I’ve written before about the fact that Nebraska has been using a drug dealer in India to illicitly procure lethal injection drugs that are in short supply in the U.S. Today, the saga continues and this interesting example tells us a lot about the way the death penalty is perceived by its proponents, namely that the rules apply to defendants but not to the state that wants to kill them:

Attorney General Jon Bruning’s office filed documents Monday with the Nebraska Supreme Court saying a challenge by death-row inmate Michael Ryan’s lawyer of the state’s purchase of a lethal-injection drug is “frivolous, dilatory and irrelevant.”

“I think it’s outrageous that the conversation continues to be about the method of execution as opposed to the brutal murders committed by Michael Ryan,” Bruning said.

The problem for Bruning’s office — and, I think, for all the states that are faced with the same problem of procuring sodium thiopental — is that this lawsuit isn’t frivolous. I understand that a lot of people are heavily invested in the execution of Michael Ryan, who crimes were particularly heinous. Putting to death the killers in high profile cases can do a lot for one’s political fortunes. But Bruning can’t claim that the only thing that matters when it comes to executions is whether or not the drugs are available.

If proponents of the death penalty have traditionally rested on anything, it’s on the notion of following the proper procedures. Indeed, many opponents (myself included) have complained that process has often been used to trump everything else, including instances of possible actual innocence. The appeals process, about which we so often hear complaints from proponents because of their seemingly interminable length, focuses almost exclusively on procedural questions and so, if proper procedures have been followed, defendants have very little recourse.

Now, though, Bruning wants to claim that process doesn’t matter … or at least that it only matters when it comes to Ryan and not when it comes to him. What I mean is this: The statute says the state can kill Michael Ryan and that they should use sodium thiopental to do so. The state has Ryan in custody, Ryan has had access to the criminal justice system, and now the state has a supply of sodium thiopental. So that’s the end of the story, as far as Bruning is concerned. The statute doesn’t specify how the drug should be procured, so Bruning wants to suggest that proper procedures have been followed that Ryan shouldn’t even be allowed to ask questions about how the drug that will help to kill him made its way to Nebraska.

But we know that it made its way to Nebraska illegally. The first time, the drugs were imported in contravention to the rules set out by the federal government. And this time, the drugs were procured only because the intermediary lied about their intended destination and use. The drug company wants its property back, claiming that they would not have made it available if they’d known the truth. But Bruning is committed to the idea that none of this matters because Michael Ryan is guilty and the state is allowed to kill him.

Proper procedures were followed in Ryan’s death penalty case … right until the moment that the state used radically improper procedures to procur the drugs to kill him. That Bruning doesn’t understand that proper procedures must be followed all the way through the process, by all of the actors, says a whole lot about the way the death penalty works in this country and a whole lot about the way that Bruning understands the law.