Ohio – The Ohio Supreme Court authorized on Wednesday the execution of a convict after officials failed to execute him in 2009. Romell Broom was sentenced to death because he abused and murdered a 14-year-old girl in 1984.
Officials at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville tried several times to introduce the IV to deliver lethal drugs, but the injection never entered Broom’s system. The execution team failed to establish the IV lines and the attempt to execute the convict was halted, as Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger wrote in an opinion, the Washington Post reported.
In 2014, the Ohio Supreme Court accepted to hear arguments about Broom’s appeal. His attorneys said that a second attempted execution would clearly be a double punishment for the same crime, but prosecutors argued that the first execution attempt never happened because officials were unable to insert the IV.
Justice William M. O’ Neil expressed in two written dissents his concern about the trauma caused to Broom by state employees who for two hours tried to find a usable vein during his scheduled lethal injection on Sept. 15, 2009. According to the report by the Times, witnesses said that Broom repeatedly grimaced in pain as the prison officials authorities made at least 10 attempts to introduce the IV.
“I believe as a moral and constitutional matter that subjecting Broom to a second execution attempt after even one extremely painful and unsuccessful attempt is precisely the sort of ‘lingering death’ that the United States Supreme Court recognized as cruel within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment 125 years ago,” O’Neill said.
Not the first failed execution attempt
Broom’s failed execution attempt occurred after two other troubled executions in Ohio. One happened in 2006 and another took place in 2007. Both were delayed because state employees were unable to insert the IV.
A similar case occurred in a botched execution in Oklahoma in 2014. Convicted murderer Clayton Lockett grimaced and writhed on the gurney during his lethal injection, which was delayed because the technician had problems inserting the IV. Officials realized Lockett’s vein had collapsed after his physical reaction. They noted that the drugs seemingly got absorbed into the convict’s tissue.
His execution was halted, but he suffered a heart attack a short time later and died.
Source: Washington Post