Capital punishment has long been a controversial issue — and it’s about to get much more controversial: an Ohio killer was executed using a somewhat unusual mix of drugs and he took 15 minutes to die. And they reportedly weren’t silent, non-eventful moments. Get ready to see the issues of what to do with convicted murders and how to do executions come to the forefront once again:
Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire appeared to gasp several times and took as long as 15 minutes to die Thursday during his execution by lethal injection, reporters who witnessed it said.
He was convicted in 1994 of the rape and murder of Joy Stewart, whose relatives were at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville to witness his death, according to tweets from television reporter Sheila Gray.
McGuire’s “children and daughter-in-law were crying and visibly upset,” Gray tweeted.
Relatives of the murdered and murderer relatives are usually stirred by executions. The difference here is that relatives of McGuire saw an unusually slow, graphic execution. Watch for arguments now to surface that this was cruel and unusual punishiment, McGuire’s murder conviction aside.
The execution, at 10:53 a.m. ET, has generated controversy because, like many states, Ohio has been forced to find new drug protocols after European-based manufacturers banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs in executions — among them, Danish-based Lundbeck, which manufactures pentobarbital.
The state used a combination of the drugs midazolam, a sedative, and the painkiller hydromorphone, the state corrections department told CNN.
In an opinion piece written for CNN earlier this week, a law professor noted that McGuire’s attorneys argued he would “suffocate to death in agony and terror.”
“The state disagrees. But the truth is that no one knows exactly how McGuire will die, how long it will take or what he will experience in the process,” wrote Elisabeth A. Semel, clinic professor of law and director of the Death Penalty Clinic at U.C. Berkeley School of Law.
According to a pool report from journalists who witnessed the execution, McGuire took more than 15 minutes to die, and made “several loud snorting or snoring sounds.”
Ohio ran out of pentobarbital in September, according to JoEllen Smith, the spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
In response to that shortage, the department amended its execution policy to allow for the use of midazolam and hydromorphone.
The Columbus Dispatch’s Alan Johnson gave this account:
McGuire’s death by lethal injection at 10:53 a.m. may have been marked by the “air hunger” that McGuire’s attorneys feared would occur from the combination of drugs used for the first time in a U.S. execution.
“What we suggested to the court did happen,” said Bohner, who refused to speculate on whether McGuire suffered. He also would not say whether further legal action would be pursued under the U.S. constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment.
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 small, windowless room at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. The three joined arms and sobbed throughout the procedure.
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. At the same point, her unborn child died, too, probably in the woods in the rural area of Preble County where her body was found the next day by two hikers.
“This has been a long time coming. Joy’s death was the hardest thing our family has had to endure,” the victim’s family said in a three-paragraph statement.
“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.”
The problem with this execution for supporters of capital punishment: reports of how this went down — the antithesis of how modern executions are supposed to unfold — will bring renewed criticism of capital punishment. Late 20th century to early 21st trending is not on finding ways to execute prisoners that take longer and make them suffer longer, no matter how heinous or contemptuous their crimes. Look for renewed debate in the U.S. and increased condemnations from elsewhere in the world.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.