Company Says It Will No Longer Produce Key Drug Used in Executions

A Connecticut chemicals manufacturer that was identified as having sold a lethal drug to the Trump administration for use in its execution spree has said that it will no longer produce the substance, according to a letter obtained by The Intercept.

John Criscio, the president of Absolute Standards, wrote to two Connecticut legislators last month that his company stopped manufacturing pentobarbital in December 2020. “We have no intention to resume any production or sale of pentobarbital,” Criscio added.

The one-page letter, which has not previously been reported on, is the first formal acknowledgment by Criscio that his small family business was making pentobarbital, a barbiturate that has been used both by itself and in combination with other drugs to carry out lethal injection executions.

The letter notes that the company had been registered with the Drug Enforcement Agency to manufacture pentobarbital, and it makes no mention of whether the company had provided execution drugs to the federal Bureau of Prisons. On two previous occasions, Criscio denied to The Intercept that his company had done so. The Intercept called Absolute Standards multiple times on Friday and was told that Criscio was not around. The company did not respond to an email requesting comment, nor did Criscio respond to messages sent to his personal email account.

Conservative policy leaders have been calling for an escalation of federal executions if Donald Trump retakes the White House. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has fantasized about expanding the list of crimes eligible for the death penalty and executing people who deal drugs. In a nearly 900-page policy wishlist published last year, conservative groups recommended that Trump should execute all of the 40 people on federal death row if elected.

But as pharmaceutical manufacturers have restricted the use of their medicines in executions, it’s become increasingly difficult for prison officials to obtain drugs like pentobarbital. The Bureau of Prisons spent years searching for a pentobarbital supplier, as The Intercept previously reported. The government obtained its first batch of the active ingredient in October 2018, according to a legal filing. While it’s unknown how many suppliers the federal government had, Absolute Standards’ decision to stop producing the lethal drug could impede future executions.

In the wake of news reports this spring linking Absolute Standards to the federal executions, the company faced questions from Connecticut lawmakers and a pressure campaign from anti-death penalty activists. Bianca Tylek, the executive director of Worth Rises, an activist group that campaigned with Death Penalty Action to stop Absolute Standards from supplying the execution drug, said she would “cautiously, optimistically” trust Criscio’s pledge to stop making pentobarbital but would also remain “on watch.”

“It is the first response that anyone has gotten from this company that has done so much harm, and a response in which they actually say they’re going to stop. And so that’s meaningful, that’s important,” Tylek said.

But, she continued, “they stopped just short of saying, ‘We would never do this again,’ and truly making that a long-standing or irrevocable statement to some extent.”

Shielded From Accountability

The Trump administration killed 13 people at the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, beginning in July 2020. In April, comedy news host John Oliver named Absolute Standards as the company that had supplied the Bureau of Prisons with execution drugs.

The Intercept subsequently revealed additional details about the company. We reported that Criscio and the company’s director, Stephen Arpie, told a source who met with the pair about obtaining lethal drugs that Absolute Standards produced the active pharmaceutical ingredient for pentobarbital that was used in the federal executions. A separate unnamed pharmacy then used that ingredient, or API, to create an injectable solution that would stop prisoners’ hearts.

That same month, Worth Rises and Death Penalty Action launched a public campaign to stop Absolute Standards from participating in executions.

Approximately 1,900 people sent 5,000 emails to Absolute Standards through a form created by the organizations, Tylek said. Activists also left negative Google reviews. “Perfect place to get execution drugs,” wrote one reviewer, who gave the company one star.

Connecticut state Sen. Saud Anwar and Rep. Josh Elliott, meanwhile, asked Criscio to stop making execution drugs and requested a meeting about his company’s activities, Anwar told The Intercept.

Criscio, in his letter to Anwar and Elliott, declined a meeting, writing that he had been “inundated with vulgar, and sometimes threatening, attacks by telephone, letter, email, and social media.”

He added, “Although some reports have given the impression that we acted illegally or even purposefully subverted the law, nothing could be further from the truth.”

Anwar and Elliott plan to introduce a bill that would make it illegal for Connecticut companies to participate in the death penalty. (The state abolished the death penalty in 2012.)

“If the commitment is there, I respect that,” Anwar told The Intercept, referring to Absolute Standards. “I’m more interested in making it illegal going forward. I think that laws last longer than legislators and issues and I feel that irrespective of their commitment, I am interested in having a law in the future … to make sure that we don’t have another similar situation that we learn about indirectly or directly five years, 10 years, 20 years from now.”

He said he hopes the legislature will pass the bill by the end of the 2025 session. If approved, it would be the first legislation across the country banning the sale of drugs or materials for use in an execution, according to Robin M. Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Since 2021, Connecticut officials have been concerned that Absolute Standards was selling its drugs to states for executions. After a staffer for U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, raised concerns about Absolute Standards’ potential involvement in federal executions in 2021, according to a letter from the state’s attorney general, William Tong. Tong stated in the letter that supplying drugs for executions goes against the values and policies of the state.

For over ten years, pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell drugs like pentobarbital for use in executions. Despite this, agencies have found ways to obtain the necessary substances for lethal injections. Last year, both Idaho and South Carolina announced that they had finally acquired pentobarbital for executions after years of searching.

States have taken measures to protect the identities of their drug suppliers. Since 2011, more than a dozen states have passed laws to conceal information about their execution procedures.

Following Criscio’s letter, a former official from the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) who was familiar with the agency’s lengthy search for execution drugs noted that it was not surprising that Absolute Standards had reported receiving threats. The official mentioned that the BOP and Department of Justice had tried to keep the supplier’s name out of the media for as long as possible.

The disclosure also raises a new question, as the former official pointed out: if Absolute Standards is no longer manufacturing pentobarbital, who is now supplying it to the states that are using it?

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