Nebraska Supreme Court stays Moore's June 14 execution

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Supreme Court issued an order Wednesday staying what was to be the state's first execution using lethal injection, giving attorneys for Carey Dean Moore a chance to challenge one of the execution drugs on appeal.

Moore, 53, was scheduled in April to be executed June 14 for the 1979 slayings of two Omaha cabbies.

But the high court said in its two-page order that Moore can't be executed until his appeal in Douglas County District Court is resolved.

"The matter needs to be litigated in the post-conviction motion," Moore's attorney, Jerry Soucie, said. "Once that's done, the state and the defense will move on from there."

A message left Wednesday with the Nebraska Attorney General's Office wasn't immediately returned.

In the pending appeal, Moore challenged the state's purchase of one of the three drugs used in its lethal-injection protocol in district court. Soucie, has questioned the legality of Nebraska's purchase from an Indian company and whether the state bought the right substance. A worldwide shortage of the drug, sodium thiopental, has made it difficult to acquire.

Soucie said during a Tuesday hearing that the state Department of Correctional Services might as well have bought the drug "from some out-of-work meth dealer," the Lincoln Journal Star reported.

The Nebraska Attorney General's Office said such a challenge should be heard in federal court, and the district judge on Tuesday gave Soucie until June 7 to respond to a filing from that office.

The Nebraska Supreme Court last month rejected a similar appeal by Soucie and ordered Moore to be executed.

Moore was convicted of first-degree murder for killing Maynard D. Helgeland and Reuel Eugene Van Ness during botched robberies.

Six days before Moore was scheduled to be executed in 2007, the state's high court issued a stay because it wanted to consider whether the electric chair should still be used. The court ruled in 2008 that the electric chair amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

Nebraska lawmakers voted in 2009 to replace the electric chair with lethal injection as its preferred method of execution.

Source: timesunion.com, May 25, 2011

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