Georgia postpones executions over lethal injection drug

By David Beasley ATLANTA (Reuters) - Two executions in Georgia were indefinitely postponed on Tuesday to give the state time to analyze its lethal injection drug after corrections officials said a batch "appeared cloudy" hours before one of the death sentences was due to be carried out. The state's Department of Corrections said in a statement it was delaying the executions of inmates Kelly Renee Gissendaner and Brian Keith Terrell "out of an abundance of caution" while an analysis of the drug supply is conducted. Gissendaner, the only female prisoner on Georgia's death row, was slated to die at 7 p.m. on Monday from an injection of the drug pentobarbital. Condemned for the 1997 murder of her husband, she would have been the first woman executed by the state in 70 years. But corrections officials halted the process after consulting with a pharmacist because they said the drug looked cloudy during a routine check. In a court filing, Gissendaner's attorneys said lawyers for the corrections department called them at 10:25 p.m. on Monday to alert them about the issue with the drug. The state lawyers called back to say officials might go ahead with the injection after realizing they may have examined the wrong batch of the drug, Gissendaner's attorneys told the U.S. Supreme Court in an emergency motion for a stay of execution. The state lawyers called a third time, saying the execution was off because “this particular batch (of drugs) just didn’t come out like it was supposed to," the court filing said. It was the second time Gissendaner's execution was halted, after a winter storm delayed it last week. Georgia's execution protocol, like those in many states, has been challenged in court. The state switched from a three-drug cocktail to a single drug in 2012, and the state's Supreme Court later upheld a law shielding the identity and methods of compounding pharmacies that make the drug. Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, criticized the secretive nature of the process and said Gissendaner's life should be spared. "No one's life should be toyed with by being placed on the precipice of death and then yanked away numerous times," he said. The corrections department said new execution dates would be set when it is ready to proceed. Terrell, who had been scheduled to die on March 10, was condemned for the 1992 murder of a 70-year-old man in Newton County, Georgia. (Reporting by David Beasley; Additional reporting and writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Lisa Lambert, Eric Beech and Eric Walsh)