Death Penalty News

As more ‘technological’ methods have proved grisly, some states are considering shooting prisoners instead Six years ago, a man on death row in Nevada named Scott Dozier said he wanted to give up his legal fight and be executed, but there was a problem. Prison officials couldn’t find lethal injection drugs. Amid the ensuing legal turmoil, Dozier tossed off his own solution, telling me during an interview, “I’d have been just as happy if they took me out back and shot me.” Dozier’s death, in 2019, was ruled a suicide, but now his words seem prescient. On Thursday, South Carolina scheduled the execution of Richard Moore – convicted of murder in a 2001 convenience story robbery – for 29 April. Because state officials say they have not been able to secure lethal injection drugs, they will give him the choice between the electric chair and the firing squad. Officials have now spent $53,000, by their own estimate, to renovate part of a prison to allow a three-person firing squad to carry out...

Nevada's death row houses 64 men, and 1/4 of them have lived there for more than 3 decades Nevada’s death row houses 64 convicted killers, all men, most of whom have been awaiting execution for more than 2 decades. At least 9 of those men have been granted a new trial or have had a court rule that their sentences should be re-evaluated. But for unknown reasons, the Nevada Department of Corrections continues to list them as residents of death row, a specific wing of Ely State Prison. As recently as mid-September, Samuel Howard, 1 of 16 men who had served more than 30 years on death row, was found ineligible for capital punishment by the Nevada Supreme Court after his previous violent felony conviction in New York was vacated. “Death row is aging,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. “It’s aging for many reasons, but one of them is because new evidence continues to show up in these cases.” On Sept. 21, a Clark County dist...

Nevada prison officials say 1 of the drugs they originally planned to use this month in the state’s 1st execution of an inmate in 15 years expires July 31. Another expires 6 weeks after a new evidentiary hearing a judge now has scheduled in October to decide if or when 4-time convicted killer Zane Michael Floyd will receive a lethal injection. But Nevada’s lawyers said in new court filings two other drugs in the four-drug execution protocol they have submitted to the court are available at least through February. And state corrections’ officials told the judge before he ordered a delay in the execution on Monday that they have access to similar drugs that could substitute for the other two closest to expiration. Meanwhile, the order blocking the execution previously scheduled the week of July 26 is subject to appeal by the state for another 2 weeks. And a pharmaceutical company that sold Nevada one of the drugs, ketamine, is demanding it be returned because it’s meant to be used for li...

A federal court judge in Las Vegas is ordering an execution set for July to be put on hold at least until October, saying the defendant deserves more time to evaluate whether the method of killing violates his constitutional rights. Judge Richard Boulware said after a Monday afternoon hearing that an order calling for injunctive relief in the case of Zane Floyd would come no later than Wednesday. He said that because the Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC) had three months to establish protocols for Floyd’s execution, Floyd should have at least that much time to consider whether the process violates the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Floyd, who was convicted of killing four people and injuring a fifth person inside a Las Vegas grocery store in 1999, was originally set to be put to death on July 26. The federal court stay delays that date to at least the week of Oct. 18. During testimony, Charles Daniels, director of the NDOC, said the agency had...

The makers of ketamine, a drug planned for the execution of convicted killer Zane Floyd, have demanded that Nevada prison officials return the supply before the lethal injection scheduled for next month. A lawyer for Hikma Pharmaceuticals wrote in a cease-and-desist letter to Attorney General Aaron Ford on Thursday that the Nevada Department of Corrections obtained 50 vials of ketamine illegally. “NDOC’s purchase and intended use of Hikma’s products for capital punishment is in violation of state and federal law, in knowing violation of Hikma’s property and proprietary interests in its products, and these actions will cause significant damage to Hikma’s business reputation and the interests of its investors,” Hikma’s lawyer, Josh Reid, wrote in the nine-page letter obtained by the Review-Journal. The prison system’s lethal injection cocktail calls for an injection of painkillers fentanyl or alfentanil, “depending on availability;” ketamine, an anesthetic; cisatracurium, a paralytic; an...

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A convicted murderer facing lethal injection in late July in Nevada wants a federal judge to at least delay his execution long enough to review the constitutionality of the never-before-used procedure and sequence of drugs that state prison officials plan to use. In a plea for a stay of execution that could be issued Friday, a team of deputy federal public defenders representing Zane Michael Floyd asked U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware II to slow the case to allow “adequate time to litigate for the first time in any court nationwide Nevada’s novel execution protocol.” “The public has an interest in assuring executions proceed humanely and constitutionally,” they said. One of Floyd’s defense attorneys, Brad Levenson, declined comment Monday about the 24-page court filing submitted on June 18. A spokeswoman for Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, representing prison officials, and the Clark County prosecutor handling the Floyd case also declined to comment. Boulware...

The Nevada Department of Corrections (NVDOC) intends to execute death-row prisoner Zane Floyd with a three- or four-drug combination that has never been used before to put a prisoner to death. In a proposed execution protocol released on June 10, 2021, NVDOC said its execution cocktail would be drawn from six possible drugs, depending upon availability. While acknowledging ongoing challenges to the legality and constitutionality of NVDOC’s planned execution process, Las Vegas trial judge Michael Villani granted Clark County District Attorney Scott Wolfson’s motion to set a July 26 execution date for Floyd. “The court is unpersuaded that the Nevada Department of Corrections must first prove that it can safely carry out an execution before the court can sign an order of execution,” Villani said. Brad Levenson, a federal public defender who represents Floyd and had already filed a federal challenge to the state’s execution procedures, said he will appeal the execution order to the state s...

Lawyers for Zane Floyd, scheduled to die in fewer than 40 days for a massacre at a Las Vegas grocery store, say an untested combination of drugs planned for his lethal injection would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.  “Zane Floyd is in a unique position,” federal public defenders wrote in a court brief filed Friday, reiterating a request to stay the execution. “The State seeks to execute him using a novel execution protocol. Only 1 of the 6 proposed drugs and alternates has an established (though contentious) history of use in executions; the others have been used rarely, accidentally, or not at all.” Ketamine, 1 of the drugs proposed by the Nevada Department of Corrections in a 4-drug cocktail made public last week, has never been used in an American execution, according to the lawyers. The plan calls for an injection of painkillers fentanyl or alfentanil, “depending on availability;” ketamine, an anesthetic; cisatracurium, a paralytic; and heart-stopping potassium chloride...