The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area–Background Paper 2018 pharmacy board, although they are not required to be accredited or registered with the FDA. Ten federal states are believed to use, or intend to use, drugs that have undergone pharmacy compounding.67 Human rights activists have also raised concern over the potential for federal states to resort to alternative execution practices.68 In March 2018, the Oklahoma Attorney General announced that due to the shortage of lethal drugs, the state may use nitrogen gas asphyxiation.69 Similarly, Alabama (effective July 2018) and Mississippi (effective April 2017) have laws that allow for use of nitrogen hypoxiation. Tennessee’s law allows for the use of the electric chair, Utah’s law allows a firing squad to be used if the state cannot obtain lethal-injection drugs 30 days before an execution, and New Hampshire allows for hanging if it is determined “to be impractical to carry out the punishment of death by administration of the required lethal substance or substances.”70 Cases: In February 2017, the Governor of Arkansas set the execution dates for eight death row prisoners, stating that executions needed to be carried out in quick succession in order to utilize the federal state’s final batch of the sedative midazolam before its expiration date at the end of April 2017. Arkansas had not carried out executions for 12 years, and the last time it carried out a dual execution was on 8 September 1999.71 On 19 April 2017, then-ODIHR Director Michael Georg Link raised concern about the compressed execution schedule in Arkansas and called on the United States to once more consider the complete abolition of capital punishment, in the context of the international debate linking the practice with torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.72 Arkansas executed four death row prisoners – Ledell Lee, Jack Jones, Marcel Williams and Kenneth Williams – on 20 and 24 April 2017. In a statement to the OSCE Permanent Council on 27 April 2017, Norway, together with Iceland, Liechtenstein, San Marino and Switzerland strongly condemned the executions of the four inmates in Arkansas and reiterated that “in the international community there is an increasing support for the view 67  “State by State Lethal Injection”, Death Penalty Information Center, op. cit., note 65. 68  “ACLU of Oklahoma responds to announced intent to modify Oklahoma’s death penalty method”, ACLU of Oklahoma, 14 March 2018, <https://www.acluok.org/en/news/aclu-oklahoma-responds-announced-intent-modify-oklahomas-death-penalty-method>. 69  “Oklahoma Turns to Gas for Executions Amid Turmoil Over Lethal Injection”, the New York Times, 14 March 2018, <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/us/oklahoma-nitrogen-executions.html>. 70  “State by State Lethal Injection”, Death Penalty Information Center, op. cit., note 65. 71  “Arkansas carries out first execution in 12 years”, Al Jazeera, 21 April 2017, <http://www.aljazeera.com/ news/2017/04/arkansas-carries-execution-12-years-170421052004430.html>; see also: “Arkansas carries out first double execution in US since 2000”, the Telegraph, 25 April 2017, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/25/ us-judge-temporarily-halts-second-arkansas-execution/>. 72  “ODIHR Director Link concerned by accelerated executions using questionable drug in Arkansas”, OSCE/ ODIHR, op. cit., note 4. 19