USA - Ohio. Ohio will not appeal judge's delay of Kenneth Smith's execution.

Ohio will not appeal judge's delay of execution. The state won't challenge a July 8 (see) order that delays Kenneth Smith's lethal injection over what federal judge Gregory Frost says is haphazard enforcement of its execution policies. Attorney general's spokesman Dan Tierney said today that the office will not appeal the ruling in the case of Smith, who was scheduled to die next week for killing a husband and wife in their home during a 1995 robbery. Smith now will be allowed to argue in an upcoming trial that the state violates the federal constitution with uneven application of its rules for executing inmates. Smith and other inmates argue that Ohio too often strays from its execution policies by not always having the required number of execution team members present and not always documenting the mixing of drugs.