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| FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction shows inmate Dennis McGuire. McGuire appeared to gasp several times and took an unusually long time to die — more than 20 minutes — in an execution carried out Thursday, Jan. 16, 2014, with a combination of drugs never before tried in the U.S. An attorney for McGuire's family said it plans to sue the state over what happened. |
COLUMBUS, Ohio
(AP) -- The long and restless execution of an Ohio inmate with an
untested combination of chemicals brought cries of cruel and unusual
punishment Friday and could further narrow the options for other states
that are casting about for new lethal injection drugs.
A
gasping, snorting Dennis McGuire took 26 minutes to die after the
chemicals began flowing Thursday - the longest execution of the 53
carried out in Ohio since capital punishment resumed 15 years ago,
according to an Associated Press analysis.
McGuire's
adult children complained it amounted to torture, with the convicted
killer's son, also named Dennis, saying: "Nobody deserves to go through
that."
Whether McGuire felt any pain was
unclear. But Ohio's experience could influence the decisions made in the
31 other lethal-injection states, many of which have been forced in the
past few years to rethink the drugs they use.
States
are in a bind for two main reasons: European companies have cut off
supplies of certain execution drugs because of death-penalty opposition
overseas. And states can't simply switch to other chemicals without
triggering legal challenges from defense attorneys.
"There's
only so many times you can say we're going to try a new method, or try
something different, where at this point it's just going to invite a lot
of skepticism," said Fordham University law professor and lethal
injection expert Deborah Denno.
She added: "There's a dead-end we've never seen before with lethal injection."
In
light of what happened in Ohio, "states will now have more of a burden
to show that they are using a well-thought-out best practice," said
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information
Center, which opposes capital punishment.
Ohio's
prison system is reviewing the execution and declined to comment on the
amount of time it took McGuire to die from the two-drug combination,
which had never been used before in a U.S. execution. McGuire, 53, was
given both a sedative and a painkiller.
Most
Ohio death row inmates over the past 15 years took 15 minutes or less to
die, records show. In years when Ohio used a three-drug combination,
many inmates died in less than 10 minutes, according to the records.
McGuire,
who was sentenced to die for raping and stabbing to death a pregnant
newlywed in 1989, appeared unconscious but gasped repeatedly as he lay
on a gurney, his stomach rising and falling and his mouth opening and
shutting.
States have been hit with a series
of setbacks as they attempt to refine lethal injection, with one problem
cropping up as soon as another appears solved.
To
end constitutional challenges over the possibility of an inmate
suffering undue pain from the widely used three-drug method, states
beginning with Ohio switched to single doses of a powerful sedative,
sodium thiopental. Even opponents agreed that wouldn't cause pain.
Then
sodium thiopental was put off limits when Illinois-based manufacturer
Hospira said it couldn't promise authorities in Italy, where the drug
was to be produced, that it wouldn't be used in executions.
The
next choice, pentobarbital, experienced a similar fate when its Danish
maker also prohibited its use in executions, and a U.S. company that
inherited the drug agreed to continue the restriction.
Missouri
at one point proposed using propofol, the powerful operating room
anesthetic infamous for its role in Michael Jackson's overdose death.
But
Missouri's governor backed off for fear the European Union, which
opposes the death penalty, would cut off exports to the U.S. and cause a
nationwide shortage of propofol.
Companies in India and Israel put similar prohibitions on their drugs.
As a result of all this, states will be under a lot of pressure to find new sources of pentobarbital, Dieter said.
One of those sources could be compounding pharmacies, which turn out custom-made batches of drugs.
But
concerns about compounding pharmacies arose in 2012 after contaminated
pain injections from a Massachusetts facility caused a meningitis
outbreak that killed 64 people.
There are a
number of painkillers, sedatives and paralyzing agents that can kill if
administered in high doses.
But switching to one of those could involve
long, drawn-out bureaucratic or legislative delays in some states.
And
any switch is all but certain to bring legal challenges over the drug's
effectiveness and the risk of pain in violation of the Constitution's
ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Jon Paul Rion, an attorney for McGuire's children, called his execution unquestionably cruel.
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.
