Georgia Halts Executions Over 'Cloudy' Drug

The US state of Georgia has suspended executions so corrections officials can analyse a drug that prompted the last-minute cancellation of a lethal injection.

Kelly Renee Gissendaner had been due to face the death chamber on Monday evening at the prison in Jackson, in what would have been Georgia's first female execution for 70 years.

Georgia's Department of Corrections said it delayed carrying out the sentence out of an "abundance of caution" after the drug, pentobarbital, was seen to have a cloudy appearance.

It was Gissendaner's latest temporary reprieve - last week her execution was put off because of bad weather.

The number of executions in the US has fallen in recent years because prison authorities are having difficulty obtaining the drugs needed for lethal injections.

They have been forced to try to manufacture their own compounds after pharmaceutical companies complained that their drugs were being misused.

The Danish-based company Lundbeck restricted distribution of pentobarbital, which was used to treat severe epilepsy after discovering that it was being used to kill prisoners.

Its spokesman Anders Schroll told Sky News that Departments of Corrections in several states ignored their complaints.

"Of course it was quite a shock. We are a company conducting research to save people's lives with severe brain diseases," he said.

"So this was, from our view, the complete opposite.

"You have other situations where you have misuse of medication, where people are using medication for doping.

"And if that's the case you work with authorities to try to stop it.

"But in this case it was actually the authorities which were doing the misuse."

Lundbeck restricted the distribution of pentobarbital, and has advised other companies which have also found their products being used on death row.

Georgia Department of Corrections won't reveal any details of the drug now being used, but it appears to be a locally produced version of Lundbeck's pentobarbital.

In January, Oklahoma postponed executions using the drug Midozolam after several cases of prisoners appearing to be conscious and in pain before their deaths.

The state is awaiting a ruling from the US Supreme Court, which will hear evidence about the drug at a hearing next month

No new date has been set for the execution of Kelly Gissendaner.

According to prosecutors, she convinced her lover, Gregory Owen, to murder her husband Douglas, who was stabbed to death.

The execution had already been delayed while the US Supreme Court reviewed last-minute arguments for a stay of execution by her lawyers.

They urged the court to consider their client had not killed her husband herself and had reformed.