There will be no lethal injection in the state of Ohio for now.
A Federal judge rejected Ohio's new legal injection process last Thursday. According to a report published in Reuters, Magistrate Judge Michael Merz declared the process problematic thus further delaying three upcoming executions. His decision was based on the premise that the court needed more time to determine the constitutionality of the process.
With the ruling, the state is also banned from using rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride in the process. Lethal injection in Ohio, which has been stopped since 2014, uses three drugs for execution: midazolam, rocuronium bromide, which paralyzes the individual; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.
Executions have been put on hold since January 2014. Back then, Ohio used a two-drug method starting with midazolam. The last to be executed was Dennis McGuire who gasped and snorted for 26 minutes before dying. It was the longest execution since the resumption of executing prisoners in the state in 1999.
As a result of the decision, the execution of Ronald Philips next month will be delayed. According to a report that appeared in BBC, the judge sided with Philips and two other inmates waiting execution that using the sedative midazolam would not be constitutional based on US Surpeme Court standards. Philips would have been the first inmate to die by lethal injection in the Midwestern state after three years.
Death row inmates claimed that midazolam does not in any way induce the deep state of unconsciousness required to shield a prisoner from the pain of the next two drugs. Midazolam was also adjudged as problematic in a 2014 execution in Arizona. However, in 2015 the US Supreme Court upheld the use or midazolam in an Oklahoma case.
The lawyers of the inmates and critics of capital punishment praised the ruling saying that in other states, midazolam is no longer used for execution. According to the website of NBC News, Ohio, just like other states, have not been able to find alternative chemicals for execution because pharmaceutical companies have stopped selling them to prisons for lethal injection.
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