On this date in 2018, Nebraska executed Carey Dean Moore for killing two cab drivers all the way back in 1979 — 39 years earlier.
It had been over 20 years since Nebraska carried out any execution, but Moore’s real milestone was in the ongoing drug supply breakdown of the U.S. lethal injection system. Moore was the first U.S. prisoner executed using the opiate fentanyl — in his case, in combination with diazepam, cisatracurium, and potassium chloride. Nebraska’s supply of the last two of these stood within weeks of its labeled expiration.
The German pharmaceutical firm that manufactured some of Wilson’s lethal cocktail sued the Cornhusker state for its intent to use its product as a mankiller. U.S. judge Richard G. Kopf — who formerly blogged bench life at his site Hercules and the Umpire — tartly rejected this appeal, finding that after four decades on death row it had become curiously essential to the majesty of justice that Moore be executed right now: “Any delay now is tantamount to nullifying Nebraska law, particularly given the rapidly approaching expiration of two of the drugs and the total absence of any feasible alternatives.”
Although the execution went ahead, it did not go smoothly. According to the Lincoln Journal Star,
Members of the media who witnessed Moore’s death Tuesday by lethal injection described reactions of Moore to the drugs that included rapid and heaving breaths, coughing, gradual reddening of the face and hands, and then a purple cast to the skin.
But about 15 minutes into the procedure, about a minute after Moore’s eyelids appeared to open slightly, Corrections Director Scott Frakes, who was in the room with the condemned prisoner, said something into his radio and the curtains closed for the media witnesses.
The curtains did not open again for 14 minutes, six minutes after Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon pronounced Moore dead at 10:47 a.m., and 29 minutes after the first drug, diazepam, was administered at 10:24.
The curtain that shielded the four media witnesses from what happened during that time is significant, as they were not allowed to view everything that happened in the room. That hindered transparency and true reporting of the effects of the drugs, observers have said.
Don’t worry, we have the assurance of Frakes et al that everything worked fine and was done by the book while the curtain was down.
On this day..
- 1954: Nikos Ploumpidis, Greek Communist
- 1765: Andrew Oliver lynched in effigy to the Liberty Tree
- 1944: Lucien Natanson
- 1878: Ivan Kovalsky, nihilist martyr
- 1679: John King and John Kid, Covenanters
- 1793: Walter Clark, hanged women's father
- 1480: The Martyrs of Otranto
- 1820: Amasa Fuller, the Indiana hero
- 1949: Husni al-Za'im, Syrian president
- 1860: John Moyse, the Private of the Buffs
- 2004: Dhananjoy Chatterjee, the last hanged in India ... for now
- 1936: Rainey Bethea, America's last public hanging