The ACLU of Nebraska challenged the validity of the death sentences. The group argued that when the Nebraska Legislature repealed capital punishment in 2015, the law was in effect long enough to convert the death sentences of the 11 men then on death row to life in prison.

Debate on the measure delved into biblical teachings about killing, the evolving position of the Roman Catholic Church and the role of Gov. Pete Ricketts and his family to finance the campaign that restored capital punishment.

Erwin Charles Simants, who killed six members of a family, then found not guilty by reason of insanity, will stay in state custody for at least another year. 

But the state's solicitor general argues that the Nebraska Supreme Court should defer to the Douglas County judge who heard the evidence and interacted with Jenkins during a tumultuous three years of court proceedings.

Carey Dean Moore shot and killed Omaha cab drivers Reuel Van Ness and Maynard Helgeland in the summer of 1979. Execution dates have been set six times in his case over the decades, but the Supreme Court stayed his execution. 

"Apparently they do not want to execute me, even though I haven't filed any appeals in over 10 years," Moore wrote. "Therefore, since they are either lazy or incompetent to do their jobs, or both, I should receive a full pardon."

Patrick Schroeder has taken the unprecedented step of dismissing his lawyers and acting as his own attorney. 

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska recently filed the legal challenge on behalf of two death penalty opponents who argue that prison administrators produced the execution protocol “hastily, secretly and without following required procedures.”

Carey Dean Moore has been at the center of a 38-year legal odyssey marked by a half-dozen stays of execution, thwarting Nebraska’s efforts to put him to death. Will Moore soon become the first Nebraska inmate to die via lethal injection? Or does the odyssey continue?

A judge has scheduled a hearing Friday on a motion to block the Nebraska Legislature from questioning the prisons director about the state's execution protocol.

The first hearing in what could become a constitutional battle between two branches of state government is now scheduled for June 18 in Lancaster County District Court.

The Nebraska Supreme Court has ordered a public legal office to represent death row inmate Carey Dean Moore as the state seeks a warrant for his execution. 

The suits pit the Omaha World-Herald, the Lincoln Journal Star and the ACLU of Nebraska against the State Department of Correctional Services over the release of documents related to how the state obtained drugs to be used for lethal injection.

Carey Dean Moore filed a sworn statement with the court Thursday, making it official that he wants no lawyer to contest the state's motion for an execution warrant.

Corrections Director Scott Frakes said the state’s supply of potassium chloride, a drug intended to stop the inmate’s heart, will expire Aug. 31.

A three-judge panel ruled that Schroeder will die in the state’s execution chamber for killing his cellmate in a double-bunked solitary confinement cell at the Tecumseh State Prison last year.

Lancaster County District Judge Lori Maret ruled the two death penalty opponents who filed the lawsuit lacked standing to do so. She did not rule on whether prison officials failed to follow required procedures when they set up a new lethal injection protocol in 2017.

The court overturned a motion Wednesday that was filed recently by the ACLU of Nebraska asking for permission to submit a brief in the Carey Dean Moore case. The court provided no comment or written response that might signal why the judges rejected the motion. 

The judge sided with lawyers for the state's two largest newspapers by ordering the public disclosure of records related to the source of four death penalty drugs. But Lancaster County District Judge Jodi Nelson said officials may withhold documents that directly identify members of the execution team to comply with a confidentiality requirement in state law.

Late Wednesday, the court overruled Moore's motion to dismiss his appointed attorney from the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy. 

The Nebraska Supreme Court has set Aug. 14 for the execution of double-murderer Carey Dean Moore, the longest serving inmate on Nebraska's death row.

A morning execution has been set for Carey Dean Moore, Nebraska's longest-serving inmate on death row.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer again has demanded that the State of Nebraska return any lethal injection drugs manufactured by the company, but made it clear that it will not go to court to try to force that.

If Boswell, 24, is found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, she will be the first woman on Nebraska's death row in history, according to State Department of Corrections records.

Two more pharmaceutical companies have notified Nebraska officials that they don't want their drugs used in a lethal injection scheduled to take place in less than two weeks.

Saline County District Judge Julie Smith on Monday set a Sept. 17 hearing to hear arguments on the death penalty challenge.

Jeff Pickens, director of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy, cited a conflict of interest in being assigned to represent a man who wants to be the first inmate executed by lethal injection in Nebraska.

The Nebraska Supreme Court kept next week's execution of Carey Dean Moore on track Tuesday.

The lawsuit filed late Tuesday could delay the Aug. 14 execution of Carey Dean Moore, who was sentenced to death for killing two Omaha cabdrivers in 1979.

Granting a restraining order to block next week's execution would have the effect of changing the death sentence "into a de facto sentence of life in prison for Carey Dean Moore," said Scott Frakes, director of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. 

A federal judge in Nebraska has refused to block next week’s execution of Carey Dean Moore, rejecting a pharmaceutical company’s claims that using its drugs in a lethal injection will harm its business interests.

A second major pharmaceutical manufacturer wants to join a federal lawsuit seeking to stop Tuesday’s execution in a dispute involving Nebraska’s lethal injection drugs.

A German drug company that was seeking to force Nebraska to return drugs it plans to use in Tuesday's execution says it won't appeal the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty delivered signatures of more than 60,000 people to the governor's office at the State Capitol, asking that he cancel the execution. Another group, called Catholic Democrats of Nebraska, brought a "public" letter, signed by more than 660 people, for Ricketts to "see the error of his ways." 

Carey Dean Moore, 60, was killed by lethal injection at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln Tuesday. He served 38 years on death row for the 1979 killings of Omaha cabdrivers Reuel Van Ness and Maynard Helgeland.

Moore was described by the four media witnesses as "straight faced" and "composed" as the death warrant was read to him just prior to the execution.

Awaiting his fate Friday, Anthony Garcia assumed the same position he’s taken since he was convicted two years ago of the serial killings of four innocents. Slumped in a wheelchair. Neck cranked to one side. Eyes squeezed shut.

The Nebraska Supreme Court has once again rejected an appeal by death row inmate John Lotter, one of two men convicted in a triple homicide fictionalized in the movie “Boys Don’t Cry.”

The ACLU argues that the Nebraska Legislature's repeal of the death penalty was briefly enacted into law, therefore death row inmates' sentences were changed to life sentences. The state argues that the repeal was suspended before it was enacted, by the submission of signatures on a referendum petition.

The Nebraska Supreme Court left little unturned as it upheld spree killer Nikko Jenkins’ conviction and death sentence in the 10-day rampage that left four Omahans dead in August 2013.

Anthony D. Davis, 40, died about 7 p.m., according to the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. He was being treated for injuries he suffered in a Sept. 16 assault by another inmate, whose name was not released pending completion of an investigation.

Nikko Jenkins has a new makeshift tattoo: the word Dawn. Lubbock, Texas, resident Dawn Arguello wishes he wouldn’t have done it. But she isn’t denying that she has feelings for the man who murdered Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz, Juan Uribe-Pena, Curtis Bradford and Andrea Kruger in 2013.