Zane Floyd (Photo: Nevada Department of Corrections)
By Ken Ritter Associated Press
Thursday, August 12, 2021
LAS VEGAS — Advocates seeking clemency for a condemned killer of four whose execution date has been postponed by courts in Nevada have released pleas for top state officials to commute his death sentence to life in prison without parole.
Attorneys for Zane Michael Floyd argue in documents released Tuesday that the state court jury that sentenced Floyd to death for killing four people and wounding a fifth in a 1999 shotgun attack at a Las Vegas grocery store wasn't asked to consider whether he suffered brain damage that contributed to his crime and made him ineligible for execution.
"Had the jury been presented with this information, one or more jurors may have voted to spare him from execution," attorneys led by Brad Levenson, a deputy federal public defender, said in a statement distributed by the 8th Amendment Project, a group that advocates for the end of capital punishment in the U.S.
They argue that Floyd, now 45, was honorably discharged as a U.S. Marine after serving at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba but suffered from post-traumatic stress, and that his mother's consumption of alcohol when she was pregnant before he was born left him with brain damage.
"Clemency is an act of mercy," Levenson said Wednesday. "If a death case does not qualify for consideration, what does?"
Levenson noted that Floyd's 297-page written request and companion video for his case to be heard by the state Board of Pardons Commissioners — chaired by the governor and including the state attorney general and seven state Supreme Court justices — were not listed on the Sept. 21 board agenda.
He said he feared that Floyd could be put to death before the next quarterly board meeting Dec. 9.
State law allows any of the nine board members to add Floyd's case to the meeting schedule up to three days before the meeting.
Floyd lost state and federal appeals last year arguing that he received an unfair trial. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case, including claims that he had a diminished mental capacity. Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson then sought to have prison officials carry out Floyd's lethal injection in late July.
Prosecutor Alexander Chen declined comment about the clemency plea. He said if it is heard by the board the district attorney would respond at that time.
His execution would be the state's first execution in more than 15 years.
State and federal judges have issued orders postponing Floyd's execution to allow time to hear challenges to the constitutionality of the lethal injection plan drawn up by prison officials and the never-before-used combination of drugs.
Prison officials have said they want to use the powerful opioid fentanyl or a substitute, the sedative ketamine, a heart-stopping salt, potassium chloride or a substitute, and possibly the muscle paralytic cisatracurium.
The maker of the ketamine — New Jersey-based Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. — has threatened to sue if the state intends to use its product in an execution.
