Killing time on death row: 'If they're going to kill me, get to it'

He's the death row inmate they can't kill.

It's not for lack of trying on the State of Nevada's part: Scott Raymond Dozier's execution by lethal injection has been scheduled twice.

And it's not because the brutal double murderer wants to live: before his last execution date passed earlier this month, he repeated his desire to die.

"Life in prison isn't a life," he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "It's just surviving".

The law of the land in Nevada is pretty clear on what is to happen to Dozier, 47.

He was sentenced to die by lethal injection in 2007, convicted of robbing, killing and dismembering a 22-year-old man in Las Vegas, and was convicted in Arizona in 2005 of another murder and dismemberment near Phoenix.

But a legal bunfight over accessing the lethal drugs to see him become Nevada's first death row execution in 12 years has left him in limbo.

Courts have twice blocked the execution, last time just hours before it was to take place, AP reports.

Nevada and other states are running up against pharmaceutical companies who don't want their products used in executions and the public relations nightmare surrounding the debate.

Drug company Alvogen wants to stop Nevada using its product to kill Dozier. It's name became public in the early rounds of the legal wrangle.

Stripper-turned-drug dealer's brutal murders

Growing up in the state he now wants to die in, Dozier was the son of a landscaper and, when not in the army, helped out at a charity that built homes for the disadvantaged.

He married early and had dreams of becoming a teacher but, instead, found himself working as a stripper at a Las Vegas casino. His primary income came from cooking and selling ice.

As his drug business grew, Dozier's life started spiralling out of control and he soon graduated from living outside the law to murder.

In April 2002, a maintenance worker noticed a "very foul" smell coming from a dumpster at an apartment complex a few kilometres from the Las Vegas strip.

Inside was a suitcase crawling with flies and maggots. The worker opened it up to find a stinking mass of human hair, flesh and a blood-soaked towel.

Authorities were later able to match tattoos on the shoulders of the dismembered corpse to those of Jeremiah Miller, 22, who had been reported missing a week earlier.

Investigators deduced that Dozier had offered to help Mr Miller obtain ingredients to make meth in exchange for US$12,000. But when the young man turned up, Dozier shot him and stole the cash before chopping up his body.

At the trial, the jury were told the body was "mutilated," and the head had been removed. It was never found.

Following his arrest on June 25, 2002, Dozier was connected to another crime, the murder of Jasen "Griffin" Green, whose remains had been found in a plastic container in the desert north of Phoenix a year earlier.

In 2005, Dozier was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing Mr Green. He was then extradited to Nevada to stand trial for the murder of Mr Miller. He was convicted and sentenced to death on October 3, 2007.

Why the wait?

Dozier, 47, had his execution first delayed last November, when the courts blocked Nevada from using a never-tried combination of drugs that it created after struggling to get lethal injection supplies.

It happened again on July 11, when a judge blocked use of the sedative midazolam until at least September after its drugmaker Alvogen sued.

The state has appealed the postponement in the Nevada Supreme Court.

District Court Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez placed a temporary order banning the state from using the Alvogen drug having to decide whether the company had a legal right "to decide not to do business with someone, including the government, especially if there's a fear of misuse of their product."

Dozier doesn't care if his execution is painful, he says. Photo / AP

The appeal documents last week acknowledged that Gonzalez concluded there was a reasonable probability that Alvogen would "suffer irreparable damages, including damages to its business reputation" if its drug was used in the execution.

But they added the judge's ruling "will not only prevent the execution of Dozier … it will also open the floodgates for yet another nationwide wave of death penalty litigation that will stall capital sentences indefinitely."

The state of Nevada says it didn't do business with Alvogen, but got the drug from a third party, its usual prisons pharmaceutical supplier, Cardinal Health.

Manufacturers "do not retain a property interest in products that their distributors resell," the appeal document argued, "and they cannot sue states to recover lawfully purchased drugs."

The legal hurdles will be overcome until at least September — if indeed they can be.

