State reveals execution drug mix
ACLU objects to inclusion of midazolam in July 11 sentence
With a week and a day until Nevada’s first execution in a dozen years, the Department of Corrections disclosed its lethal injection procedures Tuesday, revealing for the first time the planned use of a drug banned in Arizona and decried by civil rights groups across the country.
Scott Dozier, the condemned prisoner, is scheduled to die July 11.
In a one-page press release, prison officials revealed the three drugs to be used in his execution: midazolam, a sedative; fentanyl, a painkiller; and cisatracurium, a paralytic.
Hours earlier, in an emergency petition filed in Carson City, the ACLU of Nevada asked for the prison system to produce public records about the execution procedure.
Dozier waived his appeals nearly two years ago and has maintained his death wish ever since.
The ACLU wants more information than what was disclosed in the protocol released Tuesday afternoon, legal director Amy Rose said.
“There are so many questions left outstanding that releasing a heavily redacted version of the protocol that they should have released several weeks ago doesn’t do anything,”
Rose said. “If anything, it just raises more questions and more concerns.”
At Ely State Prison, where Dozier’s execution is set to take place, Monday marked the retirement of warden Timothy Filson after 28 years with the prison system. Corrections spokeswoman Brooke Santina said another Nevada warden, Isidro Baca, would oversee the killing.
Reached by phone, Filson said he had no concerns about the state’s first execution since 2006. Should Dozier’s wish be carried out, he will be the first inmate to put to death in an $860,000 chamber built in 2016.
“I have full confidence that the execution will go well,” said Filson,
DOZIER
This year, he’s adding a show at the company’s Texas Station and Fiesta Rancho casinos in North Las Vegas for the first time.
Visitors to the two neighboring casinos, located off Rancho Drive, will be able to watch Wednesday night’s show for free, Stations Casinos spokeswoman Lori Nelson said.
Sullivan, 60, said the show will last about 12 minutes and will feature music and 5,000 explosive devices launching from the top of the Fiesta Rancho parking garage. On Tuesday morning Sullivan’s team connected wires to switchboards that will enable them to launch the explosives remotely.
“We don’t even have to be out there,” said Sullivan, who’s worked as a pyrotechnician for 22 years. “It’s a great safety feature, and if anything does go wrong, we’ll shut it down right away.”
His team spent 650 man-hours setting up the fireworks at each location. The pyrotechnicians start at 5 a.m. to beat the heat and will continue working right through Wednesday morning.
The North Las Vegas location alone accounts for several hundred pounds of explosives.
Nelson would not reveal how much the displays cost, but he did say, “For what we spend, it’s well worth the thousands upon thousands of smiles and oohs and aahs we get each year.”
Sullivan said his wife’s family, the Gruccis, have been in the fireworks business for over a hundred years. His son, who was part of the team helping set up the show Tuesday morning, is a sixth-generation pyrotechnician.
“For me it started as a child blowing up firecrackers in my own little family,” Sullivan said. “I met my lovely wife in 1996, and she was part of that family, and then I became part of her family right away.”
He said watching the fireworks and being able to set them off is like being “a kid in a candy store.”
“It’s the roar of the crowd and the audience clapping after everything is done that makes it all worthwhile,” Sullivan said.
Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.