Montana says it is changing execution drugs

HELENA — Montana officials are changing their method of carrying out executions after one of the drugs previously used was taken off the market.

The move by the Montana Department of Corrections follows similar action in other states that have substituted a drug called pentobarbital for sodium thiopental.

The state says that the new drug has already survived court challenges to execution procedures. The agency, which has come under fire from death penalty opponents in the past for its execution methods, says it is making some other changes as well.

It says there will also be new safeguards to make sure drugs render the condemned completely unconscious before death-inducing drugs are administered by injection.

Montana says it made the changes as part of the preparations to execute Canadian Ronald Allen Smith.