15 October 2018 :
On August 14, 2018, Nebraska executed Carey Dean Moore. Associated Press reporter Grant Schulte, a media witness who kept a timeline of events during the execution, reported that on three occasions prison officials dropped a curtain that prevented the witnesses from seeing portions of the execution, and that towards the end of the procedure Moore's face turned reddish, then purple. Joe Duggan, a journalist for the Omaha World-Herald, said the media witnesses could see the IV-line connected to Moore's arm, but could not see into the room where prison personnel controlled the flow of the drugs. "It was not possible for us to know exactly when each drug was administered," he said. Brent Martin, reporting for Nebraska Radio Network, compared Moore's executions to the 13 executions he had previously witnessed in Missouri, saying "this was much longer." He also noted that the Nebraska team "approached it a bit differently" than had corrections officials in Missouri, where executions had "become routine." But, he said, "I didn't get any sense that it did not go other than how they planned it to go." Later, prison officials acknowledged the curtain had been lowered after the last drug was administered, preventing the reporters from witnessing Moore's reaction to that drug. Strapped to the death gurney, Carey Dean Moore desperately heaved in oxygen, coughed, went red in the face and hands, then purple before his executioners pulled the curtain. The change in protocol happened when in the Nebraska State Penitentiary’s death chamber, the condemned prisoner appeared to open his eyes slightly. A minute later the curtain was inexplicably closed. He eventually succumbed to the experimental new cocktail of drugs devised to kill him with that curtain drawn. It remained closed for 14 minutes in total, not opening again until six minutes after death was pronounced. Nebraska’s first execution in two decades was already controversial for its new four drug combination. It was the first time the opioid fentanyl had been used in a lethal injection.
