As executioners poked his limbs with an IV needle, Romell Broom initially tried to speed along his own demise, flexing his arm and tugging on a rubber tourniquet to better expose a vein on the inside of his elbow.
But as prison workers repeatedly failed to find a vein strong enough to take the lethal injections, the convicted rapist-murderer began to despair over his protracted end. Witnesses and the execution-team log from Tuesday describe how the 53-year-old winced and cried as a shunt inserted in his leg also failed to open a pathway for the fatal drugs.
Two hours and 23 minutes after it started, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland halted the execution and scheduled a second attempt for a week later.
The aborted execution has renewed concerns about lethal injection, and raises the question of whether a second execution attempt would violate the 8th Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
On Friday, one of Broom's attorneys filed lawsuits in state and federal court alleging that another execution attempt would violate Broom's civil rights. U.S. District Judge Gregory L. Frost issued a temporary restraining order putting off the attempt for at least 10 days. The attorney, Tim Sweeney, also appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.
Only once before has a state's execution failed, legal scholars say. In 1946, 17-year-old Willie Francis walked away from Louisiana's "Gruesome Gertie" electric chair after a 2,500-volt current coursed through his body.
"The issue with Willie Francis was, can you re-execute him, or would that be cruel and unusual punishment or double jeopardy?" said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor and death penalty expert.
A divided high court decided in 1947 that Louisiana could lawfully subject Francis to execution again. A second electrocution killed him a year and three days after the first attempt.
"But so many aspects of that case are so outdated or so specific to Willie Francis and that time that even though it is entrenched precedent with the U.S. Supreme Court and frequently cited, one would look at the Broom case very differently," said Denno, whose writings on execution methods were cited by the U.S. Supreme Court majority in last year's decision upholding the constitutionality of lethal injection in Kentucky.
"I think we're in a new day in our treatment of human beings," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
