I believe they used that drug because there is a shortage of sodium thiopental in america. There was a story about it a while back on MSN where the one company that makes the drug stopped making as much and it caused stated to go and try to borrow the drug from other states.
Texas was one state that had the most however they refused to release any. Go figure
Oklahoma death row inmate John David Duty was executed Thursday using a drug commonly used to euthanize animals because of a nationwide shortage of the sedative normally employed in Oklahoma's lethal injections.
Pentobarbital is an anesthetizing drug widely used to euthanize dogs, cats and other animals. Duty, who was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. CT, is believed to be the first condemned inmate to be executed using pentobarbital as part of the three-drug cocktail.
Lawyers for Duty, who was sentenced to die for strangling his cellmate with a shoelace, claimed that pentobarbital is risky and unproven in humans.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Duty’s execution to go forward using pentobarbital in place of sodium thiopental, a short-acting barbiturate that induces unconsciousness.
"According to the record, sodium thiopental is now effectively unobtainable anywhere in the United States, thus requiring Oklahoma and other death-penalty states to revise their lethal injection protocols," the court said in an order issued December 14.
Hospira, the Illinois-based drug company that is the only domestic manufacturer of sodium thiopental, stopped producing the drug in August 2009 because of a shortage of raw materials, a company spokesman said.