Scott Dozier, a twice-convicted murderer who had repeatedly said he wanted to die by lethal injection, was found dead in his death-row prison cell from an apparent hanging, the Associated Press reports. Dozier, 48, was found unresponsive in his solo death-row cell at the state’s maximum-security prison in Ely, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Brooke Santina. Dozier had said repeatedly he wanted to die rather than live the rest of his life in prison. Nevada officials said he tried to kill himself several times after two scheduled lethal injections were postponed. “I’ve been very clear about my desire to be executed … even if suffering is inevitable,” Dozier told a judge who postponed his execution in November 2017 over concerns the untried drug regimen could leave him suffocating, conscious and unable to move.
“Just get it done, just do it effectively and stop fighting about it,” he told AP last August, a month after a different judge stopped his execution at nearly the final hour. His bid to become the first Nevada inmate put to death since 2006 was called off twice amid court fights over a three-drug combination that had never been used in the U.S.: the sedative midazolam, the powerful opioid fentanyl and the muscle-paralyzing agent cisatracurium. The starts-and-stops in Dozier’s case shed light on extraordinary efforts some states take to try to obtain drugs from pharmaceutical companies that insist they don’t want their products used for executions. Dozier was sentenced to death in 2007 for separate killings of methamphetamine drug trade associates in 2002 in Phoenix and Las Vegas. Drug companies joined his appeal, arguing that their products should not be used in an execution. Nevada got backing in the state high court fight from 15 of the 30 other states in the U.S. with capital punishment. Dozier was not on suicide watch Saturday.