Rejecting Eighth Amendment challenges to the drug cocktail Ohio uses to give the death penalty, a federal judge moved the state one step closer Wednesday to resuming lethal injections.
The executions of Alva Campbell Jr., Gary Otte, Ronald Phillips and Raymond Tibbetts have been on hold since January, when U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Merz found that the state’s three-drug injection protocol violated the Eighth Amendment.
Merz said that “the use of midazolam as the first drug in Ohio’s present three-drug protocol will create a ‘substantial risk of serious harm’” to the prisoners.
But the Sixth Circuit lifted the ban two weeks ago in a 8-6 en banc ruling, clearing the way for the state to move forward with the executions.
Read the full article at Courthouse News Service