Inmate’s request to delay execution denied

COLUMBUS (AP) — A judge has denied an inmate’s request to delay his execution for strangling a neighbor while the inmate challenges Ohio’s lethal-injection process.

U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost on Wednesday turned down 43-year-old Lawrence Reynolds, who is trying to stop his March 9 execution.

Reynolds says the state hasn’t worked out problems with accessing inmates’ veins, and that a new backup method that injects lethal drugs into muscles is untried and could cause pain.

Frost says Reynolds’ argument is nearly identical to that made by death-row inmate Mark Brown earlier this year and rejected by Frost and a Cincinnati federal appeals court. Brown was executed Feb. 4.

Prosecutors say Reynolds strangled neighbor Loretta Foster in Cuyahoga Falls near Akron in 1994 for money to fuel his alcohol addiction.

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