Oklahoma has executed 11 people – eight white and three black – since 2007, for an annual rate of about three executions a year.
The state joined Ohio in substituting a new drug, pentobarbital, for sodium thiopental to carry out three additional executions in 2011. Critics say the drug, a sedative used to euthanize animals, has not been tested for this purpose. Lundbeck, the Denmark-based US supplier, is also opposed to its use in executions. Oklahoma was also the last state to execute a person for a crime committed as a juvenile, which it did in 2003.
