Ohio executed an inmate Thursday with only one drug, previously used primarily to euthanize animals, marking the first time anyone in the United States had been put to death in that manner.

Johnnie Baston, 37, was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, after receiving an infusion of the drug pentobarbital. His attorney and two brothers witnessed the execution, along with five reporters.

Baston was sentenced to death for the 1994 killing of Chong Mah, 53, a Toledo store owner.

The execution comes after capital punishment in the United States was thrown in disarray in January when the only U.S. company that makes sodium thiopental, which Ohio and most other states had long used in lethal injection, announced that it would no longer produce the drug. The decision by Hospira of Lake Forest, Ill., was prompted by demands from Italy, which does not have capital punishment, that sodium thiopental – which the company had planned to make at its plant outside Milan – not be used for executions.

The decision forced states and the federal government to scramble for alternatives to the drug.

“The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced in January that it will substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental for the purposes of carrying out lethal injections in Ohio. The protocol change resulted from a national shortage of sodium thiopental and the manufacturer’s announced discontinuation of production,” said JoEllen Smith, a department spokeswoman.

Hospira’s announcement was praised by death penalty opponents for raising new questions about the procedures used for lethal injection. But the decision was condemned by supporters of capital punishment. Some blasted another country’s interference in the U.S. criminal justice system. Thirty-four states allow for capital punishment. All use lethal injection, and until recently all but two had used a three-drug cocktail: sodium thiopental to render the prisoner unconscious, pancurium bromide to paralyze the prisoner and potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Shortages of sodium thiopental began after Hospira stopped making it in August 2009 because of problems obtaining one of the main ingredients, prompting doctors to turn to alternatives and some states to delay executions.

The company had planned to shift production from a plant in North Carolina to a facility in Liscate, Italy. But after those plans became public, the Italian Parliament demanded that the company ensure that the drug would be used only for medical purposes.