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| FILE-In this undated file photo provided by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction shows Dennis McGuire. A condemned Ohio killer facing a never-tried lethal injection method has arrived at the state death house a day ahead of his scheduled execution. The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction plans to use a combination of a sedative and a painkiller to put McGuire to death for the 1989 rape and fatal stabbing of Joy Stewart in Preble County in western Ohio. |
LUCASVILLE, Ohio
(AP) -- An attorney for the family of a killer whose Ohio execution
by lethal injection was marked by several minutes of unprecedented
gasping and unusual sounds plans to sue the state over what happened.
Dayton
defense lawyer John Paul Rion says Dennis McGuire's family is deeply
disturbed by his execution and believes it violated his constitutional
rights.
Rion is a member of a state Supreme
Court panel examining possible changes to Ohio's death penalty law.
He
said Thursday all citizens have a right to expect they won't be punished
in a cruel and unusual fashion.
McGuire was
executed Thursday for raping and killing a pregnant woman in 1989. He
took nearly 25 minutes to die, an unusually long time based on prior
executions.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
A
condemned man appeared to gasp several times and took an unusually long
time to die - more than 20 minutes - in an execution carried out
Thursday with a combination of drugs never before tried in the U.S.
Dennis
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."
McGuire's
lawyers had attempted last week to block his execution, arguing that
the untried method could
lead to a medical phenomenon known as "air
hunger" and cause him to suffer "agony and terror" while struggling to
catch his breath.
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.
Executions under the old method were typically much shorter and did not cause the kind of sounds McGuire made.
Ohio prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith had no comment on how the execution went but said a review will be conducted as usual.
Prison
officials gave intravenous doses of two drugs, the sedative midazolam
and the painkiller hydromorphone, to put McGuire to death for the 1989
rape and fatal stabbing of a pregnant newlywed, Joy Stewart.
The
method was adopted after supplies of a previously used drug dried up
because the manufacturer declared it off limits for capital punishment.
The
execution is certain to launch a new round of federal lawsuits over
Ohio's injection procedure. The state has five more executions scheduled
this year, with the next one to come on Feb. 19.
What
was particularly unusual Thursday was the five minutes or so that
McGuire lay motionless on the gurney after the drugs began flowing,
followed by a sudden snort and then more than 10 minutes of irregular
breathing and gasping. Normally, movement comes at the beginning and is
followed by inactivity.
"Oh, my God," his daughter, Amber McGuire, said as she watched her father's final moments.
In
pressing for the execution to go ahead, Assistant Ohio Attorney General
Thomas Madden had argued that while the U.S. Constitution bans cruel
and unusual punishment, "you're not entitled to a pain-free execution."
U.S.
District Judge Gregory Frost sided with the state. But at the request
of McGuire's lawyers, he ordered officials to photograph and preserve
the drug vials, packaging and syringes.
The
selection of drugs for use in executions in the U.S. involves more than
just considerations of effectiveness. It is complicated by the politics
of the death penalty, questions of medical ethics and the constitutional
protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
In
Ohio's case, the state in recent years used pentobarbital - a form of
which is used to put down cats and dogs. But the state's supply ran out
after the manufacturer refused to allow its use in executions.
Some
executions with pentobarbital ran into problems, but they involved
difficulties inserting the needle, not trouble with the effectiveness of
the drug itself.
A few minutes before McGuire
was put to death, Ohio prison director Gary Mohr said he believed the
state's planning would produce "a humane, dignified execution"
consistent with the law.
Strapped to a gurney
in the death chamber, McGuire thanked Stewart's family members, who
witnessed the execution, for their "kind words" in a letter he
apparently received from them.
"I'm going to heaven. I'll see you there when you come," he said.
Stewart's
slaying went unsolved for 10 months until McGuire, jailed on an
unrelated assault and hoping to improve his legal situation, told
investigators he had information about the death. His attempts to pin
the crime on his brother-in-law quickly unraveled, and he was accused of
the killing.
More than a decade later, DNA
evidence confirmed McGuire's guilt, and he acknowledged his
responsibility in a letter to Gov. John Kasich last month.
The
death row inmate's lawyers argued McGuire was mentally, physically and
sexually abused as a child and had impaired brain function that made him
prone to act impulsively.
"We have forgiven
him, but that does not negate the need for him to pay for his actions,"
Stewart's family said in a statement after the execution.
