Nevada man who dismembered victim demands to be executed

During a mid-November telephone call from prison condemned killer Scott Dozier contemplated dying by firing squad. “That would be my favorite way,” he said. “That would be the way to go, if it was up to me,” reported the Las Vegas Review Journal.

In 2005, a Clark County, Nevada jury convicted Dozier of killing 22-year-old Jeremiah Miller at a motel and robbing him of $12,000 that Miller had brought from Phoenix to Las Vegas to purchase materials to make methamphetamine.

Miller’s torso, cut into two pieces, was found in April 2002 in a suitcase in a trash bin at an apartment complex. His head, lower arms and lower legs never were recovered.

In 2005, Dozier was convicted in Arizona of second-degree murder and given a 22-year prison sentence. In that case, prosecutors said he shot and killed a 27-year-old man, stuffed his body into a plastic container and dumped it in the desert near Phoenix.

Standing before a judge and flanked by three corrections officers and his attorney at a recent court appearance, Dozier made his desires clear and raised questions about what would happen should Nevada legislators decide to abolish the death penalty.

“My goal is to be executed, first and foremost,” said a shackled Dozier, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, black rectangular glasses and white Nikes. “But if I’m not, and I’m going to be to stuck alive, I would like to know what my options are.”

Nevada’s last execution, by lethal injection, occurred at the Nevada State Prison in April 2006.

The state has executed 12 inmates since capital punishment was reinstated by the Legislature in 1977. All but one were inmates who, like Dozier, voluntarily gave up their appeals. Last year, prison officials sent out 247 requests for proposals after a stockpile of at least one drug used in executions expired, and not one response was received.

Other states have cut back on executions, as only 20 people were executed across the nation in 2016, the fewest in 25 years. On Thursday, a federal judge in Ohio found that state’s lethal injection process unconstitutional.

Legislators in Nevada are weighing a bill that would make life without the possibility of parole the maximum criminal penalty.

To read more CLICK HERE