The name of the physician picked to attend a state inmate's execution can remain secret, even from drug makers suing to ban the use of their products in the twice-postponed lethal injection, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled Monday.
In a twist, lawyers for three pharmaceutical companies who won the right to obtain the name last week - and had promised to sue the doctor once they got it - told a judge in Las Vegas that they welcomed Monday's high court order.
Attorney Todd Bice, representing drug firm Alvogen, told Clark County District Court Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez the high court decision to protect the doctor's identity, coupled with a recent sworn statement from Nevada prisons chief James Dzurenda, bolsters companies' arguments that their business would be hurt if their drugs are used.
"We aren't going to get into the identity of the doctor. We do intend to argue strongly that having your name associated with capital punishment is harmful to reputations," Bice said. "The director testified that it would be ruinous of the doctor's reputation."
Gonzalez had ruled last week that drug companies could learn the name, but it would not be disclosed to the public.
The turnabout came on a day of boundary-setting decisions a day ahead of hearings on the drug companies' contentions that Nevada improperly obtained their drugs for a use the companies don't allow.
Gonzalez plans three days of testimony on a lawsuit by Alvogen that stopped the July execution of Scott Raymond Dozier. The case was later joined by Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA and Sandoz Inc.
State Supreme Court justices are watching developments before Gonzalez ahead of oral arguments next week on the state's bid to put Dozier's execution back on track for a yet-to-be-determined date in mid-November.
15 states are siding with Nevada in the state Supreme Court fight against the drug companies, led by Oklahoma and including Nebraska, where an inmate was put to death last month.
They argue that similar drug company challenges amount to a tactic in a "guerrilla war against the death penalty" aiming to thwart the will of voters in the 31 states with capital punishment.
Nevada's trouble obtaining drugs from companies that don't want to be associated with capital punishment, its attempts to fashion a protocol using medications it found and the challenges it has faced in court has made Nevada a model of the trouble that death penalty states have had carrying out lethal injections.
Dozier's execution was postponed last November and again in July by legal challenges to the choice of drugs and the procedures developed for what would be Nevada's 1st execution since 2006.
The state's lethal injection protocol calls for using the sedative midazolam, made by Alvogen, followed by lethal doses of the powerful opioid fentanyl made by Hikma and then the muscle paralytic cisatracurium produced by Sandoz.
Nebraska used a similar sedative, diazepam, followed by fentanyl, cisatracurium and a 4th drug, potassium chloride, that is not part of Nevada's planned 3-drug protocol.
Gonzalez did not immediately decide Monday on a new bid by the state to dismiss the drug makers' claims outright. She scheduled another hearing Oct. 2 on that question, saying she expects her eventual decision will also be appealed to the state high court.
Dozier, 47, was sentenced to die in 2007 for murder convictions in killings in Phoenix and Las Vegas. He has given up court challenges, insists he wants to die and says he doesn't care if it's painful.
Source: Associated Press, September 11, 2018
Prisons chief: Supplier error got Nevada its execution drugs
Under questioning by drug company lawyers, Department of Corrections Director James Dzurenda said the top state pharmacy official jumped at the chance last May, and once Nevada had to the drugs Dzurenda felt no obligation to return them.
"If I didn't have any contract with them and did it legally, I would keep it," Dzurenda told Todd Bice, a lawyer representing Alvogen, maker of the sedative slated to be the 1st of 3 drugs in the execution of twice-convicted killer Scott Raymond Dozier.
State attorneys say the drugs came from a third-party supplier, Cardinal Health, and not the drug companies.
"Is that your definition of dealing with the public in good faith?" Bice asked after citing passages from Dzurenda's department's rules of ethics.
"I believe so, yes," Dzurenda replied.
The day of testimony provided a glimpse at the trouble Nevada and many of the other 30 death-penalty states in the U.S. have had identifying, obtaining and keeping drugs for executions. Nevada requires lethal injection and last put an inmate to death in 2006.
Drug companies Alvogen, Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA and Sandoz Inc. accuse the state of improperly obtaining their drugs for a use the companies don't allow, and deceiving the public in the process.
Dzurenda refused to identify state officials involved in execution planning by name or title, saying it was to avoid exposing them to harassment or threats by opponents of capital punishment.
He said he keeps confidential the names of prison employees who he said volunteer for the overtime job of taking part in an execution.
Nevada also tried to keep secret the drug company identities, although a court order in a last-minute American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit in July forced disclosure of the 3 company names.
"Once it goes public," Dzurenda said, "just like when you produce and publicize people's names, those companies and people get harassed, or could get harassed, or letters."
Dzurenda told the Clark County District Court Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez that the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, which has been blamed for illegal use overdose deaths nationwide, was added to Nevada's 3-drug lethal injection plan after the state pharmacy chief found a way to get the drug.
Later, the state's top doctor testified that although he's not licensed to practice medicine in the U.S. and doesn't prescribe or use painkillers or anesthetics, it seemed to him that the high doses of the sedative, the fentanyl and a muscle paralyzing drug that Dzurenda told him would be used would kill Dozier.
In Nevada, the prisons chief and top doctor are the only 2 officials who can sign off on the execution plan.
"He consulted with me if the proposed medication was appropriate and effective and I said yes," Ihsan Azzam told the judge.
Azzam even commented, "Yeah, it will kill a mammoth," he told David McElhinney, an attorney representing Hikma.
Azzam meets qualifications to be chief state medical officer under Nevada law. He has a master's degree and worked for several years in environmental public health and epidemiology before being named chief state medical officer last May. He is originally from Syria, became a doctor in Romania and practiced for several years as an obstetrics and gynecology physician in Africa before moving to the United States in the 1990s.
2 more days of hearings are slated Wednesday and Thursday ahead of oral arguments next week before the state Supreme Court on the state's bid to put Dozier's execution back on track for mid-November.
15 states are siding with Nevada in the state Supreme Court fight against the drug companies, led by Oklahoma and including Nebraska, where an inmate was put to death last month.
Source: Associated Press, September 11, 2018
⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.
 |  |
Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde