The Ohio Supreme Court is about to decide whether its legal to try to execute a prisoner twice. Via Stephanie Mencimer: -Erika Executing people is harder than it sounds. Thats what Ohio discovered in 2009 when it tried to kill Romell Broom, a man who had been sentenced to death for abducting, raping, and killing a 14-year-old girl in Cleveland in 1984. Broom was scheduled to die by lethal injection, but when officials brought him to the death house, the execution team could not find a suitable vein to insert the IV that would deliver the lethal drug. Members of the team, none of whom were doctors, spent two and a half hours jabbing him with needles, to no avail. After an hour, corrections officials managed to bring in a prison doctor with no experience in executions to assist, but that didnt help either. After being stuck with needles 18 times, Broom was crying from the pain and emotional trauma. He insisted on seeing his lawyer, who was not allowed to enter the room with him. She eventually contacted state prosecutors, who alerted then-Governor Ted Strickland about the situation, and the governor halted the execution. The state tried to reschedule the execution for a week later, but Brooms lawyers succeeded in blocking it with an appeal over the central question: If someone survives an execution attempt, can a state legally try it again? Or does the process itself constitute such torture that it qualifies as unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment? Those arguments have been working their way through Ohios courts until this week, when the Ohio Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
Posted on: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 17:00:00 +0000
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