Ohio plans on reinstating executions in January, ending an unofficial three-year moratorium that was blamed on shortages of the lethal drugs needed, a state attorney told a federal judge Monday.
Thomas Madden from the Ohio attorney general’s office said the state will use the drug midazolam, to put the inmate to sleep; rocuronium bromide, which will paralyze the inmate; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. He said the drugs are FDA approved and are not compounded.
The U.S. Supreme Court approved the use of such a combination in a ruling last year involving Oklahoma’s execution protocols.
There are roughly 25 inmates currently on death row, including Ronald Phillips, who was convicted of raping and killing his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter in 1993. The attorney general’s office spoke of plans to file a formal notice of the change later this week.
Attorneys representing death row inmates say they’ll file a new challenge almost immediately.
The last execution in Ohio was in January of 2014 when Dennis McGuire repeatedly gasped and snorted during a 26-minute procedure using a two-drug combo that had never been tried prior to the execution.
The state’s largest anti-death penalty group, Ohioans to Stop Executions, criticized the announcement, calling for the revising of recommendations from a state Supreme Court committee that has studied the death penalty before any executions take place.
Ohio, as well as other states, have struggled to find legal supplies of the necessary execution drugs.
Last year, Republican Gov. John Kasich ruled consideration of alternative methods such as the firing squad or hanging. In 2014, Kasich signed a bill into law shielding the names of companies that provide the state with lethal injection drugs, though opponents called it naive to think the bill could truly prevent the disclosure of the companies’ names.
