Tag Archives: Terry Collins

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.

Ohio at Death Penalty Crossroads

January 27, 2011 at 1:51 PM

(c) Scott Langley

As the pace of executions has accelerated in Ohio (it was second only to Texas is executions last year), the Buckeye State has been at the center of death penalty debates in the U.S.  Since the miserably failed execution of Romell Broom (in which he was subjected to two hours of unsuccessful attempts to find a vein suitable for injecting the lethal drugs) Ohio has twice switched execution protocols – first, moving to a one drug method (a massive dose of the anesthetic sodium thiopental), and now, as that drug’s manufacturer has taken it off the market, a one drug dose of a different anesthetic, pentobarbital, which is commonly used to put down animals. 

The first execution in Ohio to incorporate this new drug is scheduled for March 10.

Meanwhile, those who know Ohio’s death penalty the best have begun to assert that Ohio should just abolish the death penalty.  Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, who as a state Senator was largely responsible for enacting Ohio’s death penalty law, has called for an end to capital punishment in his state.  And Terry Collins, a former warden who personally witnessed 33 executions, has also urged Ohioans to give up the death penalty.

On the question of capital punishment, Ohio is moving simultaneously in two different directions.  Will Ohio ignore the voices of those most experienced with the death penalty and continue to execute prisoners at a record pace?  Or will the people of Ohio heed those voices and move to shut down Ohio’s incredibly dysfunctional death penalty once and for all?