commentary by Patrick H. Moore
A grisly scene was played out for all the world to see today at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio where condemned rapist and murderer Dennis McGuire was killed by lethal intravenous injection. What made the execution anything but routine was the fact that the new drug cocktail designated by the state of Ohio for executions didn’t work properly. According to Alan Johnson of The Columbus Dispatch, who was there in person observing, after receiving the “cocktail”, which is a combination of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a morphine derivative, McGuire, 53, “repeatedly gasp(ed) loudly for air and made snorting and choking sounds, before succumbing to (the) new two-drug execution method.”
This is the first time that this particular drug combo has been used in a U.S. execution. It was chosen by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction because pentobarbital, the single drug previously used, is no longer available.
It was a full 24-minutes from the needle administration of the drugs until McGuire was pronounced dead at 10:53 a.m. According to one of the McGuire’s attorneys, Federal Public Defender Allen Bohnert, the clumsy and possibly excruciating 24-minute execution process was a “failed, agonizing experiment by the state of Ohio.”
“The people of the state of Ohio should be appalled by what was done in their name,” said Bohnert.
Bohnert suggested that McGuire’s death by lethal injection may have been marked by the “air hunger” his attorneys feared would occur from using the previously untested combination of drugs.
“What we suggested to the court did happen,” said Bohnert. The lawyer refused to speculate on whether McGuire suffered and also would not say whether further legal action would be pursued under the U.S. constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment.
If you are a sadist, and if you had been part of the large press corps in attendance, you would have had a field day. According to Alan Johnson, here’s how it all came down:
After being injected at 10:29 a.m., about four minutes later McGuire started struggling and gasping loudly for air, making snorting and choking sounds which lasted for at least 10 minutes. His chest heaved and his left fist clinched as deep, snorting sounds emanated from his mouth. However, for the last several minutes before he was pronounced dead, he was still.
McGuire’s adult children, Amber and Dennis, along with Dennis’ wife, were among those who watched his execution in (a) small, windowless room at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. The three joined arms and sobbed throughout the procedure.
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Of course there are several sides to every story, and though McGuire may well have suffered from mental problems, there is no doubt that his crime was heinous.
McGuire’s victim, Joy Stewart, 22, of West Alexandria, a small town about 20 miles west of Dayton, was about 30-weeks pregnant when McGuire raped her, choked her, and slashed her throat so deeply it severed both her carotid artery and jugular vein on Feb. 12, 1989. Her unborn child also died, probably in the woods in rural Preble County where her body was found the next day by two hikers.
Stewart’s slaying went unsolved for 10 months until McGuire, jailed on an unrelated assault and hoping to improve his legal situation, told investigators he had information about Ms. Stewart’s death. He initially attempted to blame the crime on his brother-in-law, but his scheme quickly unraveled and according to prosecutors, he was soon accused of being Stewart’s killer. At trial, he was convicted of Stewart’s rape and stabbing death and was sentenced to death in 1989.
More than a decade later, DNA evidence confirmed McGuire’s guilt, and in December of 2013, he acknowledged his culpability in a letter to Governor John Kasich.
Although much of the evidence concerning McGuire’s impaired mental functioning was excluded at his trial, his attorneys later argued that he was mentally, physically and sexually abused as a child resulting in impaired brain function that made him prone to act impulsively.
‘Dennis was at risk from the moment he was born,’ the lawyers said in a parole board filing. ‘The lack of proper nutrition, chaotic home environment, abuse, lack of positive supervision and lack of positive role models all affected Dennis’ brain development.’
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The victim’s family issued the following statement:
“This has been a long time coming. Joy’s death was the hardest thing our family has had to endure.
“There has been a lot of controversy regarding the drugs that are to be used in his execution, concern that he might feel terror; that he might suffer. As I recall the events preceding her death, forcing her from the car, attempting to rape her vaginally, sodomizing her, choking her, stabbing her, I know she suffered terror and pain. He is being treated far more humanely than he treated her.
“Ultimately, we must all face judgment – both here and on Earth and in Heaven. It is his time to face his judgment.”
In his final statement, McGuire thanked Joy Stewart’s family for kind words they apparently passed his way and told his children, perhaps unrealistically, that he would meet them in heaven:
“I’d like to say to Joy’s family, thanks for the letter and the kind words. They meant a lot … To my children, I love you. I’m going to heaven. I will see you there when you get there.”
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The execution had an unusually large news media contingent on hand, probably due to the controversy concerning the new drug cocktail. In recent years, the media had dwindled away as executions became almost routine since Ohio re-instated in the death penalty in 1999. This morning, outside the prison, a handful of anti-death penalty protestors demonstrated as temperatures remained in the low 20s.
McGuire’s last meal on Wednesday night consisted of roast beef, fried chicken, fried potatoes with onions, potato salad, toasted onion bagel with cream cheese, butter pecan ice cream and a Coke.
He is the first person to be executed in Ohio this year.
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Although I strongly oppose capital punishment in all but the most exceptional cases (and even there I have my doubts), I know realistically that the death penalty is going to remain part of our “get tough on crime” national mentality for the foreseeable future. For somewhat inexplicable reasons, the U.S. takes stubborn pride in being the most barbaric of the so-called “advanced nations”.
Lethal injection was developed as a supposedly more humane means of execution in comparison to the gas chamber. I really think that if we are going to insist on continuing to execute our citizens, whether or not they suffer from serious mental imbalance, we should develop a quick and reasonably humane way to kill them. But that makes too much sense, doesn’t it? Odd that we can now successfully transplant hearts, livers and other essential organs, but we cannot manage as simple a thing as finding a quick, relatively painless way to administer death.