Execution of Nevada: the state can not use drugs, rule the rules



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The state was planning to use three drugs – midazolam (a sedative), fentanyl (the high-potency opioid) and cisatracurium (a paralytic) – to run Scott Dozier on Wednesday night .

Clark County District Judge, Elizabeth Gonzalez, ruled in favor of the company that manufactures midazolam, which sued the state, claiming that Nevada had illegally acquired the product for sale. # 39; execution. He wants the state to return his drug stock to the company.

"If the state is allowed to use the midazolam manufactured by the plaintiff, the plaintiff has shown a reasonable probability that he will suffer irreparable damage," Gonzalez said in his diary. The Vegas Court

The drug maker, Alvogen, and the state must return to court on September 10.

The execution would have been the first time that fentanyl, one of the central drugs of the opioid epidemic in the United States, Robert Dunham, executive director of the Center of 39, information on the death penalty, was used in a capital punishment case in the United States. It would probably have been a first for cisatracurium to be used too, he said.
Dozier, 47, does not make a legal challenge to stop his execution. "Life in prison is not a life," he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "It does not live, man, it's just to survive."

"If people say that they will kill me, get there," he told the newspaper.

  This undated photo of the Nevada Corrections Department Scott Raymond Dozier, on death row

His lawyer, Thomas Ericsson, told CNN that his client wanted to be executed.

Although Dozier is not trying to stop his execution, there is opposition to the drug cocktail that the state plans to use to execute the death sentence.

"Nevada should not use prisoners as guinea pigs in experimental executions, even if they ask to die," tweeted the ACLU of Nevada.
Dozier was convicted of first degree murder in the death of Jeremiah Miller, who was killed and dismembered in 2002. The victim's torso was found in a suitcase thrown in a garbage bin in Las Vegas , according to Nevada. Department of Corrections. Dozier was also convicted of second degree murder in the death of another victim found buried in the Arizona desert.

Wednesday's performance would be Nevada's first in 12 years, after Daryl Mack's performance in 2006, and the first to take place in a new run-time facility at the jail. # 39; Ely. Lethal injection is the only method of capital punishment used by Nevada

The company does not want midazolam to be used in executions

Many pharmaceutical companies do not want their products are used for the products for this purpose. States have been striving to find lethal injectable drugs legally available.

"Alvogen has undertaken controls to avoid diversion of this product for use in the implementation protocols," the company said on its website regarding midazolam. "Alvogen does not accept direct orders from prison systems or correctional services."

The use of midazolam remains controversial because critics of the death penalty have long argued that it is not an anesthetic painkiller and that the convict will feel the tortuous pain of the drugs that come next.

The drug was used in the execution of Joseph Wood in 2014, which took nearly two hours to die, and led Arizona to stop using midazolam. Earlier that year, another inmate, Clayton Lockett, received an injection of midazolam, but instead of becoming unconscious, he contracted, convulsed, and spoke. Execution in Oklahoma was stopped, but Lockett died after 43 minutes.
In 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that the use of midazolam in lethal injections did not constitute a violation of the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Fentanyl is part of the blend

  Execution in Nevada to use the potent opioid fentanyl

Nevada announced last fall that he was preparing to use fentanyl in Dozier's execution.

The news divides the experts. Josh Bloom, senior director of chemical and pharmaceutical sciences for the American Council on Science and Health, told CNN in September that the decision left him "stunned".

"You have something that kills hundreds of people a day in the United States and you have prisons that can not get the death penalty, so they turn to drugs that kill hundreds of people in the United States. across the United States, "he said. "It sounds like an article from the Onion," referring to a satire news site.

Others said that given the lethality of the drug, the state's decision was not shocking.

Nebraska is also considering the use of fentanyl in combination with other drugs for executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Cisatracurium

The third drug, cisatracurium, was the subject of an appeal process last year in the Dozier case.

Dozier was to be executed in November, but a district court judge ruled that cisatracurium could not be used in execution for fear of the muscle relaxant, which could hide the signs of pain.

This case ended at the Nevada Supreme Court, where judges unanimously overturned the District Judge's decision in May, according to CNN affiliate KSNV. This decision paved the way for the planned execution of Dozier

Dunham, the head of the Death Penalty Information Center, said that if cisatracurium was used in the execution of the Nevada would be the first time that a state would publicly recognize its execution.

"It is possible that another state has already used cisatracurium in an execution without publicly announcing it, but as far as we know, that did not happen" , he said

. Moshtaghian, Elwyn Lopez, Marlena Baldacci and Jacqueline Howard contributed to this report.

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