The Ohio Department of Corrections Thursday said it would change its protocol for capital punishment to eliminate a controversial two-drug cocktail it used for lethal injection and add a previously used drug to its options.
The decision by state corrections Director Gary Mohr means that the execution of Ronald Phillips scheduled for Feb. 11 will be postponed, said JoEllen Smith, communications chief for the Department of Corrections. Others may also be delayed, too.
That will allow the state time to accumulate a supply of thiopental sodium, a drug previously used for lethal injections from 1999 to 2011. As part of the change the state will remove the two-drug combination of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a narcotic painkiller from use in lethal injections. That combination was used one time in 2014 — the execution last January of Dennis McGuire.
McGuire’s family filed a federal lawsuit after he was seen gasping, choking and clenching his fists while taking an unexpectedly long 25 minutes to die from the never-before-tried drug cocktail.
A state review concluded that McGuire suffered no pain during his execution, but officials said then they would increase the dosage of the drugs for future executions.
In May, U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost halted all Ohio executions in the wake the McGuire case. In August he extended that moratorium to this month to allow the state to study new execution protocols.
Four scheduled executions were delayed. One of those was for Phillips for the 1993 rape and killing of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter, Sheila Marie Evans in Summit County.
Ohio had adopted the two-drug cocktail because it had trouble finding supplies of pentobarbital.
In December, Gov. John Kasich signed a bill that provided protection to any companies that prepared the drug for the state in hopes it would make it easier for the state to find compounded supplies of the drug.
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