Tag Archives: Ohio

As drug companies refuse to let their products be used for the death penalty, states are using untested drug combinations that have resulted in deaths like that of Dennis McGuire in Ohio, where the state used untested two-drug method despite warnings it might cause immense suffering.  We speak with the reporter who witnessed the execution, and with a lawyer for a man executed in Missouri with an entirely different lethal drug cocktail, made by a pharmacy the state refused to name.

Meanwhile on Thursday, Virginia lawmakers failed to pass a law that would let death row prisoners die in the electric chair now that the state has run out of the chemicals used to make up its three-drug execution cocktail, and is unable to locate more. The delayed vote could impose a temporary moratorium in Virginia, which executes more people than any other state besides Texas. The execution drugs’ scarcity stems from the refusal of manufacturers in Europe and the United States to let them be used to put people to death.

We speak with Alan Johnson, reporter with the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio, who witnessed McGuire’s execution and says he observed him gasping for air, and that he appeared to be choking. We are also joined by Cheryl Pilate, one of the lead attorneys for Herbert Smulls, who was executed Jan. 29 with a lethal dose of pentobarbital that was made by a compounding pharmacy the state refuses to name. Also joining is is Megan McCracken, attorney with the University of California, Berkeley School of Law’s Death Penalty Clinic, where she is an expert on lethal injection methods.