Jose Sandoval is slated for Nebraska’s first execution by lethal injection, a method that has never carried out by the state previously. The last inmate executed by the state was Robert E. Williams in 1997. His capital punishment was exacted by electric chair. Nebraska’s Supreme Court has since ruled execution by the chair unconstitutional due to cruel and unusual punishment. Sandoval, who was informed on November 9 that his execution is next, wrote letters to the Omaha World-Herald, the news source reported on December 3.
With the assistance of an ACLU attorney, Sandoval plans to challenge Nebraska’s goal to execute him.
After state prison authorities informed the death row inmate that he’s earmarked for execution, it didn’t take long for defense attorneys to contact him, according to Sandoval and the World-Herald. The news agency stated that letters from the condemned killer “indicate” he plans to “resist” being put to death.
Without citing details or explaining anything specific about a legal challenge to his capital punishment, he stated, “Everything happens for a reason,” the World-Herald reported. The death drug cocktail the state plans to administer in carrying out his sentence includes diazepam, fentanyl, cisatracurium, and potassium chloride.
Condemned killer sentenced to die after five murders during bank robbery
Sandoval was sentenced to die following a bank robbery and five murders committed in Norfolk, NE, on September 26, 2002. Video footage showed Sandoval shooting Evonne Tuttle, 37, Jo Mausbach, 42, and Samuel Sun, 50. Two of his bank robbery accomplices shot and killed employees Lisa Bryant, 28, and Lola Elwood, 43.
The condemned killer also admitted to having murdered his former roommate Travis Lundell, as well as Lundell’s friend Robert Pearson, Jr. The two were buried in graves near Norfolk. Sandoval received two life sentences for the murders.
As a result of his admission of guilt in two murders and his role in orchestrating the murders he and others committed at the Norfolk bank during the robbery, Sandoval had a crucial role in a sum of seven murders enacted in Nebraska.
Former state senator says inmate killed ‘for sport’
In November 2017, former state Senator Mike Flood stated that Sandoval killed people “for sport,” according to the Lincoln Journal Star. He also said that there are “not many” within the prison system who have committed seven murders. He considers Sandoval a “supreme risk to human life.”
Dave Mausbach’s wife was killed by Sandoval. He described his wife, Jo, as easy-going, caring, and selfless – a woman who would “drop everything” and help others “with anything.” He also told the Journal Star that his wife lived for the couple’s children. Her family was her life.
On the day his wife was murdered in 2002, Mausbach took his two children out of school and watched as they left school.
He said they were excited. They took leaving school as a sign that “they would be getting to do something special.” Instead, he faced the daunting and heartbreaking task of having to let them know that their mother was killed at work, the Journal Star reported.
Victim’s husband believes execution overdue
According to Mausbach, Sandoval’s execution is way overdue and believes that the murder’s execution will provide some “relief.” He has lived with the “senselessness of the crime,” as well as experienced when his children, Rebecca and Jacob, graduated college and landed jobs, but without their mother also in their lives, the Journal Star noted.
The Nebraska Supreme Court has upheld Sandoval’s convictions.
In 2011, the United States Supreme court declined to review his petition. He has also long-abandoned his tale of taking LSD on the morning of the bank murders and saying he saw blue Smurfs in the bank, behind the teller’s counter.
Mausbach’s hope and what he has been “waiting for” is Sandoval’s execution, according to the Journal Star. “I will feel a hell of a lot better.”
