Back in 1989, Dennis McGuire raped Joy Stewart, a woman eight months pregnant, before brutally stabbing her. It was a horrible and barbaric crime. However, the manner in which he was executed yesterday was, in my book, also an act of barbarism. McGuire was executed by lethal injection using a drug cocktail that had never been used in an execution before anywhere in the United States. It took a whopping 25 minutes for him to die--during which he was seen gasping and snorting.
Well, it only took 24 hours for McGuire's family to make their next move. Earlier today, they announced they would file a federal lawsuit against the state for violating his Eighth Amendment rights.
The McGuire family has instructed a group of Dayton-based lawyers, led by Jon Paul Rion, to prepare a federal lawsuit that is expected to be filed next week. The suit will ask the federal courts to halt executions in the state on the grounds that the department of corrections is violating the eighth amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
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Speaking at the press conference, Rion said: “If you were to read a medieval journal about something that happened hundreds of years ago when they strapped an individual to a board, deprived him of oxygen for over 15 minutes, and have the world sit there and watch him die, that would be interpreted as cruel. A culture that would inflict that kind of injury on a person would be questioned for its civility.”
Richard Schulte, co-counsel on the lawsuit, said the legal team would be focused on trying to find out where the drugs used in McGuire’s execution had come from and whether the manufacturers had been aware of what their product was being used for.
McGuire was executed yesterday using the sedative midazolam and painkiller hydromorphone. They were forced to turn to this combination because the manufacturer of the previous cocktail refused to let it be used for executions anymore. According to
a timeline put out by the Ohio Department of Corrections, the midazolam was inserted at 10:27 am, and the hydromorphone was inserted less than a minute later. McGuire was not pronounced dead until 10:52 am.
At a hearing to grant a stay for the execution, David Weisel, a Harvard Medical School professor retained as an expert by McGuire's legal team, said that midazolam was inappropriate for use in executions, and that McGuire could potentially be conscious for five minutes while feeling like he was suffocating--a phenomenon known as "air hunger." Based on several eyewitness accounts, Weisel's prediction came true--horrifyingly so. Allen Johnson of the Columbus Dispatch, for instance said that the execution went far longer than any of the others he'd ever seen.
McGuire's son, Dennis R. McGuire, said that he saw his father fight his restraints and repeatedly clench his fist. "Until yesterday I did not understand what cruel and unusual punishment was," he said. "Now I do." Watch his entire statement here--but be warned, it's not for the faint of heart.
The Dayton Daily News reports that the McGuires were forced to move quickly after getting word that another man may be due to be executed in March using the same combination. Ohio officials officially say that the drugs used to execute McGuire are their backup in case the old cocktail isn't available.
What McGuire did to Stewart was an outrage, and he should have never been allowed to live among us again. But that is no excuse whatsoever for the outrageously cruel way that he was executed. The signal has to go out--not now, not again, not ever in our name.