Friday, February 20, 2015
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Supreme Court has set a 2017 execution date for a death row inmate accused of killing a prison cellmate with a paintbrush and padlock.
Condemned killer James Hanna was sentenced to die for the 1997 attack on 18-year-old cellmate Peter Copas at the Lebanon Correctional Institution.
The court on Thursday set a Jan. 12, 2017 date for Hanna’s execution, making him the 12th inmate scheduled to die once executions resume next year.
Records show the 63-year-old Hanna thrust a sharpened paintbrush into Copas’ eye and struck him in the head with a padlock wrapped in a sock on Aug. 22, 1997. Copas died of his injuries about three weeks later.
Executions are on hold until 2016 while the state tries to find supplies of lethal injection drugs.