Death row inmate Scott Dozier in Nevada was discovered dead by apparent suicide in his cell on Saturday, according to the state’s department of prisons. The agency announced in a press release that they found 48-year-old inmate Dozier hanging from a bed sheet that was attached to an air vent in his cell at Ely State Prison. At 4:35 pm PT, his life support was turned off and he was officially declared dead.
Dozier was scheduled to be put to death in July 2018 with a novel medication combination, but the execution was halted due to a court judgment on one of the drugs.
Jeremiah Miller Death
Dozier was found guilty of first-degree murder for the 2002 killing and dismemberment of Jeremiah Miller. The Nevada Department of Corrections reports that the torso of a dead body was discovered in a suitcase that had been thrown away in a Las Vegas garbage can. Another of Dozier’s victims was discovered buried in the Arizona desert, and he was found guilty of murder in this case as well.
Dozier’s lawyer Thomas Ericsson said in July that his client was eager for the death penalty. Due to the mixture of midazolam, Fentanyl, and cisatracurium that Nevada intended to use to execute him, his execution was postponed twice: once in November 2017 and again in July 2018.
Concerns were raised legally that the medicine combination would amount to torture for Dozier in his last hours. Death sentence opponents have long contended that the condemned will suffer excruciating pain since midazolam is not a pain-killing anesthetic.
The company that makes midazolam sued to prevent it from being used in an execution. A district judge issued a TRO, citing “irreparable damages” to the corporation as justification for doing so. Contrary to popular belief, Fentanyl, the medication recently labeled the deadliest in America by the CDC, was not the primary source of contention.
In court cases throughout 2017, the focus was on the third component of the cocktail. Since cisatracurium, a muscle relaxant, can mask pain, a district court judge determined that the state could not employ it.
For the ACLU, “allowing the government to execute a person using a protocol that risks torture would be a grave injustice” as they put it in July.
#ScottDozier (November 20, 1970 – January 5, 2019) American murderer on death row in Nevada for the 2002 murder of 22-year-old Jeremiah Miller, who was one of Dozier’s drug associates. pic.twitter.com/lPGdhYF2Kv
— NoT🖤ForgotteN (@the_memorypage) February 18, 2019
Dozier did not try to stop his own execution by filing any legal objections. ” Life in prison isn’t a life,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Winston Churchill said, “This isn’t life. That’s all it is: a matter of staying alive.” In April 2006, Nevada executed Daryl Mack by injection, and since then, the state has not carried out an execution.
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