Nebraska Proposes Untried Lethal-Injection Combination as Nevada Court Halts Execution With Similar Drugs

As Nebraska announced its intention to use a never-before-tried four-drug execution combination featuring the opiod pain medication fentanyl and the paralytic drug cisatracurium, a Nevada judge issued a stay of execution that put off the nation’s first attempted execution using those drugs.

On November 9, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services provided notice to death-row prisoner Jose Sandoval that it intends to execute him using a combination of the drugs diazepam (Valium), fentanyl citrate, cisatracurium besylate, and potassium chloride. Later that day, Clark County (Las Vegas) District Judge Jennifer Togliatti granted a request by lawyers for the Nevada Department of Corrections to stay the scheduled November 14 execution of Scott Dozier to permit them to appeal her order directing the state to remove cisatracurium from its also untried execution protocol of diazepam, fentanyl, and the paralytic.

Dozier, who has waived his appeals and asked to be executed, is only contesting the state’s method of execution. The judge issued her order after considering medical evidence that the cisatracurium could cause Dozier to experience “air hunger” and suffocate to death, while masking signs that he was conscious and suffering during the execution. Doctors testified that a paralytic drug would be unnecessary if the other two drugs, fentanyl and diazepam, were administered properly.

In staying the execution to permit Nevada to appeal to the state supreme court, Judge Togliatti said: “They’re going to have to be the court to make that determination that we as a state are OK with a paralytic.”

Nebraska law requires the state to give a prison notice of the drugs to be used in the execution at least sixty days in advance of issuing a death warrant. The state attorney general’s office has indicated it will ask the Nebraska Supreme Court to issue a warrant after that time has passed.

State Senator Ernie Chambers, one of the leaders of the Nebraska legislature’s repeal of the state’s death-penalty statute and its override of Governor Pete Ricketts’s veto of the measure, criticized the notice as politically motivated and called the timing of its issuance “suspicious.” The notice was issued almost a year to the day after the voters brought back the death-penalty law in a voter initiative bankrolled by Rickett, and as the governor gears up for a re-election campaign in 2018.

Sandoval is currently unrepresented. The Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy, which typically represents death-row prisoners, cannot represent Sandoval because it represented other defendants in the case. But the commission’s executive director, Jeffery Pickens, said Sandoval “has to be given some sort of opportunity to challenge [the drug protocol].”