Ohio's state execution team is finalising plans to dispatch a convicted murderer and rapist on death row using a never-before-tried combination of two drugs which defence lawyers say threatens to leave him writhing in agony from "air hunger" before he loses consciousness and expires.
The way was cleared for the execution of Dennis McGuire, 53, when a federal judge in Columbus ruled on Monday (local time) that concerns about how the new cocktail would work were not enough to issue a stay even as he acknowledged that it amounted nonetheless to a death chamber "experiment" by the state.
Ohio and other death penalty states have been struggling to keep executions going because supplies of pentobarbital traditionally used in a three-drug mix have all passed their sell-by dates thanks to its Danish manufacturer prohibiting its sale to US prison services. The European Union has also threatened to restrict sales of Propofol, a leading anaesthetic used in hospitals, were US death chambers to use it instead.
In Wyoming, state Senator Bruce Burns, a Republican, said he was tabling proposals to replace death by lethal injection with the firing squad in his state because of the drug shortage crisis. Using marksmen to empty death row would be preferable, he said, than the alternative - building a gas chamber.
Controversy is also raging in Oklahoma following what appears to have been the botched execution last week of Michael Lee Wilson based on his last words uttered after the injection process had begun: "I feel my whole body burning." Exactly what went wrong is unclear because the state is not saying.
