Death row inmate they can’t kill case hits new legal hurdle

NEVADA’S death row dilemma just got worse. Now two drug companies are suing to stop their products being used in an execution.

A SECOND drug company has moved to stop Nevada carrying out its first execution in 12 years.

It’s another legal hurdle in the case of death row inmate Scott Raymond Dozier, whose execution has been scheduled and delayed twice.

The maker of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl on Monday joined a legal bid to stop its product being used as part of a three-drug combination never before tried in any state.

The maker of fentanyl — Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA — overcame objections from the state to win a judge’s OK to intervene in New Jersey-based Alvogen’s legal bid to stop the use of their sedative for the twice-postponed execution of double murderer Scott Raymond Dozier.

Nevada’s three-drug execution plan would follow the Alvogen sedative with fentanyl, the potent synthetic opioid that’s fuelling overdose deaths nationwide, and a muscle paralytic called cisatracurium.

Neither has been used in an execution before, and critics have raised concerns Dozier could be conscious, unable to move and suffocating.

Dozier says he doesn’t care if his death is painful. He just wants his life over.

Joining the legal fight on Monday, Hikma argued, like Alvogen, it would suffer “immediate and irreparable harm” should the execution proceed.

That drew a withering response from Deputy Nevada state Solicitor General Jordan T Smith.

“It’s ironic that the maker of fentanyl, which is at the centre of the nation’s opioid crisis and is responsible for illegal overdoses every day is going to … claim reputational injury from being associated with a lawful execution,” he said.

This new execution chamber was completed in 2016 at Ely State Prison, where Dozier is on death row. It has never been used. Picture: Nevada Department of Corrections via AP

Hikma lawyer Kristen Martini said the company had submitted letters to the State of Nevada in 2016 “specifically stating that they could not use Hikma’s products in capital punishment regimes”.

Ms Martini argued Hikma and Alvogen publicly declared they didn’t want their products used in executions and that Nevada improperly obtained their drugs for the planned lethal injection.

Alvogen lawyer Todd Bice said he did not object to Hikma joining the case.

The legal case is on a speedy track toward a possible mid-November execution date, after the Nevada Supreme Court last week agreed to quickly consider the state’s appeal of Clark County District Court Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez’s final-hours decision to delay the July 11 execution so she could consider Alvogen’s case.

Complicating matters is that a ruling is needed by October 19, or useful prison stocks of the third drug needed — muscle paralysing agent cisatracurium — will expire.

The maker of that drug, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, is reportedly still deciding whether to join the Alvogen-Hikma case.

Nevada last conducted a lethal injection in April 2006.

Dozier, 47, has been on death row since 2007 and has said repeatedly that he wants to die and doesn’t care if he suffers.

“Life in prison isn’t a life,” he said before his last execution date was cancelled. “It’s just surviving.”

He is not appealing his convictions for separate killings of drug trade associates in Phoenix and Las Vegas in 2002.

The legal battle is being keenly watched by the other 30 American states in which the death penalty still exists — with some even considering firing squads, nitrogen gas or a return to the electric chair as alternative — if killing by lethal injection continues to be blocked.

Originally published as Death row inmate they can’t kill case hits new legal hurdle