Nevada | Lawyers argue death row inmate Zane Floyd’s execution challenge

A federal judge is set to decide soon if he will dismiss death row prisoner Zane Floyd’s challenge to his execution.

U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware said last month that the challenge from the quadruple convicted killer could be dismissed now that some of the drugs the state intended to use in the lethal injection cocktail have expired.

Boulware gave Floyd’s lawyers and attorneys with the Nevada Department of Corrections 3 weeks to submit motions arguing whether the case was moot.

But court documents filed Monday show that attorneys on both sides agree on one aspect of the case.

“While the parties have respectfully but strenuously disagreed on most everything over this case throughout the past year, on this issue they show a united front: this case is not moot,” wrote Chief Deputy Attorney General Randall Gilmer.

Attorneys for the prison system asked Boulware to rule on multiple challenges Floyd has raised regarding the Department of Corrections’ execution protocol.

Floyd has challenged aspects of the protocol including the combination of drugs, the amount of training drug administrators, medical staff and prison employees would receive prior to the execution, and the state’s position that officials do not need to reveal the identities of those involved in the execution.

Floyd was sentenced to die for fatally shooting four people and gravely wounding another at a Las Vegas grocery story more than two decades ago.

If Boulware decides not to rule on the case, then Floyd’s attorneys asked for an “administrative closure,” which would allow them to quickly reopen court proceedings if the Department of Corrections is able to obtain the drugs called for in the execution protocol.

State officials intend to combine drugs that have never been used together to carry out a death sentence. Experts called by Floyd’s lawyers to testify during an evidentiary hearing in November said the drugs could cause extreme suffering while Floyd is paralyzed and suffocating.

The drug cocktail includes the anesthetic ketamine, the painkiller fentanyl or the similar drug alfentanil, and potassium chloride or potassium acetate. The proposed protocol indicates the state could also use cisatracurium, a paralytic drug.

Officials missed their deadline to secure Floyd’s execution warrant in February when the state’s supply of ketamine expired. The state’s last batch of cisatracurium also expired on April 19, according to Monday’s motion written by Floyd’s federal public defenders, Brad Levenson and David Anthony.

Levenson and Anthony wrote that state officials have said that prison employees still have active orders to try and obtain ketamine through the state’s regular pharmaceutical distributor, Cardinal Health.

It is unclear when Boulware could issue a ruling on the case.

Last week, Arizona executed death row inmate Clarence Dixon, 66, using the sedative sodium pentobarbital. Critics argued that the execution was botched, with the medical team having difficulty finding a vein to administer the drugs.

Officials first tried Dixon’s arms, then made an incision in his groin area, the Associated Press reported.

The day of the execution, the Associated Press reported that it took about 25 minutes to insert the IV. However, Dixon’s legal team has said the process took up to 40 minutes, the Arizona Republic reported Wednesday.

Levenson told the Review-Journal that executions that don’t happen “according to plan” continue to cast doubt on how Floyd’s execution could be carried out, especially with Nevada’s untested protocol and drug combination.

“It’s an ongoing concern that the executions in other states have not gone well,” Levenson said. “And those executions aren’t necessarily with novel protocols.”

Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal, Staff, May 19, 2022

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Two Executions In Six Hours: Florida Set For Historical Double Execution Tuesday

Florida is preparing to execute two death row inmates on Tuesday, July 28, in an action that would mark the state’s first double execution in more than 60 years. Former police officer James Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12 p.m., followed six hours later by 80-year-old Dominick Occhicone at 6 p.m. If carried out, these will mark the 39th and 40th executions under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the 11th and 12th in the state since the beginning of 2026. In response, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) has launched petition and letter-writing efforts asking DeSantis to halt both procedures. The group has organized two public vigils outside Florida State Prison in Raiford, set for 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., contingent on whether stays are issued.

Florida executes Dominick Occhicone

Florida executes 2 men in a day. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida's death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term. STARKE, Fla. — Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, the last an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history. Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of killing a young girl.

Florida | 49 years on death row, killer of Bonita Springs teen learns death date

A Fort Myers man on death row for nearly five decades learned his execution date as Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his order Thursday, July 30. Harold Gene Lucas, then 24, shot and killed his 16-year-old girlfriend, Anthia Jill Piper in Bonita Springs on August 14, 1976. Lucas was 24 when he was charged in Piper's shooting death at her parents' home on Aug. 14, 1976. The execution is set for Sept. 1 in a state that has accelerated its pace under DeSantis the past two years, with a record of 19 executions in 2025. Piper was shot seven times by Lucas, who claimed to be intoxicated.

Florida executes James Duckett

Double execution: 1st of 2 inmates is put to death in Florida Florida has executed James Duckett, a 68-year-old former cop convicted of killing an 11-year-old girl in 1987. The state is set to execute an 80-year-old man 6 hours later for a 1986 murder. Florida carried out the 1st double execution in more than 60 years, executing former police officer James Duckett and later scheduling the execution of 80‑year‑old Dominick Occhicone, amid Governor Ron DeSantis’s aggressive push to increase death penalties in the state. Florida has put to death the 1st of 2 inmates in the state's 1st double execution in more than 60 years amid an aggressive death penalty push by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Florida | Former warden recalls botched electrocution that left him battling PTSD for 13 years and turned him into an abolitionist

Ron McAndrew anticipated it would be just another standard execution. He had been assigned to carry out the death of Cuban refugee Pedro Medina via electric chair within the confines of Florida State Prison. Fifteen years had passed since Medina's conviction for the murder of 52-year-old Dorothy James, and McAndrew's responsibility was to oversee the administration of lethal electrical currents to his brain. Having already supervised two previous executions using the identical procedure and raised in a community that strongly supported capital punishment, he expected a swift conclusion with justice delivered.

Iran erects iron gallows in Isfahan protest square

An iron gallows has been erected in an Isfahan square where protests erupted in January. Families of several of the 10 remaining prisoners sentenced to death have been summoned for farewell visits. An iron gallows erected in Ali-Khani Square in the central Iranian city of Isfahan has raised fears that the regime is preparing to publicly execute protesters arrested during nationwide demonstrations in January. Sources who spoke with Iran International said large numbers of security forces had been deployed in the area, while the families of several prisoners sentenced to death had been summoned to the prison for farewell visits.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Idaho | How Bryan Kohberger’s Guilty Plea Move Could Be His Death Sentence

If Bryan Kohberger successfully withdraws his guilty plea and goes to trial for the murders of four University of Idaho students, it could lead to him being sentenced to death, experts told Newsweek . Kohberger, 31, filed a handwritten petition on Monday from the Idaho Maximum Security Penitentiary, where he is serving four consecutive life sentences for the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen in a rental home near the university's campus in Moscow, Idaho, in 2022. Kohberger pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbings just over a year ago, a month before jury selection was set to start.

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