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Thread: Carey Dean Moore - Nebraska Execution - August 14, 2018

  1. #21
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Death-row inmate's attorney asks to depose Bruning, others

    The lawyer for death-row inmate Carey Dean Moore is asking to depose Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning and other state officials in an effort to get to the bottom of why they continued to push for his client's execution when they did not have a legal drug on hand to put him to death.

    In a filing late Monday in Douglas County District Court, Jerry Soucie of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy argued it was cruel and unusual punishment to allow Moore to think his execution was looming when, in fact, the state had no way to carry it out.

    Moore had been scheduled to die June 14, but the Nebraska Supreme Court issued a stay while Soucie challenged the purchase from an Indian company of one of the drugs used in Nebraska's execution protocol. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said after the purchase the drug could not be used because the state did not have a license to import it.

    Sodium thiopental -- one of three drugs in Nebraska's lethal-injection protocol -- has been in short supply since last year, when the only U.S. manufacturer, Hospira Inc., said it was ending production because of death-penalty opposition overseas.

    In July, Soucie asked Douglas County District Judge Thomas Otepka to vacate Moore's death sentence, arguing state officials had withheld information about problems with the lethal-injection drug they bought from India.

    The judge gave him until Monday to amend the motion challenging the purchase of the drug.

    Soucie is seeking a court order directing the state to disclose all emails, letters, notes and other correspondence between Department of Correctional Services employees and the attorney general's office about how it obtained sodium thiopental. He also seeks information about discussions and correspondence between state officials and federal agencies whether the state was complying with federal drug regulations.

    Soucie asked to take depositions of those who he said had direct knowledge of the facts.

    Among them: Bruning; Nebraska Solicitor General J. Kirk Brown; Nebraska Deputy Attorney General Dale Comer; DCS Director Robert Houston; DCS General Counsel George Green and DCS Pharmacist Steve Urosevich.

    In the filing, he argued he had made good-faith attempts to get the information from the attorney general's office and DCS, but they stonewalled.

    Soucie alleged that the AG's office and DCS became aware of a DEA issue with the state's sodium thiopental in April, but continued to attempt to go forward with Moore's execution without advising him or the state Supreme Court until June 27.

    He alleged that "Nebraska, through the actions of the AG's office and DCS, was engaged in a sham execution," and that the information he is seeking may help avoid perpetrating a fraud "by allowing the Nebraska courts to make a life or death decision based upon inaccurate and/or incomplete information."

    Soucie also cited a letter from Dr. Steven Miles, an expert on torture, who gave his opinion that Moore was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment: Cruel because of the mental suffering likely after they told him his execution had been ordered, his appeals had been exhausted and a time had been set for his death; and unusual because a "sham execution" had not been part of his sentence.

    Moore, 53, has been on death row since 1980, sentenced to die for killing Omaha cab drivers Maynard D. Helgeland and Reuel Eugene Van Ness during botched robberies in 1979.

    The AG's office did not return a call late in the day seeking comment on the filing. But the AG's office has said it worked under the belief it could have found a supply of the drug by June 14.

    http://journalstar.com/news/local/cr...#ixzz1VBuXvN3i

  2. #22
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Executions not likely soon

    It's a contest neither man wants to win.

    But the race — or crawl — to become Nebraska's first prisoner to die by lethal injection now involves two people: Carey Dean Moore, Nebraska's longest-serving death row inmate, and cult leader Michael Ryan, on death row since 1986.

    It remains to be seen who will emerge at the top of the waiting list.

    Attorneys associated with both men said Friday that they doubt an execution will take place any time soon.

    Michael A. Nelsen, an Omaha attorney who formerly represented Ryan, said he was baffled why Attorney General Jon Bruning sought a death warrant for Ryan this week with one already pending in Moore's case.

    Meanwhile, attorney Jerry Soucie said Moore's case will be hounded by one major issue: whether the state "tortured" Moore by setting an execution date in June, despite knowing it had problems with its death drugs.

    Those problems — neither the state nor the pharmaceutical company in India had proper licenses for the importation of one of the drugs — delayed Moore's execution for more than six months. Corrections officials announced this week they have rectified the issue with a new, legal supply of the drug, sodium thiopental.

    Nevertheless, Soucie was in a Douglas County District Court courtroom Friday urging a judge to allow him to delve into state records about what the attorney general knew about the drug supplier in May as he worked to bring about Moore's execution. A month earlier, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had informed state officials they lacked the authority to import the drug.

    "I can't think of anything that's a greater level of prosecutorial misconduct," said Soucie, an attorney with the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy. "It is just as reprehensible for the state to (do this) as it would be to parade someone in front of a (firing) squad with no bullets."

