Federal court stops Ohio executions, ruled unconstitutional

Staff report

COLUMBUS

A federal court 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.

The death sentence of Trumbull County murderer Kenneth Biros was stayed at one point, and then-Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland found a different type of drug to use. Why can’t that happen now? Watkins asked.

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.

“I’m disappointed, but I’m sure it’s going to be appealed, and we’ll just let the appellate process work,” Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains said of the decision.

As to why Trumbull County has so many more death row inmates than Mahoning, Gains said: “Trumbull County has fewer homicides, but their homicides are usually more bizarre than ours.”

Death row for men is at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution. Death row for women is at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville.

There are 137 men and one woman on Ohio’s death row. Executions are performed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

Watkins earlier this week filed a request with the Ohio Supreme Court asking it to set an execution date for Adams, 50.

Adams killed Esther Cook, 43, and murdered and raped her daughter, 12, Ashley Cook, at their Dickey Avenue Northwest home in Warren on Oct. 11, 1999.

Adams, of Champion, and his girlfriend lived with Cook and her daughter earlier in 1999.

He was sentenced to death by Judge Peter Kontos of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, who presided over Adams’ trial, in 2001.

The Ohio Attorney General’s Office informed Watkins last week that Adams had exhausted all of his appeals in the state and federal courts, the most recent being a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Jan. 17.

“After more than 17 years since these victims were viciously murdered, it is time to see the law enforced,” Watkins said.

Adams also killed a woman from Hubbard two months before the Cook murders.

He is serving 15 years to life for strangling, raping and killing Roslyn Taylor, 40, of Poland Township on Aug. 6, 1999. Her body was found two days later in a partially burned car in Hubbard Township.

Death penalty opponents, however, praised the Merz decision.

“This ruling brings Ohio in line with recent developments from other states that have recognized that midazolam is not an appropriate drug for use in executions,” Megan McCracken of the Berkeley Law School Lethal Injection Project said. “It cannot induce general anesthesia or maintain unresponsiveness when painful stimuli are introduced, as they are in a three-drug lethal injection procedure. The risks of extraordinary pain and suffering with this protocol are unconstitutional, and this ruling correctly recognizes the problems with midazolam.”

JoEllen Smith, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said: “We are currently reviewing the judge’s order, and DRC remains committed to carrying out court-ordered executions in a lawful and humane manner.”

The ruling is the latest in a yearslong legal challenge over Ohio’s lethal injection protocols, after 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 October, state prison officials announced a new three-drug lethal injection protocol using midazolam, rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

But legal counsel for Phillips, Tibbetts and Otte challenged the constitutionality of the proposed three-drug lethal injection, arguing that the state’s new protocol amounted to a “reversion to a ‘more primitive, less humane execution method’” and created “a substantial risk of serious harm,” according to documents.

Merz agreed, noting in the ruling Thursday, “The court concludes that use of midazolam as the first drug in Ohio’s present three-drug protocol will create a ‘substantial risk of serious harm’ or an ‘objectively intolerable risk of harm.’”