A Nevada death-row inmate who tried to hasten his own execution apparently killed himself in his cell, correction officials said Saturday.
Scott Raymond Dozier, 48, was found hanging from a bed sheet attached to an air vent in Ely State Prison, according to a news release. No one else was in the cell.
“Responding staff made immediate notification to medical staff and attempted to provide emergency medical care until help arrived,” the state Corrections Department said in a news release.
“Dozier was pronounced dead at approximately 4:35 p.m. by emergency medical staff at the scene.”
Dozier, who was convicted in 2007 of killing 22-year-old Jeremiah Miller, was slated to be executed in July but his lethal injection was called after the maker of one of the drugs sued to stop its use.
Dozier had waived his appeals and told the court that he would rather be put to death than spend more time on death row.
“Life in prison isn’t a life,” Dozier told the Las Vegas Journal-Review at the time. “This isn’t living, man. It’s just surviving... If people say they’re going to kill me, get to it.”
He was placed on suicide watch after the execution was called off. This fall, according to the Marshall Project, he was placed in solitary confinement for mental health reasons, with just some clothing and an anti-suicide blanket.
Nevada has not executed an inmate in more than 12 years. When Dozier dropped his appeals, the state had to come up with a new protocol for a lethal injection.
That process was complicated when the drug manufacturers objected to their products being used as instruments to death and took legal action.
Many states have had difficulty buying execution chemicals because pharmaceutical companies have been pressured by anti-death penalty activists into barring their use for capital punishment.
As a result, some states have begun adopting older methods of execution as backups. Two Tennessee inmates have been killed in the electric chair in recent weeks.
