With three weeks to go until Taberon Honie’s scheduled execution, state officials are scrambling to get a different drug for the lethal injection — an attempt, it seems, to abandon their original plan to kill the death row inmate with an untested three-drug combination.
Honie sued prison officials last week, challenging the state’s initial plan to execute him on Aug. 8 using the combination of ketamine, fentanyl and potassium chloride.
His attorney, Eric Zuckerman, raised questions about whether the never-before-used drug combination would cause Honie unnecessary pain, which would violate the state’s Constitution by subjecting him to cruel and unusual punishment. They have asked 3rd District Judge Linda Jones to stop the state from executing him using those three drugs.
But during a Wednesday scheduling conference, a lawyer with the Utah attorney general’s office told Jones that state officials are working to purchase a different drug for the execution: pentobarbital.
It’s been used in executions in other states, and Zuckerman identified it in the new lawsuit as a possible alternative to the combination of ketamine, fentanyl and potassium chloride. Honie’s attorney noted that pentobarbital — which acts as both the anesthetic to ensure Honie does not feel pain and the fatal drug that would kill him — is the authorized drug to use in executions in at least 10 other states.
State officials consulted with an unnamed pharmacist who suggested using ketamine, fentanyl and potassium chloride — and who, according to the lawsuit, seemed to believe that pentobarbital would be “unavailable.”
It is expected that the state will confirm in court papers due Friday whether prison officials believe they will be able to get the dose of pentobarbital.
“We stand by the three-drug combination as an effective and humane method,” said Glen Mills, the communications director for the Utah Department of Corrections. “However, the defense has proposed pentobarbital as an acceptable alternative, and we have been looking into the feasibility of obtaining it.”
Wednesday’s hearing was the first time state officials have publicly indicated they were changing course — and it was the first time Zuckerman was informed that his client may be executed with another drug. He asked the judge to order state officials to provide more information about the dose — such as its expiration date and how much of the drug they plan to use — which they said they would do.
Utah law requires lethal injections be conducted with “sodium thiopental or other equally or more effective substance sufficient to cause death.” It is illegal to import sodium thiopental, a fast-acting barbiturate, and the only U.S.-based supplier stopped production in 2011.
Honie has been on death row for 25 years. In July 1998, Honie called his ex-girlfriend and demanded she visit him, threatening to kill her family if she refused. Later that evening, sometime before midnight, Honie took a cab to the house of Claudia Benn, his ex-girlfriend’s mother. He broke the door in with a rock and then beat, bit, stabbed and sexually assaulted Benn as he killed her, court documents state.
Jones, the judge overseeing Honie’s latest lawsuit, scheduled a two-day evidentiary hearing for the case to begin on July 30. If the state is not able to get pentobarbital and instead intends to use the three-drug combination, attorneys will present evidence about whether the drugs could possibly inflict unnecessary pain. They also will discuss whether Zuckerman should be allowed to have access to a phone during the execution.
Zuckerman argued in the lawsuit that prison officials have no written backup plan if the execution is botched. He also said they have decided that Honie’s legal counsel cannot bring a phone or laptop into prison while it is carried out — which Zuckerman said he would use to alert a judge and ask for a stop to the execution if something goes wrong and Honie appears to be suffering.
Honie also has a commutation hearing scheduled to begin Monday, where he will ask Utah’s parole board to spare his life.
Correction • 6:45 p.m., July 17, 2024: The judge at Wednesday’s hearing was 3rd District Judge Linda Jones. An earlier version of this story had an incorrect first name.