Nebraska killer executed with fentanyl, first for U.S.

LINCOLN, Neb. — Prison officials in Nebraska used fentanyl, the powerful opioid at the center of the nation’s overdose epidemic, to help execute a convicted murderer Tuesday. The lethal injection at the Nebraska State Penitentiary was the first time fentanyl had been used to carry out the death penalty in the United States.

The execution, Nebraska’s first since 1997, represented a stunning political turnabout in a state where lawmakers voted only three years ago to ban capital punishment, only to have it reinstated the following year through a citizen ballot drive partially financed by Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts.

The condemned man, Carey Dean Moore, 60, had been convicted of killing two Omaha taxi drivers decades ago and did not seek a reprieve in his final months. But two pharmaceutical companies tried to block the execution in federal court, claiming their reputations would suffer if the killing proceeded.

The companies could not prove that their products would be used, however, because prison officials refused to identify the suppliers of the drugs to be administered to Moore. So the execution was allowed to continue.

Moore’s death, using a previously untested fourdrug mixture, could open a new method for states that have increasingly struggled to find execution drugs as suppliers have clamped down on how their products are used. But the unprecedented use of fentanyl in an execution chamber raised new ethical concerns amid a national opioid crisis that has led to an onslaught of fatal overdoses.

Scott Frakes, the director of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, said the first of the four drugs was administered at 10:24 a.m. local time and Moore was declared dead at 10:47 a.m.

Four Nebraska journalists who witnessed the execution said it appeared to go as planned. Moore breathed heavily at one point and coughed, the reporters said. His face turned red, then purple.