New Ohio Gov puts halt to all executions until Ohio develops new execution method

As reported in this local article, headlined "Gov. Mike DeWine freezes all Ohio executions while new method developed," the Buckeye state is yet again in a capital holding pattern because it governor is troubled by the state's current execution method. Here are the details:

Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday that there will be no more executions in Ohio until a new method of carrying them out can be developed and deemed constitutional by the courts.

“As long as the status quo remains, where we don’t have a protocol that has been found to be OK, we certainly cannot have any executions in Ohio,” DeWine told reporters at an Associated Press forum in Columbus. “That would not be right, at least in my opinion.”

Pressed on whether he personally supports the death penalty, DeWine paused. Seeming to choose his words carefully, he then said he was a sponsor of Ohio’s current capital punishment law, which took effect in 1981. “It is the law of the state of Ohio. And I’ll let it go [not comment further] at this point. We are seeing clearly some challenges that you have all reported on in regard to carrying out the death penalty. But I’m not going to go further down that path any more today,” he said.

DeWine, a Republican, ordered a review of Ohio’s death penalty protocols last month after a federal magistrate judge wrote that Ohio’s method of carrying out executions would subject a condemned Ohio prisoner to “severe pain and needless suffering.” Judge Michael Merz wrote Ohio could proceed with the execution, since the inmate, Warren Henness, did not produce an alternative that is ”available,” “feasible,” and can be “readily implemented,” required under a 2015 United States Supreme Court ruling that upheld lethal injection.

DeWine delayed Henness’ execution from Feb. 13 to Sept. 12 while the review was underway. But on Tuesday, he declined to place a timetable on how long it might take for a new execution method to be developed, for it to be legally challenged and then found constitutional by the courts. “I’ve dealt with the court system a long time, and I think it’s whenever you think you can figure out how fast or slow something’s going to take, you’re wrong,” he said....

Ohio’s method of execution is to inject the condemned with a combination of three drugs: midazolam (as a sedative), a paralytic drug, and potassium chloride to stop their heart. Death penalty opponents have challenged similar methods in other states, saying they are unconstitutional because they cause cruel and unusual punishment.

In his January opinion, Mertz, the federal magistrate judge, agreed with arguments made by Henness’s lawyers, writing that “it is certain or very likely” that the state’s prescribed dose of midazolam “cannot reduce consciousness to the level at which a condemned inmate will not experience the severe pain associated with injection of the paralytic drug or potassium chloride” or the “severe pain and needless suffering that is certain or very likely to be caused by the pulmonary edema which is very likely to be caused directly by the midazolam.”

DeWine’s review marks the second time in five years Ohio has searched for a new method of execution. The state changed the drugs it uses for lethal injection after the January 2014 execution of Dennis B. McGuire took more than 25 minutes.

Ohio had some two dozen execution dates scheduled over the next four years, but I think they are all now functionally on hold pending development of a new execution method. And, reading between the lines, I get the sense that Governor DeWine would be just fine if the state official did not try all that hard to devise a new execution method anytime soon.

A few (of many) prior recent related posts:

• Ohio's new governor delays first scheduled execution under his watch based on concerns about lethal-injection drugs
• Highlighting, though Ohio's remarkable recent experience, a possible tipping point on midazolam as a lethal injection drug 
• "Behind the Curtain: Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States"
• Ohio completes its first execution since botched execution of another inmate late last year
• Ohio unable to complete execution for elderly murderer once called death penalty “poster child”
• Reviewing Ohio's unique execution difficulties ... which perhaps explains seemingly ho-hum reaction to latest botched Ohio execution