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Capital punishment

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Pfizer has decided to take steps to prevent its drugs being used in lethal injections.

In a statement published on its website, the pharmaceutical giant said: “We strongly object to the use of any of our products in the lethal injection process for capital punishment.”

Pfizer stressed that its products were meant to save the lives of patients.

The move reportedly shuts off the last remaining open market source of drugs used in executions in the US.Pfizer Allergan merger talks

According to a New York Times report, the decision follows similar moves by more than 20 US and global drug makers.

Last month, Pfizer said seven of its drugs would only be sold to purchasers on condition that they would not resell them to correctional institutions.

The company said it offered the products because they saved or improved lives, and marketed them solely for use as indicated in the product labeling.

In a statement, the drug maker said: “Pfizer makes its products solely to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve.

“We are committed to ensuring that our products remain available and accessible to the medical professionals and patients who rely upon them every day.”

Human rights groups have long campaigned against using drugs for the purpose of capital punishment.

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White supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin, who targeted black and Jewish people in a nationwide killing spree, has been put to death in Missouri.

Joseph Paul Franklin, 63, was executed for shooting dead a man and wounding two others outside a synagogue in 1977.

He was convicted of seven other racially motivated murders. He claimed to have committed 20 in total.

Joseph Paul Franklin’s execution came after the Supreme Court upheld an appeal court’s decision to lift a stay of execution.

In 1978, Joseph Paul Franklin shot Larry Flynt, leaving him partially paralyzed, after seeing a picture of a mixed-race couple in one of his magazines.

However, Larry Flynt – who opposes the death penalty – had sued to prevent Joseph Paul Franklin’s execution.

In a recent interview with the St Louis Post-Dispatch, Joseph Paul Franklin said he had renounced his racist views.

Joseph Paul Franklin was executed for shooting dead a man and wounding two others outside a synagogue in 1977

Joseph Paul Franklin was executed for shooting dead a man and wounding two others outside a synagogue in 1977

He said his motivation had been “illogical” and was partly a consequence of an abusive upbringing.

Joseph Paul Franklin said he had interacted with black people in jail, adding: “I saw they were people just like us.”

His lawyers’ appeal focused on a dispute over the type of lethal injections that Missouri uses in its executions.

US and EU manufacturers have been cutting off the supply of drugs used for lethal injections in recent years in an attempt to distance themselves from executions.

As a result, Missouri, which long used a lethal three-drug cocktail for executions, has changed the drugs it uses three times in as many months.

The single drug used in the execution of Joseph Paul Franklin was pentobarbital, a short-acting barbiturate that can induce death in high doses.

On Tuesday, Joseph Paul Franklin’s lawyers won a stay of execution when they argued in federal court that using this drug would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

However, early on Wednesday, a federal appeals court overturned the stay of execution. Its ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court, sealing Joseph Paul Franklin’s fate.

An anti-capital punishment group, Supporters of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, attended a candlelight vigil for Joseph Paul Franklin outside a church in the city of St Louis.

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