Utah rules out lethal untested drug combination for man’s execution in August

Utah officials said Saturday they are canceling plans to use an untested, lethal combination of drugs next month. planned execution of a man in a 1998 murder case. Instead, they will look for a drug that has previously been used in executions in several states.

Defense attorneys for Taberon Dave Honie, 49, filed a motion in state court to stop using the drug combination, saying it could cause “excruciating suffering” to the defendant.

The execution scheduled for Aug. 8 would be the first in Utah since the 2010 execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner by firing squad.

Honie was convicted of aggravated murder in the stabbing of his girlfriend’s mother, Claudia Benn, 49.

After decades of failed appeals, the warrant for Honie’s execution was signed last month, despite defense objections to the planned lethal drug combination.

They said the first two medications he was supposed to receive — the sedative ketamine and the anesthetic fentanyl — would not adequately prevent Honie from feeling pain when potassium chloride was administered to stop his heart.

In response, the Utah Department of Corrections decided to use a single medication – pentobarbital. Agency spokesman Glen Mills said state attorneys filed court documents overnight Friday asking that the lawsuit be dismissed.

“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 acknowledged they were not aware of any other cases of the three-drug combination being used in an execution.

At least 14 states have used pentobarbital in executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

However, there is evidence that pentobarbital can also cause extreme painincluding federal executions carried out in the last few months of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Honie’s attorney in the case, 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 said in a filing last month that a traumatic and violent childhood, along with his longtime drug abuse, a previous brain injury and extreme intoxication fueled Honie’s behavior when he broke into Benn’s home and killed her. .

They blamed a lack of legal advice for allowing Honie — a native of the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona — to be sentenced by a judge instead of a jury that could have been more sympathetic and spared him the death penalty.