Governor delays Ohio execution because of difficulty with veins

LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) — After his lethal injection was delayed for hours because of his own attorney’s appeal request, an Ohio inmate condemned for the 1984 rape and slaying of a teen girl tried to help hasten his own death as his executioners had trouble finding usable veins.

Romell Broom, 53, turned onto his side, slid rubber tubing up his left arm and moved the arm up and down while flexing and opening his fingers. The execution team accessed a vein, but it collapsed when technicians tried to insert saline fluid, bringing Broom to tears.

Prisons director Terry Collins decided after a two-hour effort using Brooms’ arms and legs that the team had had enough. He contacted Gov. Ted Strickand, who issued the state’s first last-minute reprieve since Ohio resumed executions in 1999.

Problems also delayed executions in Ohio in 2006 and 2007 and led to changes in Ohio’s lethal injection process. In 2006, the execution of Joseph Clark was delayed for more than an hour after the team failed to properly attach an IV. Since then, the state’s execution rules have allowed team members to take as much time as they need to find the best vein for the IVs that carry three chemicals.

Richard Dieter, director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said he knows of only one inmate who was subjected to more than one execution attempt. A first attempt to execute Willie Francis by electrocution in Louisiana did not work, and he was returned to death row for nearly a year while the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether a second electrocution would be unconstitutional.

The problems prompted the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio to ask state officials to immediately halt executions.

In addition to the delayed execution of Clark in 2006, the state also had difficulty finding the veins of inmate Christopher Newton, whose May 2007 execution was delayed nearly two hours. In that case, the state said the delay was caused by team members.

Ohio has executed 32 men since Wilford Berry in 1999, an execution slightly delayed also because of problems finding a vein.