LINCOLN — Death row inmate Michael Ryan asked the Nebraska Supreme Court to withdraw his execution date Tuesday while a recently filed appeal is considered in a lower court.
Ryan who has been on death row since 1986, asked the high court to stay the execution so a complex legal challenge can be sorted out in Richardson County District Court. Ryan is scheduled to be executed March 6.
“Ryan should be entitled to a few months in order to litigate whether the state's actions pass state and federal constitutional scrutiny,” Ryan's motion stated.
Shannon Kingery, spokeswoman for Attorney General Jon Bruning, said Ryan's appeals present no evidence of his innocence or credible reasons why the execution should not take place.
“This is just another tactic by the defense to stall justice from moving forward,” she said in a statement.
The Nebraska Supreme Court has twice denied Ryan's motions since November, when the attorney general asked the court to set an execution date.
Jerry Soucie of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy filed a 116-page motion on Ryan's behalf Monday in Richardson County District Court. The motion raises an assortment of constitutional challenges to Nebraska's lethal injection procedure and how the state obtained execution drugs.
Among them is a claim that the state plans to execute Ryan using sodium thiopental that was stolen by an Indian drug broker. The anesthetic, the first drug administered in Nebraska's lethal injection protocol, is no longer made domestically and must be obtained overseas.
The motion also alleges a pattern of “bad faith” by the Attorney General's Office for withholding evidence and information related to how it obtained the drug.
Bruning has said the Calcutta drug broker legally purchased the thiopental he resold to Nebraska. Bruning also has asserted that the way states obtain lethal injection drugs has been ruled irrelevant by other courts.
Ryan, 63, is a former religious cult leader responsible for the 1985 murders of two followers at an encampment near Rulo, Neb. He was sentenced to death for the torture and killing of James Thimm, 25, and also was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of 5-year-old Luke Stice.
Nebraska's last execution took place in 1997, when Robert Williams died in the electric chair. In 2009, lawmakers switched to lethal injection after the state Supreme Court ruled electrocution cruel and unusual punishment.
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402-473-9587, joe.duggan@owh.com
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