Federal judge again halts Ohio execution because state not following its own protocol
As reported in this piece from the Columbus Dispatch, “U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost today blocked next week’s scheduled execution [in Ohio] of convicted murderer Charles Lorraine because the state has not adhered to its own execution policies.” Here are the basics:
Lorraine, 45, was slated to be executed Jan. 18 for murdering 80-year-old, bedridden Doris Montgomery and her 77-year-old husband, Raymond, in 1986.
However, Frost, who previously raised serious questions about Ohio’s execution procedures, ruled today that the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction didn’t properly document the drug used or check the medical chart of inmate Reginald Brooks when he was lethally injection on Nov. 15 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville.
The ruling today from Judge Frost, in a case now captioned In Re Ohio Execution Protocol, runs 23 pages and can be downloaded below. Here is how it gets started (emphasis in original):
This case is frustrating.
For close to eight years, the Court has dealt with inmate challenges to the constitutionality of Ohio’s execution protocol. During that time, the litigation has morphed from focusing primarily on allegations of cruel and unusual punishment to allegations of equal protection violations. Ohio has been in a dubious cycle of defending often indefensible conduct, subsequently reforming its protocol when called on that conduct, and then failing to follow through on its own reforms. Occasionally in this litigation, state agents lie to the Court. At other times, different state actors impress this Court with their sincere devotion to carrying out the unenviable task of executing death-sentenced inmates within constitutional parameters. As a result of laudable effort by the various state actors involved — motivated either by duty, embarrassment, the decisions of this Court, or a combination of any of the foregoing — Ohio finally arrived at a protocol that on paper satisfies every Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment challenge thrown against it. Then once again Ohio decided to carry out the protocol in a manner that simply ignores a key component of the execution scheme.
The end result is that rather than proceeding to a final conclusion in this case that would enable Ohio to proceed to fulfill its lawful duty to execute inmates sentenced to death free from this ongoing litigation, Ohio has unnecessarily and inexplicably created easily avoidable problems that force this Court to once again stay an execution.
This is frustrating to the Court because no judge is a micro-manager of executions and no judge wants to find himself mired in ongoing litigation in which he must continually babysit the parties. But the law is what it is, and the facts are what they are. The Constitution demands that a judge honor the rights embodied in that document, that a judge appreciate the nuance involved in those rights rather than adopting a constitutionally irresponsible, “big-picture, close enough” approach, and that a judge follow the evidence presented by the parties to whatever principled conclusion it leads–no matter how easily avoided and frustrating that conclusion may be. In other words, if Ohio would only do what it says it will do, everyone involved in this case can finally move on.