In Nebraska, today's Lincoln Journal Star reports, "Supreme Court issues stay of Moore's execution." It's written by Kevin O'Hanlon.
The Nebraska Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a stay of the June 14 execution of death-row inmate Carey Dean Moore.
Jerry Soucie, a lawyer with the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy, asked for the stay while a Douglas County District Court judge considers a motion he filed challenging the purchase of one of the three lethal-injection drugs.
District Judge Thomas Otepka has given Soucie until June 7 to respond to a brief submitted by J. Kirk Brown, solicitor general in the attorney general's office, saying Moore's appeal is without merit.
Soucie also is challenging Nebraska's lethal-injection law, which was passed in 2009 after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled the electric chair amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
Soucie said lawmakers unconstitutionally allowed the Department of Correctional Services to set a lethal-injection protocol and exceeded their authority by passing a law that changed Moore's sentence from death by electrocution to lethal injection.
Brown said Moore's conviction and sentence have been affirmed and "absent a factual circumstance whereby the judgment is void or voidable under the state or U.S. constitution, the court has no jurisdiction" to grant a stay.
Soucie is challenging the legality of Nebraska's purchase from an Indian company, Kayem Pharmaceutical Pvt. Ltd., of one of the drugs and is questioning whether the state even bought the right substance.
Soucie said Nebraska law does not allow the state to obtain lethal-injection drugs from sources not registered with the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The state's lethal-injection protocol calls for using sodium thiopental. Soucie said it appears the state might have bought a generic version of the drug, which is not called for in the lethal-injection protocol.
"Moore execution postponed," is the Omaha World-Herald report written by Robynn Tysver.
A debate over the quality of a death drug from India has bought convicted Nebraska killer Carey Dean Moore more life.
After 30-plus years of appeals, Moore won a stay of execution Wednesday from the Nebraska Supreme Court. It was his sixth stay.
He did so, in part, by raising objections to the drug meant for his lethal injection. Moore argues that the sodium thiopental that Nebraska purchased from a Mumbai company fails to comply with U.S. pharmaceutical standards.
“We don’t know whether the drug is any good or not, because it was not manufactured in compliance with American pharmacuetical standards. And you can’t test anyone without breaking the law,” said Jerry Soucie, Moore’s attorney.
It is unclear how long resolving Moore’s latest appeals will take, though the case could return to the Nebraska Supreme Court — and eventually end up in federal court.
The state is reviewing its options, said Shannon Kingery, spokeswoman for Attorney General Jon Bruning.
No one has died by the needle in Nebraska since state lawmakers scrapped the electric chair for lethal injection in 2009. Moore’s appeals give the courts their best chance yet to review the lethal injection law.
Moore is the longest-serving of Nebraska’s 11 death-row inmates.
"Arizona inmate put to death by lethal injection," by JJ Hensley and Jim Walsh in the Arizona Republic.
An emotional Donald Beaty used his last words to apologize to the family of his victim, 13-year-old Christy Ann Fornoff, moments before he was put to death by lethal injection Wednesday at Arizona State Prison Complex-Florence.
And:
Beaty was pronounced dead at 7:38 p.m., more than nine hours after his execution had initially been scheduled. When the lethal drugs were injected, Beaty almost immediately appeared to go sleep, letting out a large yawn.
Beaty's execution had been delayed for most of the day Wednesday as his defense team tried to challenge the Arizona Department of Corrections' decision to substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental in the state's execution-drug formula.
Eight hours of legal debate took place in three cities - Phoenix, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco - before appeals were exhausted and final preparations were made for the execution.
In arguing for a stay, Beaty's attorneys said more time was needed to determine if the last-minute drug substitution, which was announced late Tuesday, would infringe on Beaty's constitutional rights or constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
They also suggested that corrections officials should have taken more time to train executioners in the use of pentobarbital, since it was not a part of the state's existing execution-drug protocol. One filing called the last-minute change "unconscionable."
Those arguments were first made before the Arizona Supreme Court on Wednesday morning, but the state's high court rejected them several hours later after meeting on the matter behind closed doors. Rejections continued throughout the afternoon: first in U.S. District Court, then twice at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected two other legal arguments put forth to block the execution.
In the end, the courts recognized the state's right to substitute pentobarbital for thiopental. One judge noted during oral arguments that pentobarbital already had been reviewed by other courts and approved for executions.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, meanwhile, called the daylong delay a "slap in the face" to the Fornoff family.
By 6 p.m., however, prison officials were cleared to proceed with the execution after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider further appeals.
Beaty's execution was the first in Arizona to use a pentobarbital mix; it was the state's second execution this year. To date, Arizona has carried out 26 executions since 1992. It was the 19th execution in the nation this year; the 1,252nd post-Furman execution in the United States.
Earlier coverage from Arizona and Nebraska begins at the links.
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