The execution chamber at Ely State Prison is shown Nov. 10, 2016 just after completion. (Photo: Nevada Department of Corrections via AP, file)
By Ken Ritter Associated Press
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
LAS VEGAS — The two doctors enlisted by Nevada prison officials to oversee an execution by an end-of-February deadline don't want to be publicly identified and are no longer being considered, state officials told a federal judge.
After U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware II said he wanted to see the credentials of medical personnel who might attend Zane Michael Floyd's lethal injection, two emergency medical technicians also withdrew their names, court documents show.
"I will continue to attempt to locate qualified individuals," William Gittere, deputy Nevada Department of Corrections operations director, said in a Jan. 27 written declaration to the judge.
Gittere told Boulware last week he believed the attending physicians and EMTs don't ever want to be publicly identified.
"Providing information such as specialty or education would be identifiable factors in the small community of Ely, Nevada," Gittere said in the court filing. Nevada's execution chamber is at Ely State Prison.
Boulware plans a hearing Thursday as part of ongoing proceedings about whether Nevada's plan to use a never-before-tried combination of drugs for Floyd's lethal injection would result in an unconstitutionally cruel and inhumane death.
Floyd, 46, does not want to die. He was convicted in 2000 of killing four people and wounding a fifth in a 1999 shotgun attack at a Las Vegas grocery store. He had exhausted appeals and his execution was scheduled last July, but then delayed by Boulware and a state court judge pending the result of additional court proceedings.
Boulware collected written closing arguments in recent days from attorneys for Floyd and the state.
Randall Gilmer, chief deputy Nevada state attorney general, quoted testimony from Dr. Mark Heath, an expert for the state, saying of the drugs: "If they work as designed, as they're hoping it will work, this is going to be a nice, beautiful, smooth execution."
But in a written court filing, Health also called the Nevada drug plan "an extremely agonizing method of causing death" by sedating and paralyzing the inmate before "the excruciating pain of intravenous concentrated potassium" to stop his heart.
If things go wrong, Heath said, "it's a terrible, disastrous thing."
David Anthony and Brad Levenson, federal public defenders representing Floyd, have raised the specter of a "botched" procedure that would cause Floyd unconstitutional pain and suffering.
Nevada's plan is to use big doses of three or four drugs: fentanyl to block Floyd's awareness; ketamine to sedate him; possibly a muscle paralytic called cisatracurium; and potassium chloride. The drug alfentanil might substitute for fentanyl and potassium acetate, also used as an aircraft deicer, might substitute for potassium chloride, according to the state plan.
Floyd's lawyers enlisted pharmacy and medical experts critical of using drugs in a way never tried before. Neither ketamine nor a possible fentanyl substitute, alfentanil, have been used before in an execution in the U.S.
Those experts testified before Boulware that the sequence of drugs could cause excruciating pain while Floyd is rendered unable to move or express emotion.
"Alone, each drug causes serious side effects," Floyd's attorneys argued in their summary document last week. "In combination, the sequence of drugs cannot reliably produce unawareness sufficient to prevent unconstitutional harm."
Complicating matters: The state supply of ketamine is due to expire Feb. 28, putting a deadline before the court.
Gilmer told Boulware last week that since state law allows a minimum of two weeks' notice to schedule an execution, a state judge would have to issue a death warrant by Feb. 13.
Alexander Chen, the chief deputy Clark County district attorney who would handle a request to set Floyd's execution, noted that Floyd also has cases pending before the Nevada Supreme Court — including one about whether the state judge currently assigned to handle Floyd's case will continue in that role. The state high court has not indicated when it will rule.
The last person put to death in Nevada was Daryl Mack in 2006 for a 1988 rape and murder in Reno. Mack asked for his lethal injection to be carried out.
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