Nevada’s plan to execute a convicted murderer with a never-before-used combination of drugs is on hold for at least 60 days.
The state was planning to use three drugs — midazolam (a sedative), fentanyl (the high-potency opioid) and cisatracurium (a paralytic) — to execute Scott Dozier on Wednesday night.
Clark County District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez ruled in favor of the company that makes midazolam, which sued the state, saying Nevada had illegitimately acquired the product for the execution. It wants the state to return its stock of the drug to the company. Gonzalez granted a temporary restraining order.
“If the state is permitted to use the midazolam manufactured by plaintiff, plaintiff has shown a reasonable probability it will suffer irreparable damages,” Gonzalez said in her Las Vegas court.
The drug maker, Alvogen, and the state are scheduled to return to court September 10 for another hearing in the case.
The execution would have been the first time that fentanyl, one of the central drugs in the US opioid epidemic, has been used in a capital punishment case in the United States, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. It would likely have been a first for cisatracurium to be used as well, he said.
Dozier, 47, is not making legal challenges to halt his execution. “Life in prison isn’t a life,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “This isn’t living, man. It’s just surviving.”
“If people say they’re going to kill me, get to it,” he told the newspaper.
This undated Nevada Department of Corrections photo shows death row inmate Scott Raymond Dozier.
His attorney, Thomas Ericsson, told CNN that his client wants to be executed.
Although Dozier is not trying to stop his execution, there is opposition to the drug cocktail the state plans to use in carrying out 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.
ACLU of Nevada@ACLUNV
Join the Nevada Coalition Against the Death Penalty for a rally and vigil at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Governor’s Mansion! Nevada should not use prisoners as guinea pigs in experimental executions, even if they ask to die.
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 dumped in a trash bin in Las Vegas, according to the Nevada Department of Corrections. Dozier was also convicted of second-degree murder in the death of another victim found buried in the Arizona desert.
The Wednesday execution would be Nevada’s first in 12 years, after Daryl Mack was executed in 2006, and the first to take place in a new execution facility at Ely State Prison. Lethal injection is the only method of capital punishment that Nevada uses.
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