Burge orders change in lethal injection protocol

06/10/2008

BREAKING NEWS: Burge orders change in lethal injection protocol

ELYRIA - Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge ordered this
morning that Ohio change the lethal injection protocol used to
execute condemned prisoners.
The ruling comes after two days of testimony from anesthesiologists
and written arguments submitted in the case. Capital murder
defendants Ronald McCloud and Ruben Rivera challenged the state's
lethal injection protocol arguing that it violates Ohio law that
guarantees a quick and painless death.

Burge ordered the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to
eliminate two of the three drugs used in the execution protocol. The
judge ruled that the state must use a single anesthetic to kill a
condemned inmate.

Ohio, in recent years, has used three drugs - sodium thiopental, an
anesthetic; pancuronium bromide, a paralytic and potassium chloride
that stops the heart. Burge ordered the state to eliminate the use of
pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride from its protocol and to
use a single anesthetic to kill an inmate that is sentenced to die by
lethal injection.

McCloud and Rivera have not yet gone to trial in their separate
alleged criminal acts. McCloud is accused of raping and killing Janet
Barnhard, 57, at the Living Water Christian Fellowship Church in
Lorain in June 2005. Rivera is awaiting trial in the slaying of
Manual Garcia, 48, in a drug-related robbery in Lorain in 2004.

©The Morning Journal 2008

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