Animal drug used to execute criminal

Officials in the US state of Oklahoma have executed a prison inmate using a drug cocktail that includes a sedative typically used to euthanize animals.



Fifty-eight-year-old, John David Duty, is thought to be the first US prisoner to be executed using the sedative pentobarbital.



Duty, who killed a cellmate in 2001, was executed at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.



A shortage of sodium thiopental in the US forced the state to make the change.



A judge's ruling to allow Oklahoma to substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental was upheld by a federal appeals court this week.