by lethal injection, from Swiss company Naari AG. The drug is no longer manufactured in the United States and is in scarce supply worldwide. But as first reported Tuesday by The Lincoln Journal Star (http://bit.ly/uUpIvH), Naari CEO Prithi Kochhar said in a letter sent on Nov. 18 to Nebraska Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Heavican and Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning that his company did not supply the drug to the state and would never support its use for lethal reasons.
