COLUMBUS, Ohio — Executions for eight Ohio inmates have been rescheduled following a federal court decision barring the state’s lethal injection protocol and staying the next three executions.
The revised schedule released Friday by Gov. John Kasich sets the next execution for May 10 instead of Wednesday. The delays are needed, according to a Kasich administration press release, to allow the judicial process to come to a full resolution.
On Jan. 26, a federal magistrate judge found the state’s three-drug injection cocktail to be unconstitutional and stayed the next three executions. The state appealed the decision.
The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals is not expected to issue its ruling before Wednesday, when Akron killer Ronald Phillips was to be put to death.
Phillips is now scheduled to die May 10.
Other execution dates scheduled Friday:
- Gary Otte of Cuyahoga County, from March 15 to June, 13.
- Raymond Tibbetts of Hamilton County, from April 12 to July 26.
- Alva Campbell, Jr. of Franklin County, from May 10 to Sept. 13.
- William Montgomery of Lucas County, from June 13 to Oct. 18.
- Robert Van Hook of Hamilton County, from July 26 to Nov. 15.
- Jeffrey A. Wogenstahl of Hamilton County, from Sept. 13 to April 17, 2019.
- Melvin Bonnell of Cuyahoga County, from Oct. 18 to April 11, 2018.
Ohio hasn’t executed anyone since January 2014, when killer Dennis McGuire took 25 minutes to die after receiving a new combination of execution drugs. Witnesses said he appeared to gasp several times during his execution and made loud snorting or snoring sounds.
McGuire was administered a cocktail that included midazolam.
Death row inmates sued the state, and executions were put on hold until the state picked a new lethal-injection drug combination of midazolam, rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride last October.
“The Court concludes that use of midazolam as the first drug in Ohio’s present three-drug protocol will create a ‘substantial risk of serious harm’ or an ‘objectively intolerable risk of harm’ as required by (Supreme Court precedent),” Magistrate Judge Michael Merz of Dayton wrote in the January opinion.
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