MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) – The Alabama Supreme Court has set a new lethal injection date for a man convicted in the 1991 sword-and-dagger slaying of a pastor.
The Alabama Supreme Court scheduled Christopher Lee Price’s lethal injection for May 30. Price was set to be executed last month but the state death warrant expired at midnight before a divided U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay that blocked the lethal injection.
State justices set a new execution date even though a federal judge had scheduled a June trial to hear Price’s challenge to Alabama’s lethal injection process.
The judge on Wednesday denied his requests for a stay of execution or to move up the trial date. However, the judge asked Alabama to respond to Price’s request to prohibit the state from administering a paralytic agent, which is the second drug in the state’s three-drug combination, during his lethal injection.
His attorneys said the first drug, a sedative called midazolam, doesn’t guarantee unconsciousness and a second drug, a paralytic, needlessly increase pain by adding “an unnecessary suffocation element.”