The expected cost of drugs for Utah’s execution jumped from $7K to $200K. Here’s why the state says it’s worth it.

Prison officials believe it would have cost more to fight Taberon Honie in court over their initial plan to use an untested three-drug cocktail than pay for the pentobarbital they now plan to buy.

Utah prison officials are expecting to spend $200,000 for the lethal injection drug they now plan to use to execute Taberon Honie, after changing course when the death row inmate’s attorney raised questions about the state’s original plan to use an untested three-drug cocktail.

That’s twice the amount that Idaho corrections officials paid to obtain the same amount of pentobarbital last year, according to news reports. And it’s 25 times more than the estimated cost of $7,900 for the three-drug combination of ketamine, fentanyl and potassium chloride that the Utah prison initially planned to use.

But Glen Mills, a spokesperson for the Utah Department of Corrections, said that prison officials are planning to move forward with getting the pricier three doses of pentobarbital because officials believe the costs to fight Honie in court over the novel three-drug combination would exceed $200,000.

Scrapping the earlier plan to use the three-drug combination in favor of pentobarbital did whittle down Honie’s lawsuit. Attorneys on Wednesday agreed to dismiss claims challenging the untried drug mixture, which his legal team had argued could subject him to a painful death in violation of the state’s constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

Prison officials have also offered a way for Honie’s lawyers to call a judge and ask them to stop the execution, currently scheduled for Aug. 8, if something goes wrong during the lethal injection and Honie appears to be suffering. Prison officials initially said they would not allow Honie’s attorney to have a communication device in the prison, which was another aspect he was challenging in his lawsuit. That claim was also dismissed Wednesday as part of a stipulation.

The lawsuit hasn’t been entirely settled, though. Attorneys will argue next Tuesday over two key issues: Whether Honie had enough notification to research the drug the prison plans to use and whether the prison needs to update its execution protocol.

That protocol has been in place since 2010, and reflects the use of “sodium thiopental or other equally or more effective substance sufficient to cause death.” It is illegal to import sodium thiopental, a fast-acting barbiturate, and the only U.S.-based supplier stopped production in 2011.

Honie has been on death row for 25 years. In July 1998, Honie called his ex-girlfriend and demanded she visit him, threatening to kill her family if she refused. Later that evening, sometime before midnight, Honie took a cab to the house of Claudia Benn, his ex-girlfriend’s mother. He broke the door in with a rock and then beat, bit, stabbed and sexually assaulted Benn as he killed her, court documents state.

Honie’s lawsuit is one of his last chances to stop his scheduled execution. Earlier this week, he also asked the Utah parole board for clemency. The board is now considering that request and is expected to issue a decision before his execution date.

In declarations filed last weekend, Randall Honey, chief of prison operations, and UDC Executive Director Brian Redd described the state’s attempts to acquire pentobarbital.

Officials reached out to 12 states, which “either did not respond, or replied stating that due to their laws, they could not provide any information related to their supply of pentobarbital,” Honey said. The drug is an authorized execution option in at least 10 other states.

Honey said he also contacted an unnamed pharmacist “who told me that they could also not procure pentobarbital.” That pharmacist suggested instead to use the three-drug combination of ketamine, fentanyl, and potassium chloride. Mills, the corrections spokesperson, would not say Thursday whether the state paid this pharmacist for his or her opinion, or how much.

At a June hearing, lawyers with the Utah attorney general’s office presented the plan to use the three drugs during a hearing when asking for Honie’s death warrant — which the judge signed.

Following news coverage of that hearing, Redd said, “I was contacted by an individual who ... informed me that they could get me in touch with a supplier of pentobarbital.”

Redd contacted the supplier. And now, Honey wrote, prison officials say they will be able to get the supply of pentobarbital in an “appropriate and legal way” at least three days before Honie’s scheduled execution.

Source: sltrib.com, Jessica Miller, July 26, 2024

_____________________________________________________________________

Twitter/X | Facebook | Telegram | Contact Us

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

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.

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.

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

Texas: The inmates who refused to die quietly and had to be gassed out of their cells before execution

Former crime reporter Michelle Lyons, who witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, reveals the desperate acts of death row prisoners who refused to accept their fate After spending years or often decades locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, most Death Row inmates go willingly to their executions. However, some refuse to die quietly - with officers forced to gas them out of cells, strap up their heads and even give chase across prison grounds. Michelle Lyons, who has witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, exclusively tells Sun Online how certain inmates "fight like hell" in their last moments. On most occasions, Michelle watched from the witness area, with the killers already on the gurney - the stretcher where they'd be given a lethal injection. Seven prisoners once tried to escape from the Row in Huntsville - with one shoving magazines and newspapers under his clothes to help him roll over razor-wire fences. Others have had to b...

Japan: Capital punishment for a minor

Death chamber at Tokyo Detention Center The Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the death sentence given in a lay judge trial to a 24-year-old man for murders he committed when he was a minor raises questions about the lay judge trial system and capital punishment. These include whether the lay judges correctly understood the spirit of the Juvenile Law in sentencing the defendant to death. It was the 1st death sentence handed down on a minor in a lay judge trial. The murders took place in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in 2010 when Yutaro Chiba was 18 - meaning he fell under the purview of the Juvenile Law. Chiba was convicted of entering his ex-girlfriend's house and stabbing to death the girl's sister and a female friend of the girl with a butcher knife, seriously injuring a male friend of the sister and abducting the girl. Prosecutors said Chiba killed the victims because they were trying to separate him and his former girlfriend. Since Chiba pleaded n...

Florida to execute William Silvia for 2006 shooting murder of wife

William Silvia, convicted of the 2006 shooting murder of his wife, Patricia, is scheduled to die by lethal injection in August, according to a death warrant filed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on July 17. If all previously scheduled executions go as planned, Silvia will be the 13th person put to death in Florida this year, following a record-breaking 19 executions in 2025. Silvia, now 61, went to his estranged wife's mother's house in Seminole County to attempt to reconcile with her, but first he calmly bought a 12-gauge shotgun and ammunition, prosecutors said. After talking to Patricia Silvia, Silvia got the shotgun from his truck, shot her mother, Betty Woodard, in the face, and fatally shot Patricia in the head, court records show. Woodard, who was standing in front of her daughter, lost her left eye and the top portion of her nose.

Idaho | Death row prisoners sue over state's new firing squad

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) – Days after Idaho made the switch to a firing squad for executions, two Idaho death row prisoners next in line to be put to death sued the state prison system, saying its director withheld information about how she settled on the specifics for carrying out the method. Attorneys for prisoners Thomas Creech and Gerald Pizzuto filed suit this week in state district court against Idaho Department of Correction Director Bree Derrick. In the filing, they called her approval of an updated standard operating procedure for the firing squad and lethal injection as a backup method “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion and in excess of the statutory authority of the agency.”

Florida executes Dennis Sochor

Man, 74, becomes oldest inmate executed in Florida in state’s 10th lethal injection this year Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners in its history on Tuesday, a 74-year-old convicted murderer who was 1 of 3 older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state. Dennis Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said. He was convicted of killing a woman on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.

Oldest inmate set to be executed in Florida will face strict spending limit for final meal

An entire category of food is also off-limits for final meal requests in Florida Florida is currently preparing to execute its oldest inmate later today (July 14), a 74-year-old convicted murderer who has been on death row since the 1980s—but his final meal will be limited by a strict budget. Dennis Sochor is scheduled to be put to death later today, making history as the oldest inmate to ever be executed in the state. The criminal, who has been on death row for nearly 40 years, will be administered the lethal three-drug injection, with the process due to begin at around 6pm.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog