"Ohio executes inmate with one-drug injection," is the title of Andrew Welsh-Huggins AP report, via Google News.
An Ohio killer was put to death in an efficient 10 minutes Tuesday in the first U.S. execution to use a single drug injection instead of the standard three-chemical combination that has come under legal attack because it can cause excruciating pain.
Kenneth Biros, 51, was pronounced dead shortly after one dose of sodium thiopental began flowing into his veins at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. The U.S. Supreme Court had rejected his final appeal two hours earlier.
Experts had predicted that sodium thiopental — used in many parts of the world to put pets down — would take longer to kill than the old method. But the 10 minutes it took Biros to die was about as long as it has taken other inmates in Ohio and elsewhere to succumb to the three-drug combination.
And:
Biros' executioners struggled for several minutes to find suitable veins, inserting needles repeatedly in both arms before completing the process on just his left arm. He winced once, and his attorney, John Parker, said he was concerned by all the needle sticks. But prison officials declared nothing amiss.
"There was no problem with anything in us carrying out the law of this state in this particular execution — none whatsoever," Ohio Prisons Director Terry Collins said. "The process worked as we said it would work."
After the chemical started flowing, Biros' chest heaved several times, and he moved his head twice over a span of about two minutes before he lay perfectly still.
Also:
All 36 death penalty states use lethal injection, and 35 rely on the three-drug method. Nebraska, which recently adopted injection over the electric chair, has proposed the three-drug method but hasn't yet adopted it.
Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia are among those that have said they will keep the three-drug method.
Sodium thiopental is a barbiturate often used to anesthetize surgical patients, induce medical comas or help desperately ill people commit suicide. It is also sometimes used to euthanize animals. It kills by suppressing breathing.
Ian Urbina writes, "New Execution Method Is Used in Ohio," for today's New York Times.
The new method, which involved a large dose of anesthetic, akin to how animals are euthanized, has been hailed by most experts as painless and an improvement over the three-drug cocktail used in all other states that employ lethal injection, but it is unlikely to settle the debate over the death penalty.
While praising the shift to a single drug, death penalty opponents argue that Ohio’s new method, and specifically its backup plan of using intramuscular injection if the authorities are unable to find a usable vein, has not been properly vetted by legal and medical experts. Since it had never been tried on humans before, they contend it is the equivalent of human experimentation.
But the United States Supreme Court refused to intervene on Tuesday morning, and the procedure went largely as planned.
The inmate, Kenneth Biros, 51, died at 11:47 a.m. Terry J. Collins, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said the drug took about 10 minutes to take effect, roughly the same length of time as the three-drug cocktail. It took about 30 minutes for the execution team to find a usable vein, after having inserted the needle several times into each arm.
The Columbus Dispatch carries, "Killer executed using single drug," by Alan Johnson.
In the last night and morning of his life, Kenneth Biros drank cup after cup of water, 12 in all, perhaps hoping to ensure that he was hydrated so that his executioners could more easily access his veins to kill him.
Whether the extra water had anything to do with it or not, Biros died quietly at 11:47 a.m. yesterday, about 10 minutes after a single, large dose of thiopental sodium, a powerful anesthetic, flowed into his left arm.
He is the first person in U.S. history to be put to death using a single drug.
Ohio prisons director Terry Collins said afterward that there were "no problems whatsoever" with Ohio's new one-drug method. "The process worked as expected."
And, this paragraph refers to Biros' attorney John Parker:
Parker said after witnessing the execution that he still has "major concerns" about the intravenous-access issue. He said he counted nine times that prison medical technicians tried before gaining access for a single IV line in Biros' left arm. They were unable to start a line in his right arm.
Parker and co-counsel Timothy Sweeney argued unsuccessfully in the courts that the execution should be stopped because it involved "experimentation" on human beings using untried and untested procedures.
Bill Rodgers writes, "State hails execution as success for one-drug injection," for the Warren Tribune Chronicle.
To Terry Collins of the State Department of Corrections, the execution of Kenneth Biros on Tuesday meant validation for a procedure that was a response to, but had never been used on, inmates who argued that Ohio's lethal injection procedure caused a severe amount of pain.
"I think we far exceeded what our critics were saying about us," Collins said.
Collins bristled when asked by reporters about technicians who appeared to be prepping Biros' right arm for an IV site. In a process that took more than a half-hour, prison technicians appeared to be performing work on both arms. They swabbed Biros' arm and attempted to stick a needle.
As they worked on both arms, Biros could be seen wincing seven times. The technicians abandoned his right arm and found a site on his left.
"I see no problem finding veins. It's not an unacceptable practice,'' Collins said. ''I see no problem with what my team did today.
''There was no difficulty whatsoever. They (the execution team) did exceptionally," Collins said when asked about Biros' right arm.
Biros' attorney, John Parker, told reporters he counted nine attempts from the technicians to establish a site in Biros' arm.
The new one-drug procedure was adopted after technicians could not find a suitable vein to execute inmate Rommell Broom in September. Those technicians attempted to find a vein in 18 separate sticks, allegedly painfully hitting muscle and bone.
Parker said he believed nine attempts were close to being unacceptable. He also stated that Biros should have had a site in either arm as a safeguard against one arm not working.
He maintains that the state's "plan B" execution method, a lethal dose of midazolam and hydromorphone, that was the state's answer to the Broom execution still was untested, and he said he was thankful it wasn't used on Biros.
"Plan B is a disaster," he said.
Parker did not go into details about that statement when pushed further.
Ohio Department of Corrections spokeswoman Julie Walburn told witness reporters after they had left the larger reporter pool prior to the 11 a.m. execution that the intramuscular injection could have side effects.
She said that experts with the Department said it was "possible while very unlikely" that one of the drugs could cause the inmate to throw up prior to death. This was unlikely as the other drug was anti-convulsive and anti-nausea, she said.
The department's consultants were in disagreement about whether that would occur with "plan B," she said. She claimed that the inmate in such an instance would experience no pain.
"Prison official: Single-drug protocol worked as expected, despite criticism," is the Youngstown Vindicator report by Marc Kovac.
Prison staff who volunteered to participate in the execution process were able to find one viable vein to hold an intravenous shunt, which was used to administer the lethal injection.
They worked for about 30 minutes, attempting to establish IV sites in both arms but eventually gave up on the right and focused on a vein in his left arm.
The state did not have to turn to its backup plan, which would have required a direct injection of two drugs directly into Biros’ muscle.
“I think we far exceeded what our critics have been saying about us,” said Terry Collins, the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction director, after Biros’ execution. He added, “The process worked as we expected, and we know that this process would work, did work and we’ll continue to use the process as we move forward in carrying out the law of the state of Ohio.”
But John Parker, one of Biros’ attorneys, said he remains concerned about the execution process after witnessing the inmate’s death.
Earlier coverage begins with this post.
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