Fentanyl to be used in execution after judge rejects drug firm plea

A JUDGE has cleared the way for America’s first execution involving fentanyl, the synthetic opioid.

District Judge Richard Kopf refused to block Nebraska from carrying out the lethal injection despite a pharmaceutical company’s claims that the state illicitly obtained its drugs.

Judge Kopf denied the drug company’s request to temporarily block state prison officials from executing Carey Dean Moore, one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the US.

Moore is scheduled to die on Tuesday in Nebraska’s first execution since 1997 with a never-before-tried combination of drugs. Moore, who was convicted of killing two cab drivers five days apart in 1979, has stopped fighting the state’s efforts to execute him.

Mr Kopf said granting the drug company’s request would “frustrate the will of the people,” referring to the 61 per cent of Nebraska voters who chose to reinstate capital punishment in 2016 after politicians moved to abolish it.

“I will not allow the plaintiff to frustrate the wishes of Mr Moore and the laws of the state of Nebraska,” he said during the hearing. Attorneys for Fresenius Kabi, the drug company, filed a lawsuit earlier this week arguing that state officials improperly obtained at least one of the company’s drugs. It signalled plans to file an immediate appeal of Friday’s ruling.

In Nevada, a judge indefinitely postponed an execution last month after Alvogen, a drugmaker, filed a similar lawsuit. Moore is scheduled to be executed with a combination of four drugs: the sedative diazepam to render him unconscious; fentanyl citrate, which would also help render him unconscious; cisatracurium besylate to induce paralysis and halt his breathing; and potassium chloride to stop his heart.

Drug companies have become increasingly intent on preventing their life-saving or pain relieving products being tainted with use in executions.

Fresenius Kabi argues that it manufactured the state’s supply of potassium chloride and possibly the cisatracurium. Nebraska state officials have refused to identify the source of their execution drugs, but Fresenius Kabi alleges the state’s supply of potassium chloride is stored in 30 millilitre bottles, and that it was the only company to package the drug in vials of that size.

A state judge in Nebraska ordered prison officials in June to release documents that might reveal the source of the drugs, but the state has appealed against the ruling. State attorneys deny Fresenius Kabi’s allegation that prison officials obtained the drugs illicitly.

‘I will not allow the plaintiff to frustrate the wishes of Mr Moore and the laws of the state of Nebraska’