Ohio to resume executions in January after 3-year pause
US News
Ohio to resume executions in January after 3-year pause
The state of Ohio plans to resume the execution of condemned inmates in January, ending a three-year pause in carrying out death sentences, under a new lethal-injection protocol designed to meet U.S. Supreme Court approval, prison officials said on Monday. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said it will execute Ronald Phillips, convicted and sentenced to death for the 1993 rape and murder of a 3-year-old girl. He would be the first Ohio inmate put to death since January 2014, when condemned inmate Dennis McGuire gasped and snorted during a 26-minute procedure that relied on the use of midazolam.
Following the McGuire execution debacle, they very deliberately and specifically refused to use midazolam any longer for an execution.
Allen Bohnert, a federal public defender representing death row inmates in Ohio
The Columbus Dispatch reported Monday that state prison officials intend to use midazolam, rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride to carry out executions, the same drug combination used between 1999 and 2009. Ohio, one of 31 U.S. states with capital punishment, instituted a death penalty moratorium in 2015 due to difficulty in obtaining the drugs needed to perform lethal injections. The correction department said it has presented a federal judge with a revised execution protocol that includes a three-drug combination specifically upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court last year as permissible for executions.
