That protocol will include doses of midazolam, a controversial sedative deployed in several botched executions, fentanyl, and the paralytic drug cisatracurium. But Dozier has waved appeals and said he wants to die so the combination of medicines to be used to kill him has not been examined in court.  Questions raised about whether the state’s department of corrections broke the law to obtain the drug, which is at the heart of the US opioid epidemic 
 
 Nevada plans to carry out the first execution using fentanyl, a drug at the heart of the US opioid epidemic, on Wednesday. “Now it’s being used with fentanyl. “Using fentanyl in an execution is particularly strange and confusing because of its place in the opioid epidemic,” said the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Nevada, Amy Rose. “Without this information being public, there’s no oversight as to how the execution will occur,” Lauren Kaufman, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Nevada, said Wednesday, shortly after a judge ordered the Nevada Department of Corrections to hand over some of those records. Because drug manufacturers and distributors are increasingly reluctant to let their wares be used in lethal injections, states have been forced to rewrite decades-old protocols, rely on untested drugs, and fight courtroom battles over their new execution plans. But the department of corrections doesn’t have a licence to administer the drugs at the execution,” she said. Midazolam, the state’s replacement, was first used in an execution in Florida in 2013. Rose said the ACLU is seeking more documentation to see if the Nevada authorities “lied to Cardinal in any way”.
– Critics are warning about the "very real risk of a botched execution" in what is to be the first US case of capital punishment using fentanyl. With manufacturers unwilling to sell any drugs to be used in executions, Nevada's Department of Corrections quietly purchased small doses of fentanyl from Cardinal Health over several months and plans to use the prescription painkiller in combination with paralytic drug cisatracurium and sedative midazolam in the state's first execution in 12 years, scheduled for Wednesday, per the Guardian and Vice. Critics, however, are putting up a fuss, and not only due to the secretive way officials went about acquiring the drug. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid well known for its role in the opioid epidemic, has "never been used in an execution before. It's extremely experimental," as Amy Rose of the American Civil Liberties Union puts it. Especially concerning is the fact that the fentanyl will be mixed with midazolam, which "has been at the center of executions that have gone visibly wrong in every single state in which it has been used," says Maya Foa of anti-death penalty group Reprieve. She tells the Guardian execution strategies are normally reviewed by courts through inmate appeals. Not so in this case, as double murderer Scott Dozier—convicted of second-degree murder in 2005 and first-degree murder in 2007—accepts his fate and says he wants to die. It's unclear if there's enough opposition to stave off the execution, though the ACLU is looking into the legality of how Nevada obtained the fentanyl. But if it goes ahead, Gov. Brian Sandoval "is in danger of creating the very black market he is trying to eliminate," pharmaceutical expert Donald Downing argues at the Reno Gazette Journal.