High court rejects Ohio killer’s late plea

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

AP Legal Affairs Writer

COLUMBUS

The state made preparations Wednesday to use a never-tried lethal drug combination to put a man to death for the slaying of a pregnant woman that went unsolved until he inadvertently helped authorities, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the execution.

Dennis McGuire, jailed on an unrelated assault charge, told investigators he had information about the woman’s Feb. 12, 1989, death. His attempts to blame the crime on his brother-in-law quickly unraveled, and soon he was accused of being Joy Stewart’s killer, prosecutors said. More than a decade later, DNA evidence confirmed McGuire’s guilt, and he acknowledged that he was responsible in a letter to Gov. John Kasich last month.

The state planned to execute McGuire today with a new process adopted after supplies of its previous drug dried up when the manufacturer put it off limits for capital punishment. The two-drug combination has never been used in a U.S. execution.

The state opposed McGuire’s last-minute appeal, in which he claimed a jury never heard the full extent of his chaotic and abusive childhood.

“One can scarcely conceive of a sequence of crimes more shocking to the conscience or to moral sensibilities than the senseless kidnapping and rape of a young, pregnant woman followed by her murder,” Preble County prosecutors said in a filing with the state parole board last month.

McGuire, 53, was moved from death row in Chillicothe on Wednesday morning to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, where executions are carried out. He was calm and cooperative and requested a last meal that included roast beef and fried chicken, prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said. He planned late afternoon visits with his son, daughter and other family members.

His attorneys argue he was mentally, physically and sexually abused as a child and has impaired brain function that makes him prone to act impulsively.

The U.S. Supreme Court gave no explanation in rejecting McGuire’s appeal and denying a stay of execution. Ohio officials planned to use intravenous doses of two drugs, the sedative midazolam and the painkiller hydromorphone, to put McGuire to death.