A man sentenced to death row for his involvement in an attempted bank robbery in 2002 is one step closer to being the first Nebraskan inmate executed since 1997.
On Thursday, the Nebraska Department of Corrections formally notified Jose Sandoval of the combination of lethal injection drugs that would be used to carry out his execution – Diazepam, Fentanyl Citrate, Cisatracurium Besylate, and Potassium Chloride.
NDCS already has the substances needed for the lethal injections.
“Any time you have a punishment like this, you don’t really look at this like a win. You look at this like justice being served on a very horrendous crime,” says Bob Evnen with Nebraskans For the Death Penalty.
Some anti-death penalty groups are questioning the combination of the lethal injection drugs that would be used, mainly because the four-drug combination, which includes a paralytic drug, has never been used in the U.S.
“The department of corrections listed the names of the drugs but they didn’t say where they came from or who made them and that’s very concerning to us. Nobody wants a botched execution,” said Matt Maly with Nebraskans Concerned with the Death Penalty. “It’s more than just finding the drugs, because even if you support the death penalty, that’s fine. But the drugs have to be correct. They have to work and they have to come from authorized suppliers.”
Evnen counters, “The drugs that have been selected and the order in which they were administered and the amounts that were administered, these are things that careful consideration has been given to, that the state is entitled to make these determinations and I’m confident that they’ve done that in a way that thorough and reasonable.”
Neither Peterson nor NDCS said where the drugs are from.
No date has been set for Sandoval’s execution. Nebraska’s Attorney General, Doug Peterson, has to wait 60 days before asking the state Supreme Court to issue a warrant for Sandoval’s execution.
