"Ohio Execution Using Untested Drug Cocktail Renews the Debate Over Lethal Injections," is by Rick Lyman at the New York Times.
Dennis McGuire took 15 minutes to die by lethal injection Thursday morning at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville for the 1989 rape and murder of a 22-year-old pregnant woman named Joy Stewart.
Eyewitness accounts differ slightly on how much Mr. McGuire, 53, struggled and gasped in those final minutes. But because the execution took unusually long and because Ohio was using a new, untested cocktail of drugs in the procedure, the episode has reignited debate over lethal injection.
States have been scrambling in recent years to come up with a new formula for executions after their stockpiles were depleted or expired when European manufacturers of such previously used drugs as pentobarbital and sodium thiopental stopped selling them for use in executions. No consensus has formed on what available drugs should be used.
Mr. McGuire was given midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a powerful analgesic derived from morphine, just before 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, the first time that any state has used that combination. The drugs were selected by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction after the state’s supply of pentobarbital expired in 2009, said JoEllen Smith, the department’s spokeswoman. A federal court had approved their use, she said.
The Columbus Dispatch reports, "Family to file lawsuit after troubled execution." It's by Alan Johnson, who was a media witness of the execution. There is video at the link.
The family of Dennis McGuire will file a federal lawsuit against the state of Ohio over his troubled execution yesterday.
Amber and Dennis McGuire, the executed man’s children, scheduled a press conference this morning in Dayton to announce their intention to go to court. The suit will claim McGuire’s 8th Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution to avoid “cruel and unusual punishment” were violated when he gasped for air, choked and struggled against his restraints for about 10 minutes before being declared dead at 10:53 a.m.
“Shortly after the warden buttoned his jacket to signal the start of the execution, my dad began gasping and struggling to breathe,” Amber McGuire said in a statement. “I watched his stomach heave. I watched him try to sit up against the straps on the gurney. I watched him repeatedly clench his fist. It appeared to me he was fighting for his life but suffocating.”
McGuire’s children were witnesses at his lethal injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Dayton.
"Dennis McGuire's Daughter Says Dad's Execution Was 'Torture'," is the latest AP report filed by Andrew Welsh-Huggins and Kantele Franko. It's via Huffington Post.
An Ohio inmate put to death for murder was tortured by his unusually slow execution, the man's daughter said Friday as she announced plans to file a lawsuit over her father's death.
Dennis McGuire's daughter, Amber, referred to the "agony and terror" of watching her father as he appeared to gasp in his final moments Thursday — using the same words the condemned man's attorneys used in trying to stop his execution using a previously untried method of lethal injection.
"It was the most awful moment in my life to witness my dad's execution," she said in a statement ahead of the news conference. "I can't think of any other way to describe it than torture."
The execution violated Dennis McGuire's constitutional right not to be treated or punished in a cruel or unusual way, said defense attorney Jon Paul Rion, representing McGuire's adult children.
McGuire's attorney Allen Bohnert called the convicted killer's death "a failed, agonizing experiment" and added: "The people of the state of Ohio should be appalled at what was done here today in their names."
It's almost certain lawyers will use McGuire's execution to challenge Ohio's plans to put a condemned Cleveland-area killer to death in March.
An AP report filed earlier this morning is, "Death Of Dennis McGuire Draws Obstacles For Ohio Executions," by Welsh-Huggins. It's also via HuffPost.
Ohio's capital punishment system likely faces new challenges following an unusually long execution in which the condemned man appeared to gasp several times.
Family members of death row inmate Dennis McGuire planned a Friday news conference to announce a lawsuit over McGuire's death, which they are calling unconstitutional. And it's almost certain lawyers will use McGuire's Thursday execution to challenge Ohio's plans to put a condemned Cleveland-area killer to death next month.
"All citizens have a right to expect that they will not be treated or punished in a cruel and unusual way," defense attorney Jon Paul Rion, representing McGuire's adult children, said Thursday. "Today's actions violated that constitutional expectation."
"Ohio killer's slow execution raises controversy," is by Gary Strauss at USA Today.
The problems surfacing with McGuire's death, as well as last week's execution in Oklahoma of death row inmate Michael Lee Wilson -- who complained that he was "burning" after receiving a lethal mix of drugs including pentobarbital -- could spur many of the nation's 32 death penalty states to re-examine how they condemn convicted killers.
"What's happening is shocking. We're seeing the underside of the death penalty: irresponsible behavior by states and the realization that there's not a good way to kill people,'' says Diann Rust-Tierney, director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "This case and others are going to increase and galvanize those who oppose capital punishment and cause the public and policymakers to say. 'What are we doing?'"
"Ohio executes inmate using untried, untested lethal injection method," by Ed Pilkington in the Guardian.
Ohio’s recourse to the midazolam-hydromorphone combination was forced by a shortage of pentobarbital, a drug originally manufactured in Denmark, which has been subjected to strict export licences that prevent sale to US departments of correction. A European-wide boycott, designed to ensure that medical drugs are not used to kill people, has begun to bite across the 32 states that still have the death penalty on their books.
Ohio ran out of pentobarbital in September.
The adoption of midazolam as an alternative drug - not only in Ohio, but also in Florida, one of the most active death penalty states – has led to expressions of anger and disgust by leading physicians in the US. Joel Zivot, the medical director of the cardio-thoracic and vascular intensive care unit at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta and an opponent of the use of anesthetics in lethal injections, called the use of midazolam in executions “appalling and unethical”, and said, “The public should be concerned that [the] medicines that are used to help them are being diverted instead to kill people.”
"Inmate execution called 'agonizing experiment'," by Marc Kovac in the Youngstown Vindicator.
McGuire, 53, made loud snorting noises during one of the longest executions since Ohio resumed capital punishment in 1999. Nearly 25 minutes passed between the time the lethal drugs began flowing and McGuire was pronounced dead at 10:53 a.m.
State prison officials declined to comment on the execution Thursday afternoon, saying only that they were conducting their usual “after-action review” of the process.
Earlier coverage of the botched execution of Dennis McGuire begins at the link.
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