State changes execution drug, at ‘significant cost,’ to dismiss death row civil suit

SALT LAKE CITY — The state of Utah announced Saturday it is changing its method of lethal injection for Taberon Dave Honie, under three weeks from the scheduled execution, amid a civil rights lawsuit that was brought against Department of Corrections officials.

On June 7, the department notified parties that it would use a lethal cocktail of ketamine, fentanyl, and potassium chloride for the method of execution, but a month later, lawyers for Honie filed a lawsuit asking Judge Linda Jones in the 3rd District Court to declare the state’s three-drug protocol unconstitutional.

Honie was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend’s mother, Claudia Benn, in front of Benn’s three grandchildren in 1998.

With the Aug. 8 execution date looming, and all other legal avenues for seeking relief from the over 25-year-old sentence seemingly exhausted, this civil suit asked for “adequate time to investigate the medical implications” surrounding the untested protocol, and enjoined the state to not use the cocktail proposed.

The Department of Corrections, and the state of Utah’s response — they will “no longer be using the three-drug combination under any circumstance in (Honie’s) execution.”

In a declaration from Randall Honey, chief of prison operations, filed Saturday, the Department of Corrections had been trying to obtain pentobarbital, a central nervous system depressant, according to the National Institutes of Health. It is normally used as a sedative, and commonly for euthanizing animals.

The Death Penalty Information Center reports that pentobarbital has been used by 14 states and the federal government in executions, but the supply has been more difficult with some pharmaceutical companies refusing to sell to prisons.

Since October 2023, Honey and his predecessor tried to secure a supply, but were forced to look for alternatives when they could not secure a dosage for the execution, according to the declaration, asking 12 states and a pharmacist with no progress. They ultimately landed on the contested ketamine, fentanyl, and potassium chloride cocktail.

But an unnamed individual read news coverage of the current lawsuit, Honey said, and offered to put the state in touch with a supplier for the drug.

The supply of pentobarbital would come at a “significant cost,” according to the declaration. The estimated cost of the three-drug combination was $7,900, but the doses of pentobarbital would cost $200,000.

Saturday, the Department of Corrections filed to dismiss the civil suit contesting the use of the drug combo, arguing that Honie’s stance is now moot, because it is able to obtain the preferred drug.

The quick change in execution method, however, “may raise an alleged due process concern challenging the timing of the disclosure for pentobarbital,” which the corrections officials admitted to in the dismissal motion, opening the door for another legal challenge to the execution timing.

No response to the dismissal filing has yet been submitted by Honie. A commutation hearing is scheduled for July 22-24 regarding Honie’s request to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole to commute his death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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