"It will be quite a while before Scott Dozier is going to face an execution day," said Professor Deborah Denno, an expert in capital punishment law at Fordham University in New York.

The plan and the problem

Nevada's three-drug execution plan would follow the Alvogen sedative with fentanyl, the potent synthetic opioid that's fuelling overdose deaths nationwide, and a muscle paralytic called cisatracurium.

Neither has been used in an execution, and critics have raised concerns Dozier could be conscious, unable to move and suffocating.

Dozier says he doesn't care if his death is painful. He just wants his life over.

But it stopped being his call long ago.

The Nevada Department of Corrections shows the new chamber at Ely State Prison in Ely has never been used. The state of Nevada hasn't executed a death row prisoner in 12 years. Photo / AP

If the courts block his execution again, Nevada could try to get drugs from a made-to-order compounding pharmacy. Texas and Georgia both use such pharmacies and have passed laws shielding the facilities' identities.

But the made-to-order drugs can be expensive, and "Nevada may not want to make that kind of investment," Prof Denno said.

There's no shortage of drugs that can kill people, says Dr. Jonathan Groner, a lethal injection expert and surgeon who teaches at Ohio State University — "but each has problems and will cause endless litigation'>

"My guess is that most of the 79 death row inmates in Nevada will die of old age and not at the state's hands," Groner said.

Bring back the chair?

The Nevada case could stall executions in other states if other companies and organisations follow Alvogen's lead," said Denno said.

Nevada's Attorney-General Adam Laxalt's office last week raised the spectre of syringe, intravenous equipment and even latex glove manufacturers mounting courthouse bids to block executions to protect company reputations and avoid criticism in an era of sharp public debate about executing inmates.

So the wrangle is being keenly watched by the other 30 American states in which the death penalty still exists — with some even considering firing squads or a return to the electric chair as alternative.

Nevada law calls for capital punishment by lethal injection, so state officials would have to approve changes — and may have to build new execution facilities — to switch execution methods.

Lawyer Todd Bice, representing drug manufacturer, Alvogen, appears before judge Elizabeth Gonzalez after filing a lawsuit to stop Nevada using their drugs in Dozier's execution. Photo / AP

Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio, and Oklahoma has switched to a yet-to-be-used method using nitrogen gas, Prof Denno said.

It asphyxiates a person in an airtight chamber through a lack of oxygen.

Nevada's new death chamber is not airtight, prisons spokeswoman Brooke Santina said.

There also are firing squads, the method Utah decided in 2015 to use as a backup if lethal injection drugs can't be found.

'If they're going to kill me, get to it!

Dozier's case "exposes Nevada's death penalty as a costly exercise in futility," said Scott Coffee, a deputy public defender in Las Vegas who has lobbied for years to get rid of the death penalty.

"Even when someone is begging to be executed," Coffee said, "we don't really have means to carry it out."

Meanwhile, Dozier waits, ready to die, while people guess at his motivations for pushing his execution date.

Psychologists suspect the narcissist within Dozier is enjoying the attention.

"[Dozier] saw an opportunity to be the first execution in a dozen years, in the state's new death chamber, and all these firsts could add to the myth," said Vince Gonzales, a Dallas-based sentencing expert who studied Dozier.

Others say he's calling Nevada's bluff, well aware he's reigniting debate about not just the death penalty, but also about when a death-row inmate's willingness to be executed sees the state cross a line from punishment to assisted suicide, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

"Most people think these inmates are fighting for their lives and the way to really get back at them is to kill them," says Prof Denno.

"But here we have someone … who is rubbing that in people's faces and saying, 'Do you want me to suffer? Then let me live'."

Dozier began speaking with family members about waiving his appeals and wanting to be executed in 2011.

"If people say they're going to kill me, get to it," he said.

Ahead of his last execution date, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal as an atheist he expects "nothingness" when he dies.

"I don't have any grand expectations," he said.

"I think it's just done. I think it's just black."

A sign marks the entrance to Ely State Prison, where Dozier's execution is on hold. Photo / AP