    Dave Cookson, chief deputy attorney general, said when the state requested the death warrant in January, it had a supply of sodium thiopental from India that had cleared U.S. Customs and Border Protection with no objections by the federal government.

    As questions about the drug arose, the Attorney General's Office followed a process laid out by the Drug Enforcement Administration: it could either use its existing supply of sodium thiopental or get a new supply from another company. At no time did the state believe it was incapable of carrying out the execution, Cookson said.

    "In response to Mr. Soucie, he's never been shy about stretching the truth to support his cause, but his allegations in this case are dead wrong," he said.

    Prosecutor Katie Benson, a deputy Douglas County attorney, said Soucie should make his "cruel and unusual punishment" argument in federal court, where a judge can determine whether state officials violated Moore's civil rights.

    Nebraska has not executed anyone since 1997, when the state's method was the electric chair.

    Friday's court hearing was held solely to examine whether Moore deserved an evidentiary hearing concerning any claims that there were mistakes in his trial or sentencing over the killing of two Omaha cabdrivers in 1979, Benson said.

    Soucie is "attacking the method of execution," Benson said. "He's not attacking the conviction or sentence."

    Judge Thomas Otepka took the matter under advisement and is expected to rule in the next few weeks.

    On another front, Bruning has asked the Nebraska Supreme Court to set a date for Ryan's execution for the grisly torture and murder of one of his followers at a compound near Rulo, Neb.

    Nelsen provided legal counsel to Ryan for 13 years but hasn't represented him since 2008. He said when the high court issues a death warrant for Ryan, it also will appoint a lawyer who will pursue several legal options to fight the execution.

    "Obviously he's not going to be executed next week or next month," Nelsen said Friday. "You've got wheels within wheels here. It's always the case with death penalty matters."

    If Ryan's execution date is set before the Moore case is resolved, Ryan will likely challenge the state on similar issues involving the state's lethal injection protocol.

    "I can't delve into the attorney general's mind as to why he wants to do (Ryan's case) now when he's got one going with Carey Dean Moore," Nelsen said.

    In response, Cookson said Ryan has exhausted his appeals and no stays of execution are pending in state or federal courts.

    "It's been 26 years since Michael Ryan skinned and sodomized his victim, and it's a sad commentary that the debate now is about the importation of an anesthetic for the murderer instead of the horror of the crimes," he said.

    http://www.omaha.com/article/2011110...7/711059882/-1

  3. #23
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Death Row Inmate Wants To Be His Own Lawyer

    Nebraska's longest-serving death row inmate is asking a judge to disregard any legal efforts to spare his life, unless he files them himself.

    Carey Dean Moore submitted a motion in Douglas County District Court that seeks to withdraw all pending legal briefs filed on his behalf. The motion says Moore wants to submit future court filings himself, acting as his own lawyer.

    Moore was convicted of first-degree murder for killing cab drivers Maynard D. Helgeland and Reuel Eugene Van Ness during botched robberies in 1979.

    Six days before Moore was scheduled to be executed in 2007, the state's high court issued a stay because it wanted to consider whether the electric chair should still be used. The court later ruled that the electric chair amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

    http://www.ketv.com/news/29987568/de...#ixzz1gRk2JcKK

  4. #24
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Moore withdraws motion to act as own lawyer

    Death-row inmate Carey Dean Moore has withdrawn his request to act as his own lawyer in an appeal of his case.

    Earlier this week, Moore filed a motion in Douglas County District Court asking a judge to disregard all of the appeal briefs filed on his behalf unless he submitted them himself.

    He withdrew the motion Thursday.

    "I do and continue to have the utmost trust and sincere appreciation in my lawyer of record and in all his dedicated and hard workings within the interests and issues in this action on my behalf," Moore wrote to the court.

    Moore's appeal is being handled by defense lawyer Jerry Soucie of the Nebraska Commission for Public Advocacy.

    Among other things, Soucie is challenging Nebraska's lethal injection law, passed in 2009 after the state's high court ruled death in the electric chair amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

    He said lawmakers unconstitutionally allowed the Department of Correctional Services to set a lethal injection protocol and exceeded their authority by passing a law that changed Moore's sentence from death by electrocution to lethal injection.

    In 2007, Moore said he didn't want to oppose his execution and then later changed his mind.

    Moore was convicted of first-degree murder for killing cab drivers Maynard D. Helgeland and Reuel Eugene Van Ness during botched robberies in 1979.

    http://journalstar.com/news/state-an...#ixzz1gieUm2Rg

  5. #25
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    Moore’s death sentence appeal denied

    A judge has rejected Carey Dean Moore’s request to reconsider his death sentence.

