Ohio Sets 7 Execution Dates

February 9, 2011 at 12:07 PM

Ohio (aka Texas north) has just set 7 new execution dates – meaning there is now an execution in the state scheduled each and every month between February and October.  Ohio officials are claiming that the change to a new execution drug, announced just two weeks ago, had nothing to do with this sudden splurge in execution dates. 

Also having nothing to do with it are the beliefs of the Ohio Supreme Court judge who was an architect of Ohio’s death penalty law, the former director of Ohio’s prisons who personally witnessed 33 executions, and Ohio’s Catholic bishops, all of whom have called for Ohio to stop executions and get rid of the death penalty.

The wishes of the company that makes the drug Ohio intends to use for all these new executions are also apparently irrelevant.  Ohio is turning to pentobarbital because sodium thiopental is no longer available from an FDA approved manufacturer, but Denmark-based Lundbeck, the only manufacturer of an injectable form of pentobarbital, has demanded that its product NOT be used for the killing of prisoners, stating bluntly:

“Lundbeck is dedicated to saving people’s lives. Use of our products to end lives contradicts everything we’re in business to do.”

The setting of 7 new death dates indicates that, so far, nothing has been able to halt the bureaucratic and/or political momentum driving prisoners into Ohio’s execution chamber.

But the chorus of voices opposing executions in Ohio is growing.

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6 thoughts on “Ohio Sets 7 Execution Dates”

  5. The death penalty is the greatest human shame of the XXI century and the ultimate decadence expression in democratic societies.
    While the system is living completely unpunished both the judges who have made serious mistakes and the large criminal court international.
    U.S. can not be considered a strong and influential power, as long as remains a judicial system based on the rule of law which allows kill a human being.
    Although I am not a family member of this condemned man, as a democratic state citizen, I have the painful feeling that those who hold powers, whatever they are (judicial, economic or political) are out of reach of any punishment.
    Despite the International Criminal Court (ICC) created in 1998 for judging major war criminals such Milosevic, Charles Taylor, and Pinochet. Including this lately Sudan’s President “Omar Bashir” the murderers and ruthless officials in Kenya…
    I wonder why the U.S. and France are considering the possibility to stop legal action against those who have killed hundreds of people while a citizen who committed a crime is waiting for his conviction in the death row.
    Alluding to those who make the laws and power, I dedicate them this famous phrase: “Never a smaller number of individuals have done so much damage to an entire society. On the God’s laws there are not social classes for the dead, but it seems that there has always been a large discrimination in our dehumanized world. And I wonder just even when are we prepared to take the consequences of this foul play.

  6. The death penalty is the greatest human shame of the XXI century and the ultimate decadence expression in democratic societies.
    While the system is living completely unpunished both the judges who have made serious mistakes and the large criminal court international.
    U.S. can not be considered a strong and influential power, as long as remains a judicial system based on the rule of law which allows kill a human being.
    Although I am not a family member of this condemned man, as a democratic state citizen, I have the painful feeling that those who hold powers, whatever they are (judicial, economic or political) are out of reach of any punishment.
    Despite the International Criminal Court (ICC) created in 1998 for judging major war criminals such Milosevic, Charles Taylor, and Pinochet. Including this lately Sudan’s President “Omar Bashir” the murderers and ruthless officials in Kenya…
    I wonder why the U.S. and France are considering the possibility to stop legal action against those who have killed hundreds of people while a citizen who committed a crime is waiting for his conviction in the death row.
    Alluding to those who make the laws and power, I dedicate them this famous phrase: “Never a smaller number of individuals have done so much damage to an entire society. On the God’s laws there are not social classes for the dead, but it seems that there has always been a large discrimination in our dehumanized world. And I wonder just even when are we prepared to take the consequences of this foul play.

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