Federal court blocks Ohio executions, ruling method unconstitutional

Staff report

COLUMBUS

A federal court on Thursday blocked three executions scheduled through April, determining the new lethal injection process adopted by Ohio was unconstitutional.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael R. Merz barred the state from executing Ronald Phillips, Raymond Tibbetts and Gary Otte using the three-drug protocol it announced late last year or “any lethal injection method which employs either a paralytic agent or potassium chloride.”

Phillips, convicted in the brutal rape and murder of an Akron girl in 1993, was scheduled to be executed Feb. 15.

Otte, who killed two people in Cuyahoga County in 1992, had a March 15 execution date.

And Tibbetts, who murdered his wife and an elderly man in 1997, was scheduled for execution April 12.

Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said he hopes the Ohio Attorney General’s Office will appeal the Merz decision or find an alternative method for carrying out executions.

“It makes no sense that Georgia and Texas are carrying out executions and we can’t,” Watkins said. “I’m perplexed. Florida and Georgia are getting the drugs.”

He said if using a drug or drug combination is causing the problem, then switch to the electric chair or firing squad.

Trumbull County has eight inmates on death row, according to Vindicator files — Stanley Adams, Sean Carter, Danny Lee Hill, Nathaniel Jackson, Charles Lorraine, Donna Roberts, Andre Williams and David Martin.

Mahoning County’s death row inmates are: Scott A. Group, Warren Spivey and Willie G. Wilks Jr. The death penalty trial of Robert Seman is pending in the March 30, 2015, deaths of Corinne Gump, 10, and her grandparents, William and Judith Schmidt, during an arson at their Powers Way home.

There are 137 men and one woman – Roberts – on Ohio’s death row.

Read more about the situation in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.