Nev. death row inmate: ‘Just get it done’

Fight about lethal injection drugs is delaying executions

LAS VEGAS — A Nevada death row inmate whose execution has been postponed twice said a legal fight over the drugs to be used in his lethal injection is taking a tortuous toll on him and his family.

The state should “just get it done, just do it effectively and stop fighting about it,” Scott Raymond Dozier told

The Associated Press on Wednesday.

“… This is my wish,” Dozier said in a brief telephone call from Ely State Prison. “They should stop punishing me and my family for their inability to carry out the execution.”

The Nevada Supreme Court took over the case late Wednesday involving the drugs at the request of state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, with an eye toward rescheduling Dozier’s execution for mid-November.

As a result, a state court hearing was canceled

Thursday involving a request by a third drug company to join two other firms in a legal challenge over the proposed use of their products.

Nevada law calls for capital punishment by lethal injection. But pharmaceutical companies nationwide have objected to their drugs being used in executions.

In Nebraska, a German pharmaceutical company is suing to stop the use of its potassium chloride in what would be that state’s first execution in more than two decades.

Tennessee was due

Thursday evening to execute its first inmate since 2009, using the sedative midazolam, the muscle relaxant vecuronium bromide and then potassium chloride to stop the inmate’s heart. On Monday, the Tennessee Supreme Court said a lawsuit filed by inmates contesting the execution drugs was not likely to succeed.

Nevada hasn’t executed an inmate since 2006, and officials have acknowledged initially planning the execution of Dozier around drugs they could obtain.