Kasich again postpones eight scheduled executions

COLUMBUS — Gov. John Kasich has postponed eight scheduled executions as the state continues to work through legal challenges and attempt to locate supplies of the drugs it uses to put inmates to death.

The move Friday came a couple of weeks after a federal magistrate judge blocked three executions that were scheduled through April, ruling that the new lethal injection process adopted by the state was unconstitutional.

Ronald Phillips, who was convicted in the brutal rape and murder of an Akron girl in 1993, was scheduled to be executed next week. He’s now scheduled for execution on May 10.

Gary Otte, who faced a March 15 execution date in the killing of two people in Cuyahoga County in 1992, has been moved to June 13.

And Raymond Tibbetts, facing an April 12 execution for the murder of his wife an an elderly man in Hamilton County in1997, was pushed back to July 26.

The postponements continue a years-long legal challenge over Ohio’s lethal injection protocols, following the execution of Dennis McGuire in January 2014.

McGuire, who received a capital sentence for the rape and murder of a pregnant Preble County woman, gasped for breath during what witnesses described as a prolonged procedure under the state’s two-drug execution method.

In early 2015, state prison officials abandoned that combination, switching to two different drugs, though that protocol has not been used.