    Douglas County District Judge Thomas Otepka issued the ruling Thursday, reiterating his stance that his duty was to determine only whether Moore had received a fair trial and sentencing hearing before he was sentenced to death. Otepka concluded that Moore had.

    Moore was sentenced to die in 1980 for the 1979 murders of Omaha cabdrivers Reuel Van Ness and Maynard Helgeland, both 47-year-old fathers.

    Moore’s court-appointed attorney, Jerry Soucie, raised several issues about the state’s purchase of one of the death drugs used in lethal injection — issues he promises to raise on appeal.

    He now has the option of appealing to the Nebraska Supreme Court or filing a similar appeal in federal court.

    Soucie also plans appeals for another death-row inmate, Michael Ryan, who is scheduled to die March 6.

    http://www.omaha.com/article/2012020...97/120209905/0

  6. #26
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    June 21, 2012

    OPINION: Mockery

    Here’s how bad it’s getting in Nebraska: Even a death row inmate is mocking the state’s inability to enforce its capital punishment law.

    First, a little background. If you decide to murder someone in Nebraska, you’ll be tried for the same crime several times. One trial will be to determine whether you’re guilty or innocent. The next will be to determine whether the circumstances of your crime are horrible enough (some murders are deemed too unhorrible) for the death penalty, and another before a panel of judges who pass the actual sentence. And that’s just the beginning. It doesn’t count appeals.

    As a result, few of the murderers who kill people each year ever make it to death row. When they do, they’re more likely to die of old age than lethal injection.

    The Omaha World-Herald published a letter this week from the state’s longest-serving death row inmate. Carey Dean Moore celebrated his 32nd anniversary on “the Row” with a sarcastic “thank you” to the state’s citizens for the “extra security.” He argues that after more than three decades of legal wrangling, the state needs to give up its bid to execute him and place him in the prison’s general population.

    “A safe bet to make these days is that sooner or later, I will get off death row and be given two life sentences; my question to the public is, why wait? Why wait until after a couple more years go by us and more taxpayer money is wasted to keep me on death row?” Moore wrote.

    Moore, who is now 54, brutally executed two cabdrivers in Omaha in 1979, both of whom were fathers and Korean War veterans: Maynard Helgeland and Reuel Van Ness. He entered death row on June 20, 1980. Since 1980, when he was put on death row, his lawyers have mounted numerous appeals, saving him from six death warrants. He killed for drug money. Ironically, in one of his appeals he claims the drugs that would be used to put him to death might not be pure enough, since they were manufactured in India.

    The fault for all this nonsense lies with the state’s legal community. The citizens support the death penalty, and elected officials have done what they can to expedite it. In 2007, for instance, Moore dropped all his appeals and asked to be put to death, but the Nebraska Supreme Court issued a stay of execution that he didn’t even want. Later, the same court ruled that the state’s use of the electric chair was unconstitutional, mostly because Nebraska was the last state to use it. When judges oppose the death penalty and aren’t bashful about legislating from the bench, it’s difficult to create an atmosphere of respect for the state laws against killing other people, let alone provide justice for the victims.

    Hence Moore’s mocking jibes. He says Nebraskans are wasting his time and taxpayer money with its legal pursuits.

    “That doesn’t make sense to this prisoner. How about you, those of you who are paying my bills to be kept on death row?” he wrote. “And, by the way, citizen, thank you for paying for the extra security to keep me here. I appreciate it! Maybe I’ll go for an extra 3 or 4 years on the row, with your prayers and your help of course; thank you!”

    He’s asking the wrong folks, of course. If it were up to the average Nebraskan, he’d have been saddled up for a ride on Old Sparky three decades ago. It’s an outrage that he’s even still around.

    http://www.starherald.com/opinion/op...9bb2963f4.html

  7. #27
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    AG: 3 inmates likely first in line for death penalty

    Three Nebraska death row inmates, Carey Dean Moore, Jose Sandoval and John Lotter, have exhausted their state and federal appeals, according to Attorney General Doug Peterson, and could be first in line to have execution dates set

    Moore, 59, killed two Omaha cab drivers in the course of two separate robberies and has been on death row for 36 years.

    A public hearing on the new death penalty protocol proposal, which was unveiled three weeks after voters overwhelmingly reversed the Legislature's repeal of the death penalty, is set for Dec. 30.

    "This is just a process," Peterson said. "Whenever regulations are adopted, they have to go through the administrative process of having a hearing."

