Nevada blocked from carrying out country’s first fentanyl execution
Hours before Nevada was set to carry out the country’s first lethal injection using the powerful opioid fentanyl, a judge on Wednesday halted the execution due to a challenge from a drug company that objects to the state’s plan to use one of its products as a sedative for the procedure.
Nevada’s plans to use fentanyl as part of its execution of Scott Dozier — a convicted murderer who has said he wants the lethal injection to proceed — made it the latest in a string of states that have turned to unprecedented drug combinations or uncommon execution methods as they try to carry out death sentences amid difficulties obtaining drugs.
While some other states have turned to comparatively unknown chemicals, Nevada’s plan stood out for relying on fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller that has helped fuel the country’s ongoing opioid epidemic. Depending on what happens in Dozier’s case, Nebraska ultimately could wind up carrying out the first fentanyl-assisted execution, something that state is seeking to do this summer.
Dozier, 47, was convicted of killing a man in a Las Vegas hotel, cutting him into pieces and stealing his money in 2002. Dozier also has been clear about his desire to have the execution carried out.
“Life in prison isn’t a life,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal this week. “This isn’t living, man. It’s just surviving. … If people say they’re going to kill me, get to it.”
Instead, state officials said Dozier’s execution was on hold indefinitely.
Though Dozier doesn’t oppose the execution, Nevada officials faced a late challenge from Alvogen, a pharmaceutical firm that said the state “illegitimately acquired” its drug, the sedative midazolam. That drug has become controversial for its use in executions, and Alvogen highlighted some of those incidents in court, including the bungled 2014 Oklahoma execution that saw an inmate grimace and kick, an Arizona execution that same year that took nearly two hours and the 2016 Alabama execution that had witnesses recounting that the inmate coughed and heaved.
Alvogen asked a judge to block Nevada from using its drug and called for the product to be returned. During a hearing Wednesday, Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez, who presides over the civil division of the district court in Clark County, barred the state from using its supply of midazolam in Dozier’s execution, according to a court spokeswoman. Gonzalez also set a status check in the case for September.
According to Nevada’s execution protocol, the state’s plan going into Wednesday was to inject Dozier with three drugs: midazolam to sedate him, fentanyl to cause him to lose consciousness and then cisatracurium to paralyze his muscles. Medical experts warned that the final drug could make the procedure riskier, arguing that if either of the first two drugs are administered improperly or do not work, Dozier could potentially remain conscious while the paralytic renders him unable to move or breathe.
A spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Corrections said the execution “has been postponed” due to the judge’s order and “will not take place until further notice.” She had previously declined to comment on the lawsuit and the company’s claims that the state illegally obtained the drug, citing the pending court hearing. State officials did not immediately file an appeal after Gonzalez’s decision.
Nevada last carried out an execution in 2006.