Utah scraps untested lethal drug combination for man’s August execution
Utah officials said Saturday they are scrapping plans to use an untested deadly drug combination next month. planned execution of a man in a 1998 murder case. Instead, they will be looking for a drug that has previously been used in executions in several states.
Attorneys for Taberon Dave Honie, 49, had filed a lawsuit in state court seeking to stop the use of the combination of drugs, saying it could cause the defendant “unbearable suffering.”
The execution scheduled for Aug. 8 will be the first in Utah since the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner by firing squad in 2010.
Honie was convicted of the aggravated murder of his girlfriend’s mother, Claudia Benn, 49.
After decades of failed appeals, Honie’s execution warrant was signed last month despite defense objections to the planned lethal combination of drugs.
They said the first two drugs he was to receive – the sedative ketamine and the anesthetic fentanyl – would not be enough to prevent Honie from feeling pain when potassium chloride was administered to stop his heart.
In response, the Utah Department of Corrections has decided to use one drug instead: pentobarbital. Agency spokesman Glen Mills said attorneys for the state filed court papers Friday night asking to dismiss the lawsuit.
“We will obtain and use pentobarbital for the execution,” Mills said. He said agency officials still believe the three-drug combination was effective and humane.
State officials previously admitted they were not aware of any other instances in which the three-drug combination had been used in an execution.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., at least 14 states have used pentobarbital in executions
However, there are indications that pentobarbital can also cause extreme painincluding federal executions carried out in the last months of the presidency of Donald Trump.
Honie’s attorney in the lawsuit, federal defender Eric Zuckerman, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Meanwhile, a hearing is scheduled for Monday on Honie’s request to the state Parole Board to commute his death sentence to life in prison.
Honie’s lawyers argued in a petition last month that a traumatic and violent childhood, combined with his long-term drug abuse, a previous brain injury and extreme drunkenness, fueled Honie’s behavior when he broke into his Benn’s home and killed her.
They blamed poor legal advice, which led to Honie — who was from the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona — being convicted by a judge instead of a jury that might have been more sympathetic and spared him the death penalty.