LINCOLN — The Nebraska Supreme Court has set a March 6 execution date for cult leader Michael Ryan, who is on death row for the sadistic torture and murder of one of his followers.
The high court filed the death warrant Wednesday, ordering Robert Houston, director of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, to carry out Ryan's lethal injection. The court also rejected a recent motion that challenged the setting of an execution date.
“In light of today's Nebraska Supreme Court ruling setting the execution date for Mr. Ryan, the state will make all necessary preparations to carry out the sentence,” Attorney General Jon Bruning said in a statement.
Nebraska hasn't executed a condemned inmate since Robert Williams died in the electric chair in 1997.
Whether Ryan's execution takes place March 6 remains to be seen, said his lawyer, Jerry Soucie with the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy.
Soucie said he intends to file a motion in Richardson County District Court, challenging one of the drugs the state must use in lethal injection.
He has alleged Nebraska was conned by an Indian pharmaceutical broker into buying stolen sodium thiopental. The drug, an anesthetic administered as part of the state's three-drug execution protocol, is no longer made domestically and must be purchased abroad.
But in its order, the Supreme Court said it has no procedure to hear or to judge evidence of claims related to method of execution.
“I think it's significant they didn't discuss the merits of the evidence we presented,” Soucie said Wednesday.
On Monday, Bruning filed a detailed legal response defending the legitimacy of the state's execution drug. He said he wanted to assure the court and the public that the state's broker paid for the sodium thiopental he then sold to the Corrections Department for $5,411.
Under the state's lethal injection protocol, the anesthetic is given to the condemned first so he does not suffer pain from the second and third drugs, which paralyze and stop the heart.
As a cult leader in 1985, Ryan ordered James Thimm, one of his followers, to undergo torture that included sodomy, the shooting of his fingertips and partial skinning by knife. A jury convicted Ryan of first-degree murder in Thimm's death, as well as second-degree murder in the killing of 5-year-old Luke Stice, the son of a cult member.
The depravity of the killings led Bruning to suggest Monday that Ryan doesn't deserve to be given sodium thiopental to mask the pain he would experience from the two other drugs.
“There are many Nebraskans, myself included, who wonder if an anesthetic is appropriate in the execution of Michael Ryan,” Bruning said.
Ryan, 63, could become the first person executed by lethal injection in Nebraska. The state adopted the execution method in 2009, a year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the electric chair unconstitutional.
The attorney general also is working to carry out the execution of Carey Dean Moore, convicted of killing two Omaha cab drivers in 1979. Moore has raised a challenge, related to how the state acquired the death drug, which is pending in Douglas County District Court.
Contact the writer:
402-473-9587, joe.duggan@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
