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Utah officials said Saturday that they are scrapping plans to use an untested lethal drug combination in next month's planned execution of a man in a 1998 murder case. They will instead seek out a drug that's been used previously in executions in numerous states.
Defense attorneys for Taberon Dave Honie, 49, had sued in state court to stop the use of the drug combination, saying it could cause the defendant “excruciating suffering.”
The execution scheduled for Aug. 8 would be Utah’s first 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, Honie’s execution warrant was signed last month despite defense objections to the planned lethal drug combination.
They said the first two drugs he was to have been given —- 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 has decided to instead use a single drug — pentobarbital. Agency spokesperson Glen Mills said attorneys for the state 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 that they knew of no 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’s been evidence that pentobarbital also can cause extreme pain, including in federal executions carried out in the last months of Donald Trump’s presidency.
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 said in a petition last month that a traumatic and violent childhood coupled with his long-time drug abuse, a previous brain injury and extreme intoxication fueled Honie’s behavior when he broke into his Benn's house and killed her.
They blamed poor 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 might have been more sympathetic and spared him the death penalty.