    Once the steps are complied with, it becomes the protocol of the Corrections Department, he said.

    http://journalstar.com/news/state-an...74d2a7e55.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  8. #28
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Nebraska notifies death row inmate Carey Dean Moore of drugs it plans to use in execution

    By Joe Duggan
    The Omaha World-Herald

    LINCOLN — The longest-serving member of Nebraska’s death row recently declined to join a lawsuit filed by other condemned inmates challenging the validity of their sentences.

    A check of Carey Dean Moore’s court files Friday also showed no active appeals or motions challenging his sentence.

    “He refuses to litigate further, the last I knew,” said Alan Peterson, Moore’s longtime attorney, referring to a conversation he had with the 60-year-old inmate in early December.

    Scott Frakes, Nebraska’s prisons director, took the formal step Friday of notifying Moore that the state has obtained the drugs necessary to carry out his lethal injection. The notice means that after 60 days, the Attorney General’s Office could ask the Nebraska Supreme Court to set an execution date for an inmate who was sentenced to die 38 years ago.

    It’s unclear whether the state will move that quickly to carry out its first execution in 21 years. But Attorney General Doug Peterson has not yet sought an execution date for Jose Sandoval, who received a similar notice from the state on Nov. 9.

    The executive director of the ACLU of Nebraska said Friday that the state’s latest step to resume executions is pointless considering the legal uncertainty surrounding the death penalty.

    “Issuing a notice of execution in the wake of ongoing litigation is a waste of taxpayer dollars,” Danielle Conrad said in an email. “All individuals sentenced to death in Nebraska are currently involved in multiple legal challenges about the nature of Nebraska’s execution protocols.”

    The ACLU has two death penalty lawsuits pending. One challenges the refusal by the Corrections Department to turn over all public records related to the purchase of the drugs.

    The other argues that the Legislature’s 2015 repeal of the death penalty was on the books long enough to vacate the sentences of the 11 men on death row. The same lawsuit also alleges that Gov. Pete Ricketts overstepped his executive branch authority by helping to lead and fund the petition drive that resulted in voters overturning the repeal in 2016.

    J. Kirk Brown, a retired attorney who handled death penalty litigation for the state for years, said the Supreme Court could use the pending litigation as a reason to refuse to set execution dates. Usually, however, the court requires the litigation to challenge the sentence for a specific condemned inmate.

    Further complicating the matter is the fact that not all of the 11 men on death row joined in the lawsuits. At a recent court hearing, Moore and fellow death row inmates Jeffrey Hessler and Arthur Gales declined to participate. Unlike the others, the three are listed in court filings not as plaintiffs but as “indispensable party defendants.”

    The notice provided Friday to Moore said the state intends to use a series of four drugs — in order: diazepam, fentanyl citrate, cisatracurium besylate and potassium chloride — to carry out the execution. The combination has never been used for a lethal injection before, which could provide another legal avenue for the inmates.

    Corrections spokeswoman Dawn-Renee Smith said the state received fresh supplies of two of the drugs Friday. She declined to identify the manufacturer, but said they were made in the United States.

    Moore shot and killed Omaha cab drivers Reuel Van Ness and Maynard Helgeland in the summer of 1979. Execution dates have been set six times in his case over the decades, but the Supreme Court stayed his execution. At times in the past Moore also has said he did not want to keep fighting, but then changed his mind.

    http://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/n...ca0854563.html

  9. #29
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    38 years after killing of Omaha cabdriver, time has soothed family's anger but not the pain

    LINCOLN — Their gloves may have been golden, but one of the boxers was black.

    In the early 1950s in Sioux City, Iowa, skin color mattered more than a lightning left jab. So when the young men competing in the Golden Gloves tournament tried to check into a local hotel, the black boxer was told no Negroes allowed.

    So he spent the night at the YMCA. But he wasn’t alone. A white fighter by the name of Maynard Helgeland stayed at the Y with him.

    “I think my father knew what it was like to be considered the outsider,” said Lori Helgeland-Renken of Mount Vernon, South Dakota.

    For many of the past 38 years, Helgeland has been little more than a footnote in newspaper articles about the death-row inmate who murdered him. He and Reuel Van Ness Jr. were the Omaha cabdrivers shot five days apart in the summer of 1979 by Carey Dean Moore.

    Now Moore’s case is back in the news after prison officials recently announced they have the drugs for his execution. It’s the first step in a process that could result in the Attorney General’s Office requesting an execution date for Nebraska’s longest-serving death-row inmate.

    Recent interviews with all three of Helgeland’s children found them somewhat divided on whether they still want the execution carried out. One indicated the sentence should be carried out, while two said they have grown almost ambivalent about it.

