Appeals to Nebraska execution are ended
LINCOLN, Neb. – Three years after Nebraska lawmakers voted to abolish capital punishment, the state is preparing to carry out its first execution since 1997 on Tuesday in a bewildering about-face driven largely by the state’s Republican governor.
Gov. Pete Ricketts, a wealthy former businessman, helped finance a ballot drive to reinstate capital punishment after lawmakers overrode his veto in 2015. His administration then changed Nebraska’s lethal injection protocol to overcome challenges in purchasing the necessary drugs and withheld records previously considered public that would identify the state’s supplier.
“It wouldn’t even have made it to the ballot without him,” said Matt Maly, an anti-death-penalty activist who has joined daily protests outside the governor’s residence. “To get something on the ballot takes a lot of money and resources. Nobody else would have cared enough.”
Ricketts argued last week that he was fulfilling the wishes of voters who opted to overturn the Legislature’s decision in the 2016 general election. He said he views capital punishment as a matter of protecting public safety and an important tool for law enforcement, despite his Catholic faith and the recent statements by Pope Francis that the death penalty is unacceptable in all cases.
“The people of Nebraska spoke loud and clear that they wanted to retain capital punishment as part of our overall state laws to protect public safety,” he said. “Our job is to carry that out.”
Nebraska prison officials are preparing to execute Carey Dean Moore, one of the nation’s longest-serving inmates, for the 1979 shooting deaths of Omaha cab drivers Maynard Helgeland and Reuel Van Ness Jr.
Moore, 60, who has had execution dates set seven previous times, has stopped fighting the state’s efforts to execute him, but two drug companies filed legal challenges to prevent the state from using what they say may be their drugs.
On Friday, a federal judge denied the request of German pharmaceutical company Fresenius Kabi to temporarily postpone the execution. Fresenius Kabi filed an immediate appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the judge’s ruling Monday. The company says it won’t ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
Drugmaker Sandoz Inc. also filed a motion to intervene Saturday, but that won’t prevent the execution from moving forward.
The Nebraska attorney general’s office is fighting the companies’ efforts because one of the four drugs used in the state’s execution protocol, potassium chloride, expires Aug. 31. The state corrections director said last week that prison officials won’t be able to purchase more supplies of the drug because no companies are willing to sell to the department, including its previous supplier.
Nebraska last carried out an execution in 1997, using the electric chair. The state has never conducted a lethal injection. And on Tuesday, it plans to use a combination of four drugs that has never been tried.
Lawmakers abolished capital punishment in 2015, when they voted by the narrowest margin possible, 30-19, to override the then-first-year governor’s veto.
After lawmakers overrode his veto, Ricketts contributed $300,000 of his own money to a petition drive organized by several close associates to place the issue on the November 2016 general election ballot. The governor’s father, TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, also donated $100,000 to the Nebraskans for the Death Penalty campaign.
Grant Schulte