"Killer fights execution on 2 fronts," is Joe Duggan's Omaha World-Herald report.
Condemned killer Michael Ryan asked a judge Monday to throw out his death sentence, arguing that the state intends to carry out the lethal injection using a stolen Swiss drug that fails to meet U.S. purity standards.
Ryan also plans to ask the Nebraska Supreme Court to stay his execution, scheduled for March 6. Jerry Soucie, a lawyer with the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy who represents Ryan, said he will file the motion with the high court on Tuesday.
Soucie filed a 116-page motion late Monday in Richardson County District Court in Falls City, Neb. Ryan, a former religious cult leader, was convicted of killing two of his followers in 1985 at an encampment near the Richardson County village of Rulo.
A spokeswoman for Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said Monday night that the motion was being reviewed. She offered no further comment.
Ryan's new claim raises legal challenges to the state's authority to use lethal injection on a death row inmate sentenced to die by electrocution.
Nebraska abandoned the electric chair in 2008 after the state Supreme Court ruled it was cruel and unusual punishment. The next year the state adopted lethal injection for executions.
Ryan's motion also repeats past contentions that the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services was conned into buying a stolen death drug late last year from an Indian pharmaceutical broker. The Swiss manufacturer of sodium thiopental has said it didn't intend the drug to be sold for use in lethal injections.
Using an illegally obtained drug would violate the state's lethal injection procedures, which call for the drugs to be obtained through the department's pharmaceutical supervisor or another "appropriate" source, Ryan's motion states.
"Attorney asks for death sentence to be commuted," is the Lincoln Journal Star by Nicholas Bergin.
A defense lawyer Monday asked for Michael Ryan's death sentence to be commuted to life without parole.
The Nebraska Supreme Court has set a March 6 execution for Ryan, who was convicted in 1986 of murdering James Thimm during ritualistic torture at a farm near Rulo.
In response, defense attorney Jerry Soucie of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy filed a 116-page motion for post-conviction relief with the district court of Richardson County, where the crime took place.
Soucie plans Tuesday to to ask the state Supreme Court to issue a stay of execution, he said in an email.
The district court filing argues Ryan never had the chance to present grounds for relief related to the planned method of execution -- lethal injection -- because it wasn't used in Nebraska during Ryan's prior proceedings.
The filing argues that carrying out Ryan's sentence in the wake of state legislators changing Nebraska's execution method from electrocution to lethal injection in 2010 would violate the law.
Earlier coverage of the Nebraska lethal injection challenge begins at the link.
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