Ohio: Freeze on lethal injections sought

The ghosts of problem executions past combined with an aborted attempt two weeks ago are haunting state prison officials as death-penalty foes argue that Ohio's lethal injections should be halted, at least temporarily.

The Ohio public defender, in motions filed yesterday in state and federal courts, contends that the botched attempt to execute Romell Broom on Sept. 15 - coupled with problems in two previous executions - warrants postponing the scheduled lethal injection of Lawrence Reynolds next week.

"Until a thorough and proper review of Ohio's lethal injection protocol is conducted, executions should not be allowed to proceed in the state," Kelly L. Schneider, head of the public defender's death-penalty section, told The Dispatch yesterday. "It seems like the logical thing to do is to take a step back and see what's going on here."

The prison execution team "demonstrated that it is wholly incapable of administering Ohio's lethal injection protocol" in line with the federal and state constitutions and Ohio law, the public defender said in a motion filed in the Ohio Supreme Court. A motion also was filed in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

Further, the public defender cited the "inadequacy of Ohio's lethal injection protocol" and lack of a contingency plan in its attempt to get a stay of execution for Reynolds.

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray's office, in a response to the federal filing, countered that "the difficulties in accessing Broom's veins and the postponement of (his) execution are not indications that the execution of Reynolds or other prisoners cannot be conducted appropriately."

Further, the state said, Broom was not subjected to "cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The relatively minor pain he experienced does not rise to the level of extreme pain or torture prohibited by the Eighth Amendment."

The Ohio Supreme Court has set four additional execution dates in the following four months: Darryl Durr of Cleveland on Nov. 10, Kenneth Biros of Trumbull County on Dec. 8, Vernon Smith of Lucas County on Jan. 7 and Mark Brown of Mahoning County on Feb. 4.

In her appeal, the public defender cited two previous problem executions. Joseph Clark was stuck 19 times during his execution in 2006, and the next year Christopher Newton's IV process took so long that he was allowed to take a bathroom break.

With Broom's execution now pushed back by at least 60 days, the attention has turned to Reynolds. Barring court intervention, the 43-year-old killer from Akron will be put to death at 10 a.m. Oct. 8 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. He was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering Loretta Foster, a 67-year-old neighbor, on Jan. 1, 1994.

The court late last week set a hearing in Broom's case for Nov. 30. A new execution date would have to be after that date.

Broom, 53, of Cleveland, was sentenced to death for abducting, raping and stabbing to death 14-year-old Tryna Middleton on Sept. 21, 1984.

Broom's would-be executioners struggled unsuccessfully for two hours to attach IV lines, reportedly sticking the convicted killer 18 times, sometimes striking muscle and bone and causing severe pain, according to the inmate's deposition. The execution was abandoned when Gov. Ted Strickland granted a temporary reprieve.

Within hours, Ohioans to Stop Executions called for a halt to executions, saying Broom's case made it "obvious that no amount of adjustment to the death penalty process can achieve an outcome absent of pain and suffering for victims' family members, witnesses, corrections workers and the condemned inmate."

The American Civil Liberties Union also weighed in on the Broom case, and the death-penalty center at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law is providing resource and communications support to the public defender.

Source: The Columbus Dispatch, Sept. 29, 2009