• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- Arkansas attorneys who stand ready to challenge the constitutionality of South Dakota's new one-drug execution method face an unexpected obstacle: their own client.
• Donald Moeller, convicted of the 1990 slaying of 9-year-old Becky O'Connell, says he's ready to die for the crime and wants the federal case bearing his name dismissed. The attorneys say Moeller is incompetent and incapable of making voluntary and rational decisions.
• Like many other states faced with dwindling supplies of sodium thiopental, South Dakota has turned to pentobarbital, a barbiturate used to treat anxiety and convulsive disorders such as epilepsy.
• The attorneys contend pentobarbital would inflict cruel and unusual punishment. He says the lawyers "are working for their own agenda."
• What happens next is in the hands of U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Piersol, who must quickly decide whether to let Moeller clear the last roadblock to his execution or dive into the nuts and bolts of the drug, where it's coming from and how it would be administered. Moeller, 60, is scheduled to be executed between Oct. 28 and Nov. 3, with the exact date and time up to prison officials.
• "There may indeed be grounds for arguing that out and hearing some experts," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. "But if the defendant doesn't want it, then the courts have to say, 'Why are we doing this?'"
• Piersol has upheld the constitutionality of Moeller's conviction and sentence, but he hasn't ruled on the constitutionality of a South Dakota Department of Corrections execution policy that was changed last year.
• South Dakota previously just had a three-drug protocol for executions. The change added one- and two-drug procedures as options. The two-drug protocol calls for sodium thiopental or pentobarbital to be used before pancuronium bromide is injected to stop the inmate's breathing. The three-drug procedure includes sodium thiopental or pentobarbital, followed by pancuronium bromide to stop the breathing and potassium chloride to stop the heart.
• South Dakota's supply of sodium thiopental expired last month, so it's planning to use pentobarbital on Moeller.
• Megan McCracken with the University of California Berkeley School of Law's

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