Convicted killer Carey Dean Moore will be executed by lethal injection Tuesday at 10 a.m. at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln. It is… 
 
 The state of Nebraska executed Carey Dean Moore on Tuesday at the State Penitentiary. 
 
 Execution timeline 
 
 10:19 a.m. — Four media witnesses arrive in execution chamber viewing room. Execution chamber is soundproof. 
 
 10:24 — Curtain is lifted showing Moore is on a table, his body covered by a white sheet and his arm out and connected to the IV tube, which comes out of the wall. Behind the wall is the IV team. Director Scott Frakes and acting Warden Robert Madsen are at the foot of the table Moore is on. The first of four drugs, diazepam, 37 cc, is started. 
 
 10:25 — Moore appears to speak to his witnesses, his brother, niece, a friend and a spiritual adviser. His witnesses are separated from the media witnesses by a partition. 
 
 10:26 — A saline cleanse runs through the tube to Moore. He closes his eyes. He turns his head to look up at the ceiling, then looks at his witnesses again. He closes his eyes. His lips part slightly. 
 
 10:27 — He begins to breathe more visibly. 
 
 10:29 — Warden Madsen does a consciousness check, flicking Moore’s eyelids, lifting them and shining a pen light into them. He then steps back. 
 
 10:30 — Fentanyl is delivered through the IV tube, 46 cc. Moore appears to cough and his diaphragm and abdomen move up and down rapidly, heaving. 
 
 10:31 — Saline runs through the IV tube. Moore’s chest stops moving and he goes still. His face gradually turns red and then a shade of purple. 
 
 10:32 — Cisatracurium besylate, 15 cc, is administered through the IV tube, followed by saline. 
 
 10:33 — Potassium chloride, 120 cc, is delivered. 
 
 10:36 — Saline runs through the IV tube. 
 
 10:38 — Moore’s eyelids crack open slightly. 
 
 10:39 — Frakes speaks into his radio and nine seconds later the curtain is lowered to the media witness room. 
 
 10:47 — Moore is pronounced dead by Lancaster County Coroner Pat Condon, out of sight of witnesses. 
 
 10:53 — The curtain goes up again and shows Moore, his body covered with a sheet except for his face. 
 
 Moore’s body is later remanded to the custody of the Nebraska State Patrol for an autopsy. ||||| This file photo provided by the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services shows death-row inmate Carey Dean Moore. Nebraska prison officials are preparing to execute Moore on Aug. 14, 2018, for the 1979 murders of two Omaha cab drivers. (Photo: AP) 
 
 Nebraska executed Carey Dean Moore on Tuesday morning in the state’s first death by lethal injection. 
 
 Moore, 60, had served 38 years on death row for shooting and killing cab drivers Reuel Van Ness and Maynard Helgeland in the summer of 1979, according to the Omaha World-Herald. He had said he was ready to die. 
 
 “We could see him mouthing some words toward his witnesses, it was clear he said I love you several times," witness Brent Martin of Nebraska Radio Network said at a news conference after the death, KLKN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska, reports. 
 
 The fatal drug cocktail used for Moore’s execution had never been used to put a person to death, the Lincoln Journal Star reports. The concoction included sedative diazepam, muscle relaxant cisatracurium, potassium chloride and fentanyl. 
 
 Fentanyl is an opioid painkiller that is 30 times more potent than heroin and at least 80 times stronger than morphine, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Nearly 30,000 overdose deaths were linked to fentanyl in 2017, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data cited by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. 
 
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 The drug mixture is controversial, because if the substances did not work as planned, Moore could have suffered extreme pain. Friday, a lawyer for the drug company behind the paralyzing drug said it might not be effective if it wasn’t stored at the proper temperature, the World-Herald reports. 
 
 Witnesses reported no complications, only some coughing before Moore stopped moving. Moore died at 10:47 a.m. CT surrounded by three people, a clergy member and four media member witnesses, according to KLKN. 
 
 Moore released a "last statement," where he apologized to his brother, Donald, who was with him during his first murder. 
 
 "I am terribly sorry," Moore wrote. "Please forgive me, Don, somehow." 
 
 Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska filed a motion to delay Moore’s execution on behalf of eight death row inmates, KETV-TV, in Omaha, Nebraska, reports. After the execution, ACLU of Nebraska Executive Director Danielle Conrad condemned the decision. 
 
 "This execution of Carey Dean Moore does not comport with Nebraska’s proud tradition of open government," Conrad said in a statement Tuesday. "Today stands as the most recent dark chapter in Nebraska's troubled history with the death penalty." 
 
 In 2016, Nebraska reinstated the death penalty. Before Moore, the state had executed 37 people, the last being killed by an electric chair. 
 
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 Follow Ashley May on Twitter: @AshleyMayTweets 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2vEVeyA ||||| LINCOLN, Neb. — Prison officials in Nebraska used the powerful opioid fentanyl to help execute a convicted murderer on Tuesday, the first such use of the drug in the United States and the first execution in the state since voters overturned a death penalty ban in 2016. 
 
 The use of fentanyl, an opioid at the heart of the nation’s overdose crisis, as part of a previously untested four-drug cocktail drew concern from death penalty experts who questioned how the execution unfolded. And here in Nebraska, a state that last killed a prisoner in 1997, the lethal injection represented a stark political turnabout from when legislators outlawed capital punishment three years ago. 
 
 The condemned man, Carey Dean Moore, 60, had been convicted of killing two Omaha taxi drivers decades ago and did not seek a reprieve in his final months. He was pronounced dead at 10:47 a.m. at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, officials said, 23 minutes after the first drug was administered. Mr. Moore breathed heavily at one point and coughed, said four Nebraska journalists whom the state selected to watch the execution. Mr. Moore’s face turned red, then purple. 
 
 The four-drug cocktail contained diazepam, a tranquilizer; fentanyl citrate, a powerful synthetic opioid that can block breathing and knock out consciousness; cisatracurium besylate, a muscle relaxant; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.
– The Aug. 14 execution of Carey Dean Moore in Nebraska garnered national attention because authorities used a heretofore untested cocktail of four drugs to end the life of the convicted killer. But now, another aspect of the execution is attracting attention: the fact that authorities at Nebraska State Penitentiary closed curtains for some 14 minutes, preventing observers from seeing the execution from start to finish. According to observers, about 15 minutes after authorities began to administer the drugs to Moore via IV, Corrections Director Scott Frakes—in the same room as Moore—spoke into his radio and the curtains closed the Lincoln Journal Star reports. Some say closing the curtains "hindered transparency" because observers—and, by proxy, other states looking for new execution methods—were not able to see the full effect of the drug combination. "Speculation cannot help but be rife, state Sen. Ernie Chambers, a death penalty opponent, wrote to Frakes days after the arrest, saying that witness reports of the events before the curtains closed "only tantalized." Those reports include accounts of Moore's face turning red, and then purple, the Omaha World-Herald reports, as well as Moore taking rapid, heaving breaths and coughing, per the Journal Star. However, a corrections spokeswoman says the curtain closing wasn't unplanned, telling the Journal Star that it "is consistent with past practice. Frakes says the execution was performed with "respect for the process and dignity for all involved," per the World-Herald.