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Biden Fails a Death Penalty Abolitionist’s Most Important Test

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The mystery of Joe Biden’s views about capital punishment has finally been solved. His decision to grant clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shows the depth of his opposition to the death penalty. And his decision to leave three of America’s most notorious killers to be executed by a future administration shows the limits of his abolitionist commitment. The three men excluded from Biden’s mass clemency—Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers—would no doubt pose a severe test of anyone’s resolve to end the death penalty. Biden failed that test.
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After troubled execution in Arizona, Ohio to use same drugs, dosage

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Despite problems that plagued an Arizona execution, Ohio officials plan to use the same drugs in the same quantity during Ronald Phillips’ execution scheduled for Sept. 18.

Capital punishment in Ohio has been on hold for two months because of an order by U.S. District Judge Gregory L. Frost in a lethal-injection case. Frost’s order expires on Aug. 15. Barring further legal action, the execution will proceed for Phillips, a Summit County child-killer who already has had two reprieves.

However, the troubled execution of Joseph Wood in Arizona on Wednesday turned up the heat on a death-penalty debate that began on Jan. 16 when Ohio executed Dennis McGuire using a then-untested chemical combination.

While prison officials concluded that McGuire, 53, did not feel “pain or distress” during his execution, witnesses observed that he repeatedly gasped, choked, clenched his fists and appeared to struggle against his restraints for more than 10 minutes after the administration of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a painkiller. McGuire was executed for the murder of 22-year-old Joy Stewart in 1989.

It was the first time that those drugs were used in an execution in the United States.

Ohio officials said the dosage for the next execution will be 50 milligrams of midazolam, up from 10 milligrams, and 50 milligrams of hydromorphone, up from 40 milligrams. That is the same quantity used in Wood’s execution. Ohio will have a third syringe ready containing 60 milligrams of hydromorphone; other syringes will be prepared and available “if needed.”

Phillips, 40, was scheduled to be put to death last Nov. 14, but Gov. John Kasich postponed his execution by seven months to give the inmate the opportunity to make good on his desire to donate a kidneyto his ailing mother. Time ran out before arrangements could be finalized, and Phillips was scheduled to die on July 2. That date was postponed by Frost’s order.


Source: The Colombus Dispatch, July 25, 2014
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