Utah officials said Saturday that they have secured access to a proven lethal injection drug — pentobarbital — which they expect to arrive at least three days before the scheduled Aug. 8 execution of death row inmate Taberon Honie.
Since they are scrapping an earlier plan to use an untested three-drug cocktail of ketamine, fentanyl and potassium chloride, they have now asked a judge to dismiss Honie’s lawsuit attacking their execution method.
“As long as UDC can procure pentobarbital,” Brian Redd, executive director of the Utah Department of Corrections (UDC) said in a declaration, “UDC will not use the previously planned three-drug combination of ketamine, fentanyl, and potassium chloride in any execution.”
The lawsuit is one of several attempts underway by Honie to postpone or alter his death sentence. On Monday, his commutation hearing will begin before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, which he will ask for a life prison term without the opportunity for parole.
Honie’s attorney, Eric Zuckerman, has argued that the untried drug mixture initially chosen by officials would violate the state’s Constitution by subjecting him to cruel and unusual punishment. Zuckerman had suggested using pentobarbital, which has been used in executions in other states, as an alternative.
In declarations filed Saturday in 3rd District Court, Randall Honey, chief of prison operations, and Redd describe the state’s attempts to acquire pentobarbital.
Officials reached out to 12 states, which “either did not respond, or replied stating that due to their laws, they could not provide any information related to their supply of pentobarbital,” Honey said. The drug is an authorized execution option in at least 10 other states.
Honey said he also contacted an unnamed pharmacist, “who told me that they could also not procure pentobarbital.”
So on June 6, Honey said, “in collaboration with our medical team, we decided to proceed with a three-drug combination of ketamine, fentanyl, and potassium chloride.” The state presented that plan in a June 10 hearing where 5th District Judge Jeffrey Wilcox signed Honie’s death warrant.
In July 1998, Honie had 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.
Following news coverage of the hearing before Wilcox, however, Redd said, “I was contacted by an individual who ... informed me that they could get me in touch with a supplier of pentobarbital.”
Redd contacted the supplier, “who stated that the supply of pentobarbital would cost $200,000. At that time the estimated cost of the three-drug combination was $7,900,” the filings said.
The filings do not disclose what the state is paying for three doses — one for the execution and two back-up doses — but Honey said: “I can now verify that UDC can obtain a supply of pentobarbital and has found an appropriate and legal way to pay for the supply. UDC will have obtained the supply of pentobarbital at least three days before the execution scheduled on August 8, 2024.”
In a letter to Zuckerman, also submitted to 3rd District Judge Linda Jones, UDC lawyer Justin Anderson pointed out another change to the execution plans.
Zuckerman objected that officials had decided he could not bring a phone or laptop into the prison during the execution — which the lawyer said he wanted to have available to alert a judge and ask for a stop to the execution if something goes wrong and Honie appears to be suffering.
Now, Anderson wrote, officials plan to have a phone “that does not have audio or video recording capability” available to Zuckerman outside the witness room.
UDC officials are asking the judge to dismiss a hearing set for July 30 and 31, where they would have defended their original plan, to reject Honie’s request for an injunction and to dismiss Honie’s complaint.
