Nebraska Carries Out First Execution in More Than Two Decades – Official

Authorities executed inmate Carey Dean Moore with a mix of powerful paralyzing substances that included fentanyl for the first time in the United States, according to media reports.

“The first of four substances were administered at 10:24 a.m. [Central Time], the Lancaster Coroner produced Moore’s time of death at 10:47 a.m.,” Frakes told reporters.

Fentanyl is at least 30 times stronger than heroin and had never before been used in a US execution. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has noted that in recent years, fentanyl abuse has become an alarming problem in the United States and caused nearly 30,000 deaths by overdose in the country.

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Last week, a US judge ruled against a motion by German healthcare company Fresenius Kabi to block Moore’s execution after it claimed that the US state illegally procured the enterprise’s chemicals to use them in the lethal injection. The judge said the drugs were purchased legally by a licensed US medical distributor.

Moore was sentenced to death for killing two taxi drivers in 1979. He has been on death row for more than 40 years. When the state of Nebraska suspended the death penalty in 2015, Moore faced life in prison. But Nebraska reinstated capital punishment in 2016 and issued a death sentence for the inmate.