    All said time has dissipated their anger. And they’ve been left weary after 38 years of legal fights on Moore’s behalf and six stays of execution.

    But all said that one way or another, Moore, 60, should die in prison.

    They want him to become the footnote.

    They want his name forgotten.

    And they want people to know that what they lost so long ago is still felt today.

    Maynard Helgeland was born in 1932 in tiny Mitchell, South Dakota. He was the only child of an unmarried mother, and he never knew his father.

    Helgeland’s children don’t know much about their father’s upbringing. But in an era when kids with unwed parents were sometimes disowned by extended families, Helgeland’s grandfather would have none of it.

    “He said ‘There’s always room for one more at the table,’ ” Helgeland-Renken said.

    Still, growing up in a single-parent household during the Great Depression had to be tough. Maybe boxing honed a skill he developed in the schoolyard. And perhaps the Air Force provided an escape, even though it took him to the fighting in Korea.

    After the war he held a series of labor jobs in South Dakota before moving his family to Council Bluffs in 1971. He mostly worked construction to support his wife, two sons and daughter.

    But he also supported an alcohol addiction. Drinking cost him his marriage and, for a time, it battered him far worse than any opponent in the ring ever could. One winter night he passed out drunk in his car. His feet were so severely frostbitten that doctors had no choice but to amputate.

    Then, in his mid-40s, the fighter re-emerged. He quit drinking. Driving a taxi became a way for a man with two prosthetic legs to support himself. He got an apartment and started working on his relationships with his children.

    His oldest child, Kenny, moved in, and they often drove the cab together. That was their plan on Aug. 27, 1979, but a friend invited Kenny to go to the horse races in Lincoln.

    Police went to the apartment the next morning and told Kenny they had found his father in the cab near downtown Omaha. He’d been shot three times in the back of the head. The killer had called a dispatcher requesting the cab.

    Now 62 and living in Malvern, South Dakota, Kenny Helgeland said the conversation with the officers remains vivid. And he still remembers the number of their cab: 63.

    “If I hadn’t gone to Lincoln that day, I’d probably be dead, too,” he said.

    Van Ness, the other cabdriver, had been shot to death five days earlier. He also was a 47-year-old Korean War veteran. He worked construction during the day and drove for fares at night and left behind a wife and 13 children. Attempts to reach several of those children for this story were unsuccessful.

    Later, Helgeland’s survivors would learn that the 21-year-old man who killed the cabdrivers was looking for drug money. Repulsed by the blood, however, the killer couldn’t bring himself to search for Helgeland’s wallet.

    “My father would give you the shirt off his back,” said Helgeland-Renken, now 58. “That’s the irony. All he had to do is ask and my father would have given him anything he wanted.”

    Steve Helgeland was 13 and living in Wisconsin with his mother and stepfather when he was called out of class. After the long drive to Omaha, he remembered seeing television news footage of his father’s covered body being wheeled from the crime scene.

    Now 52 and living in Rapid City, South Dakota, he said he’ll always wish he could have reconciled with his father.

    “There’s big holes for me,” he said. “Mr. Moore stole that opportunity from me.”

    And he also stole opportunities from the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Maynard Helgeland and Reuel Van Ness Jr., Steve Helgeland said.

    He and his siblings are left with frustration at a legal system they view as more preoccupied with the rights of admitted killers than helping victims cope with a terrible event that forever changes their lives.

    Moore has never denied his guilt. In past interviews he has expressed sorrow for his actions, but he has not mailed apologies to the Helgeland children, they said.

    They’re not waiting to hear from him.

    “If you profess to be a Christian, you have to find the capacity to forgive,” Steve Helgeland said. “Does that mean I don’t think he should be punished? No. But you can’t carry those kinds of things forever. You can’t foster that hatred and resentment for 40 years.”

    http://www.omaha.com/news/metro/year...d7014884d.html
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  10. #30
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Death warrant sought for Nebraska inmate

    KETV Omaha

    LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska's Attorney General asked the state supreme court Tuesday to set a date for the execution of convicted killer Carey Dean Moore.

    Moore, 60, received the death penalty for the 1980 Omaha murders of two cab drivers, Reuel Van Ness, Jr. and Maynard Helgeland.

    Moore has been on death row longer than any other inmate in Nebraska, and he's been granted six stays of execution over the years, the most recent in 2011.

    Moore, and Jose Sandoval have both been received formal notice by Nebraska Corrections of the drugs that would be used in the lethal injection process.

    Sandoval was sentenced to death for his role in the murders of five people during a botched bank robbery in Norfolk in 2002.

    http://www.ketv.com/article/possibly...-town/19670938

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