USA - Ohio. Ohio adjusts its lethal injection protocol.

Ohio adjusts its lethal injection protocol. Beginning with its next execution, Ohio will use a revised lethal injection protocol that allows executioners to use a second dose of sedative to ensure that a condemned inmate is sufficiently unconscious before fatal drugs are injected. Ohio has said it previously made sure that inmates being executed were unconscious and, therefore, not in pain when fatal drugs were given, but death penalty critics have argued that Ohio's process allows the possibility that execution causes pain. A federal lawsuit is challenging Ohio's lethal injection system. Greg Trout, lawyer for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, today confirmed a report in The (Elyria) Chronicle-Telegram that the procedures had been adjusted as of last week. The next execution is planned for June 3, when the state plans to execute Daniel Wilson. The protocol changes amount to amendments of procedures already in place. The 3 drugs used remain unchanged. The policy directive says the prison warden will call the condemned inmate's name, shake his shoulder and pinch his upper arm. "If there is no response, it is a pretty clear indicator he is unconscious," Trout said. The revised protocol also requires that the execution team prepare four grams of the sedative, thiopental sodium, instead of the 2 grams that had previously been required. Trout said 2 grams will be used, as before; the other 2 grams would be used only if needed. In a ruling last year (see June 10, 2008), Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge said the old protocol was unconstitutional, and suggested the state should use only the sedative to execute. (see also Dec. 28, 2007).