Nebraska considers first execution since 1997

Nebraska has not carried out an execution since 1997 and has never carried out one by lethal injection. Carey Dean Moore (53) could change that.

Moore was sentenced to death for the 1979 murders of two Omaha taxi drivers in botched robberies.

He came within a week of execution in 2007. Six days before his execution was scheduled to be carried out, the state's high court issued a stay because it wanted to consider whether the electric chair should still be used. In 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the use of the electric chair ammounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Lethal injection is now the state's sole method of execution, and on Friday they recieved the last drug they needed to carry out an execution by lethal injection - sodium thiopentlal - in the midst of a worldwide shortage of the drug. (Seriously, with the drug in such short supply, why are we continuing to waste it on legal murder???)

The last execution in Nebraska was that of Robert Williams, who was executed in the electric chair in 1997.

Attorney General Jon Bruning said a motion  requesting that a date for Moore's execution be set was filed with the Nebraska Supreme Court on Monday. It's not yet clear how soon the Supreme Court might set a date for Moore to die.

It's hoped that legal challenges to Nebraska's new execution method continue to hold off the use of the death penalty in the state for several years. Lawsuits attacking, for example, the vague training requirements of the new lethal injection protocol are expected.