Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire appeared to gasp and convulse for roughly 10 minutes before he died Thursday by lethal injection using a new combination of drugs, reporters who witnessed it said.
McGuire was convicted in
1994 of the rape and murder of 22-year-old Joy Stewart, who was seven
months pregnant. Her relatives were at Southern Ohio Correctional
Facility in Lucasville to witness his death, according to tweets from television reporter Sheila Gray.
McGuire's "children and daughter-in-law were crying and visibly upset," Gray tweeted.
She said McGuire, before the drugs took effect, thanked Stewart's family for a letter he apparently received.
"To my children, I'm
sorry. I love you. I'm going to heaven and I'll see you there when you
come," McGuire reportedly said
Columbus Dispatch
reporter Alan Johnson said that the whole execution process took 24
minutes, and that McGuire appeared to be gasping for air for 10 to 13
minutes.
"He gasped deeply. It was
kind of a rattling, guttural sound. There was kind of a snorting
through his nose. A couple of times, he definitely appeared to be
choking," WDTN quoted Johnson as saying.
The convicted murderer was pronounced dead at 10:53 a.m. ET.
The execution generated
controversy because, like many states, Ohio has been forced to find new
drug protocols after European-based manufacturers banned U.S. prisons
from using their drugs in executions -- among them, Danish-based
Lundbeck, which manufactures pentobarbital.
According to Ohio's
corrections department, the state used a combination of the drugs
midazolam, a sedative; and the painkiller hydromorphone.
Both the length of time
it took for McGuire to die and his gasping are not typical for an
execution, said Howard Nearman, an anesthesiologist at University
Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland.
"Why it took 24 minutes,
I really can't tell you," he said. "It just makes you wonder -- what
was given? What was the timing, and what were the doses?"
In an opinion piece
written for CNN this week, a law professor noted that McGuire's
attorneys argued he would "suffocate to death in agony and terror."
Speaking on behalf of
McGuire's legal team, attorney Allen Bohnert called on the governor to
impose a moratorium on future executions because of what took place
Thursday.
"At this point, it is
entirely premature to consider this execution protocol to be anything
other than a failed, agonizing experiment," he said in a statement.
"The people of the State
of Ohio should be appalled at what was done here today in all of our
names. Ohio, like its citizens, must follow the law. The state has
failed."
CNN's Sonny Hostin said
that McGuire's execution will likely spark debate over whether how
inmates react to the use of the drugs constitutes cruel and unusual
punishment prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.
"Whenever there's a
change in the lethal injection process clearly it's subject to legal
proceedings and perhaps we will see those," Hostin said.
Ohio ran out of
pentobarbital, which is a narcotic and sedative barbiturate, in
September, according to JoEllen Smith, spokeswoman for the Ohio
Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
In response to that shortage, the department amended its execution policy to allow for the use of midazolam and hydromorphone.
Stewart's body was
discovered by hikers near a creek in southwestern Ohio in February of
1989. Her throat was cut and she had been sodomized.
There are currently 138 men and one woman on death row in Ohio.
The state was set to
execute death row inmate Ron Phillips using the new drug combination
last year, but Gov. John Kasich granted the convicted killer a stay of
execution pending a review of a possible organ donation to his family
members.
CULLED FROM CNN
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