"Condemned Ohio killer seeks lethal drug challenge," is by Andrew Welsh-Huggins, the Ohio-based AP Legal Affairs Writer. It's via the San Francisco Chronicle.
The state's new lethal injection drug policy could cause condemned inmates "tremendous" pain and discomfort by allowing the use of a non-federally regulated form of Ohio's execution drug, according to a court filing by an inmate facing execution next month for raping and killing a 3-year-old girl.
The state's policy adopted earlier this month also breaks previous agreements with a federal judge that puts all decisions about executions in the hands of the prison directors or wardens, by allowing the designation of other individuals to do those jobs instead, the filing said.
The documents filed in federal court in Columbus late Friday also ask Judge Gregory Frost to allow whatever specialty pharmacy chosen to make the drug doses to be included in the ongoing lawsuit over executions in Ohio.
There is no procedure under which the state can guarantee the drugs the state intends to use "will not cause tremendous pain and discomfort," according to the filing by lawyers for death row inmate Ronald Phillips and several others involved in the long-running court battle.
Phillips, 40, is scheduled to die Nov. 14 for the death of his girlfriend's daughter, Sheila Marie Evans, in Akron in 1993 after a long period of sexual assaults on the girl. He is awaiting Gov. John Kasich's decision whether to spare him on the grounds he suffered sexual, physical and verbal abuse as a child. The Ohio Parole Board unanimously recommended against mercy last week.
Earlier coverage of Ohio lethal injection issues begins at the link.
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