Nebraska considers 1st execution since 1997

If inmate Carey Dean Moore is put to death, it would be Nebraska's 1st execution since 1997 and its first lethal injection.

Attorney General Jon Bruning said a motion was filed with the Nebraska Supreme Court on Monday, requesting that a date be set. Moore was sentenced to death for the 1979 murders of 2 Omaha cabbies.

The state's last execution occurred in 1997, when Robert Williams was electrocuted for killing three women. 11 men remain on Nebraska's death row. Besides Williams, Harold Otey and John Joubert also have been electrocuted since the state resumed executions in 1994.

Moore's attorney, Alan Peterson, did not immediately respond to a message Tuesday. Moore was convicted of 1st-degree murder for killing taxi drivers Maynard D. Helgeland and Reuel Eugene Van Ness in botched robberies.

Moore, 53, came within a week of being executed in 2007, but 6 days before his scheduled execution the state's high court issued a stay because it wanted to consider whether the electric chair should still be used.

Then the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the electric chair amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Since then, lawmakers approved lethal injection as the state's sole method.

For nearly 4 decades, former state Sen. Ernie Chambers, who opposed the death penalty, held up any effort to change Nebraska's method of execution because he believed the electric chair eventually would be banished by the courts. Chambers' departure from the Legislature in 2008 because of term limits made it possible for lawmakers to pass the lethal injection bill.

On Friday, the state received the 3rd drug needed to carry out an execution by lethal injection. A worldwide shortage of the drug, sodium thiopental, has made it hard to acquire, and the only U.S. manufacturer of the drug announced last week that it would stop making it.

Nebraska's lethal-injection law and the execution procedure prison officials developed were modeled on Kentucky's system because that state's death penalty withstood the scrutiny of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008.

The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services said last summer that it had prepared a new execution chamber and trained workers to carry out the death penalty once the state obtained the sodium thiopental that will be used to render an inmate unconscious. The other drugs involved in the process are pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes an inmate's breathing, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Nebraska's 5-page lethal injection protocol requires that 3 drugs be administered during an execution by trained corrections workers, including 2 emergency technicians who would be responsible for maintaining an open IV line.

After an execution date is set, members of the execution team who have already received training will undergo weekly refresher courses. When no execution dates are scheduled, the team trains every 6 months.

Critics of lethal injection have argued that corrections workers who don't regularly administer intravenous drugs may have trouble finding a vein. Supporters say the training requirements spelled out in the protocol - including that members of the IV teams be trained as emergency medical technicians - would alleviate that concern.

All 36 death penalty states use lethal injection, and 35 rely on the 3-drug method. But the 3-drug procedure has been questioned.

In 2009, Ohio switched to a 1-drug execution procedure after the state botched a lethal injection. Romell Broom's executioners tried unsuccessfully for 2 hours to find a usable vein for injection, painfully hitting bone and muscle in as many as 18 needle sticks before the governor halted the execution.

It was not immediately clear Tuesday how soon the Supreme Court might set an execution date for Moore.

But legal challenges to Nebraska's new execution method could still put capital punishment on hold for several years in the state.

Attorneys who oppose the death penalty have said they expect lawsuits will be filed attacking various components of the new lethal injection protocol, including training requirements they say are vague. The law is also expected to be challenged under federal civil-rights law.

Source: Associated Press, January 26, 2011

_________________________

Use the tags below or the search engine at the top of this page to find updates, older or related articles on this Website.

Comments

'No Warning': The Death Penalty In Japan

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out. Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.

A second South Carolina death row inmate chooses execution by firing squad

Columbia, S.C. — A South Carolina death row inmate on Friday chose execution by firing squad, just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bullets. Mikal Mahdi, who pleaded guilty to murder for killing a police officer in 2004, is scheduled to be executed April 11. Mahdi, 41, had the choice of dying by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair. He will be the first inmate to be executed in the state since Brad Sigmon chose to be shot to death on March 7. A doctor pronounced Sigmon dead less than three minutes after three bullets tore into his heart.

Louisiana's First Nitrogen Execution Reflects Broader Method Shift

Facing imminent execution by lethal gas earlier this week, Jessie Hoffman Jr. — a Louisiana man convicted of abducting, raping and murdering a 28-year-old woman in 1996 — went to court with a request: Please allow me to be shot instead. In a petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16 seeking a stay of his execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a protocol that had yet to be tested in the state, Hoffman requested execution by firing squad as an alternative.

USA | Federal death penalty possible for Mexican cartel boss behind 1985 DEA agent killing

Rafael Caro Quintero, extradited from Mexico in 2022, appeared in Brooklyn court as feds weigh capital charges for the torture and murder of Agent Enrique Camarena NEW YORK — The death penalty is on the table for notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, the so-called “narco of narcos” who orchestrated the torture and murder of a DEA agent in 1985, according to federal prosecutors. “It is a possibility. The decision has not yet been made, but it is going through the process,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Saritha Komatireddy said in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday.

South Carolina | Spiritual adviser of condemned inmate: 'We're more than the worst thing we've done'

(RNS) — When 67-year-old Brad Sigmon was put to death on March 7 in South Carolina for the murder of his then-girlfriend's parents, it was the first time in 15 years that an execution in the United States had been carried out by a firing squad. United Methodist minister Hillary Taylor, Sigmon's spiritual adviser since 2020, said the multifaceted, months long effort to save Sigmon's life, and to provide emotional and spiritual support for his legal team, and the aftermath of his execution has been a "whirlwind" said Taylor, the director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to face death penalty

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

Inside Florida's Death Row: A dark cloud over the Sunshine State

Florida's death penalty system has faced numerous criticisms and controversies over the years - from execution methods to the treatment of Death Row inmates The Sunshine State remains steadfast in its enforcement of capital punishment, upholding a complex system that has developed since its reinstatement in 1976. Florida's contemporary death penalty era kicked off in 1972 following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia , which temporarily put a stop to executions across the country. Swiftly amending its laws, Florida saw the Supreme Court affirm the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976's Gregg v. Georgia case.

Bangladesh | Botswana Woman Executed for Drug Trafficking

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Lesedi Molapisi, a Botswana national convicted of drug trafficking, was executed in Bangladesh on Friday, 21 March 2025. The 31-year-old was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail after exhausting all legal avenues to appeal her death sentence. Molapisi was arrested in January 2023 upon arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, where customs officials discovered 3.1 kilograms of heroin hidden in her luggage. Following a trial under Bangladesh’s Narcotics Control Act, she was sentenced to death in May 2024. Her execution was initially delayed due to political unrest in the country but was carried out last week.

Oklahoma executes Wendell Grissom

Grissom used some of his last words on Earth to apologize to everyone he hurt and said that he prays they can find forgiveness for their own sake. As for his execution, he said it was a mercy. Oklahoma executed Wendell Arden Grissom on Thursday for the murder of 23-year-old Amber Matthews in front of her best friend’s two young daughters in 2005. Grissom, 56, was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. local time, becoming the first inmate to be put to death by the state in 2025 and the ninth in the United States this year.

564 People On Death Row In India, Highest Since The Turn Of The Century

In 90% of of all death penalty sentences in 2024, trial courts imposed sentences in the absence of adequate information about the accused, finds a recent report Bengaluru: Following the uproar and the widespread protests after the August 2024 rape and murder of a medical professional in Kolkata’s RG Kar hospital, there were demands for death penalty for the accused. The state government passed the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill 2024 (awaiting presidential assent) which included mandatory death sentence for rape which results in death of the victim or if the victim is left in a vegetative state, despite such a mandatory sentence being unconstitutional.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog