Prison log blames inmate’s drug use for vein problems delaying execution

LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) — A prison log blames a condemned Ohio inmate’s past drug use for problems finding a usable vein during an execution attempt that was stopped Tuesday after an unprecedented two hours.

The log of Tuesday’s scheduled execution of Romell Broom indicates that executioners made the observation at 3:11 p.m., more than an hour after first trying to find a vein.

“Medical team having problem maintaining an open vein due to past drug use,” said the log reviewed by The Associated Press.

Broom said at one point he was a heavy heroin user but then said at another time that he wasn’t, prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn said Wednesday.

Broom, 53, has been placed in a cell in the infirmary at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville where he is on close watch similar to the constant observation of death-row inmates in the three days before an execution.

“It was the right place to keep him,” Walburn said. “The less we can transport an offender, the better.”

Death-row inmates are housed in the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown and executed in the death chamber at Lucasville. There’s no precedent for housing an inmate whose execution didn’t work.

Gov. Ted Strickland on Tuesday issued a one-week reprieve to Broom, who spent more than two hours awaiting execution as technicians searched for a vein strong enough to deliver the three-drug lethal injection. The issue arose three years after Ohio revised its lethal injection protocol due to problems with another inmate’s IV.

No Ohio governor has issued a similar last-minute reprieve since the state resumed executions in 1999.

The night before his scheduled execution, Broom told his brother over the phone that he was ready to die.

“He is tired of being in prison and having people tell him what to do every day,” according to the prison log.

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.

A first attempt to execute Willie Francis in 1946 by electrocution in Louisiana did not work. He was returned to death row for nearly a year while the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether a second electrocution would be unconstitutional.

Dieter said he expects legal challenges will mean Broom will not face execution again in a week’s time.

“I think this is going to be challenged, whether under our standards of decency subjecting someone to multiple executions is cruel and unusual ... whether this is in effect experimenting on human beings, whether or not they’re sure what works in Ohio,” he said.

Broom was sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of 14-year-old Tryna Middleton after abducting her in Cleveland in September 1984 as she walked home from a Friday night football game with two friends.

Prisons director Terry Collins said the execution team eventually told him they didn’t believe Broom’s veins would hold if the execution reached the point when the lethal drugs would be administered.

Collins said he contacted the governor about 4 p.m. to let him know about the difficulties and request a reprieve.

A medical evaluation Monday had determined that veins in Broom’s right arm appeared accessible. Collins said that before Broom’s next scheduled execution, the team would try to determine how to resolve the problem encountered Tuesday.

About an hour into Tuesday’s execution effort, a lawyer for Broom, Tim Sweeney, sent an e-mail and fax to Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer asking him to end the procedure. Sweeney said continuing the effort would deny Broom his constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment and violate Ohio law that requires lethal injection to be quick and painless.

The team had started working on Broom, in a holding cell 17 steps from the execution chamber, about 2 p.m., four hours after his execution was originally scheduled. That initial delay was due to a final federal- appeals request.

The team tried to insert shunts through veins in Broom’s legs, causing him to appear to grimace. A member of the execution team patted him on the back.

Collins said the difficulty in the process “absolutely, positively” does not shake his faith in the state’s lethal-injection procedure.

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

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