FEATURED POST

There's A GOP Plan For An Execution Spree If Trump Wins The White House

Published
Image
Buried on page 554 of the plan is a directive to execute every remaining person on federal death row — and dramatically expand the use of the death penalty. During the final six months of Donald Trump’s presidency, his administration carried out an unprecedented execution spree, killing 13 people on federal death row and ending a 17-year de facto federal execution moratorium.

Ohio: Did lawyer ask killer to put on ‘big show’ at execution?

Published
Dennis McGuire
The inmate who gasped for air and choked during an unusually long execution process this month was urged by his attorney to put on a “big show” that could single-handedly bring capital punishment to a halt in Ohio, the head of the prison’s execution team says.

But those allegations were rejected yesterday by Ohio Public Defender Tim Young after a weeklong investigation following the Jan. 16 execution.

Public defender Rob Lowe, one of Dennis McGuire’s attorneys, returned to work yesterday after a weeklong administrative suspension after an internal investigation found “no wrongdoing,” Young said.

But three incident reports from prison staff members released to The Dispatch by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction tell a different story.

Two members of the prison execution team said they overheard McGuire talking with his ex-wife, Darlene Thomas, the day before the execution, describing what he had been instructed to do by his attorney when he began feeling the effects of the chemicals. “When I begin to gasp for air I will have my thumb in the air per my attorney. ... If it wasn’t for my daughter, I would really put on a show.”

A third, more-detailed report from the unidentified execution-team leader recounted a conversation he had with McGuire later the same night. McGuire said Lowe told him that if things went wrong during the execution, he “would be the sole reason that executions no longer happen in Ohio, and all his buddies on Death Row would be saved.”

In an interview, Young confirmed the details of what happened but vehemently denied that Lowe or anyone on his staff urged McGuire to fake suffocation.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “We would never in any way try to corrupt this process or ask our client to feign any symptoms.”

An internal investigation led by Elizabeth Miller, deputy director in Young’s office, involved interviews with 11 people and reviews of emails and phone messages. “We concluded that there wasn’t any substantial proof or evidence” that McGuire was coached to feign symptoms, Young said.

Young said that in McGuire’s execution, as in all death-penalty cases, public defenders discuss the process step-by-step with the inmate. “We want to make sure we tell them exactly what is going to occur.

“We did ask Mr. McGuire to signal us so we would know when he lost consciousness,” Young said.


Source: The Columbus Dispatch, January 28, 2014
Related content:

Most Viewed (Last 7 Days)

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

Published
Image
The following document is a written record of convicted killer Hamida Djandoubi's last moments before he was guillotined in a Marseilles prison on September 10, 1977. This written record -- dated September 9 -- was written by a judge appointed to witness the execution. Djandoubi's execution was the last execution carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. Then-President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who had voiced his "loathing for the death penalty" before he was elected to office, flatly turned down Djandoubi's appeal for clemency and chose to let "Justice run its course", as he did on two previous instances ( Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977). Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was executed in Marseilles' Baumettes prison in September 1977. The following text was writ
Read more

U.S. | I'm a Death Row Pastor. They're Just Ordinary Folks

Published
Image
In the early 1970s I was a North Carolinian, white boy from the South attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and working in East Harlem as part of a program. In my senior year, I visited men at the Bronx House of Detention. I had never been in a prison or jail, but people in East Harlem were dealing with these places and the police all the time. This experience truly turned my life around.
Read more

Iraq executes 11 people convicted of terrorism crimes

Published
Image
Iraqi courts have handed down hundreds of death and life sentences in recent years for people convicted of membership in a terrorist group. BAGHDAD – Eleven people were executed on Monday at Al-Hut prison in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya after they were convicted and sentenced to death of terrorism crimes, two security sources said.
Read more

North Texas jury sentences killer to death penalty for shooting Burleson woman, cop

Published
Image
A jury of 12 Johnson County residents voted Thursday to send 31-year-old Jerry Elders to death row for the murder of Robin Waddell, agreeing with prosecutors who requested the death penalty. The defense argued for life in prison without parole, saying Thursday morning that Elders’ actions came after a lifetime of drug addiction and going in and out of jails and prisons, being kicked out of his family home as a teenager and not receiving support from family members.
Read more

Alabama SC approves second nitrogen gas execution

Published
Image
The Alabama Supreme Court has authorized the execution of a second inmate by nitrogen gas, months after the state became the first state to put a person to death with the previously untested method. Justices granted Attorney General Steve Marshall’s request for an execution date for Alan Eugene Miller, who survived a 2022 lethal injection attempt.
Read more

Alabama approves second nitrogen hypoxia execution

Published
Image
The Alabama Supreme Court has authorized the nitrogen hypoxia execution of Alan Eugene Miller, setting the stage for the state to have at least four executions this year. Miller's execution would be the second carried out using nitrogen gas, the Alabama Attorney General’s office says. Miller, now 59, was convicted of killing three people during a pair of 1999 workplace shootings in suburban Birmingham. He was living in Autauga County at the time.
Read more

Arkansas Supreme Court Decision Allows New DNA Testing in Case of the ​“West Memphis Three,” Convicted of Killing Three Children in 1993

Published
Image
On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decided 4-3 to reverse a 2022 lower court decision and allow genetic testing of crime scene evidence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men convicted in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after taking an Alford plea, in which they maintained their innocence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended sentence. 
Read more