Nebraska state officials have requested an execution warrant for the state's longest-serving death-row inmate.
Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson asked the state Supreme Court on Tuesday to grant an execution warrant for Carey Dean Moore, who was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1979 shooting deaths of two Omaha cab drivers.
Nebraska hasn't executed an inmate since 1997, when inmate Robert Williams was electrocuted for killing three women. The state has since adopted a lethal injection protocol.
The court motion says Moore has no pending appeals or stays of execution in state or federal courts. Moore has had several execution dates set, most recently in 2007 and 2011, but courts have stayed them.
An execution warrant triggers a 60-day window for state officials to carry out the execution and allows them to set a date. It's not clear when or if the Supreme Court would issue it.
State officials notified Moore in January of the drugs they intend to use. In response to Tuesday's announcement, Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty issued a statement expressing disappointment by "this step backward for our state. The death penalty system is just as broken today as it was three years ago, when a bipartisan majority in the Legislature voted to replace it with life without the possibility of parole."
Moore was given the death penalty for the 1980 killings of two Omaha cab drivers.