COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The prolonged execution of an
inmate during which he repeatedly gasped and snorted amounted to cruel
and unusual punishment which should not be allowed to happen again, the
inmate’s family said in a federal lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed late
Friday, also alleges the drug maker that produced the medications
illegally allowed them to be used for an execution and should be
prohibited from making them available for capital punishment.
Dennis
McGuire "repeated cycles of snorting, gurgling and arching his back,
appearing to writhe in pain," the lawsuit said. "It looked and sounded
as though he was suffocating."
McGuire’s execution Jan. 16 lasted
26 minutes, the longest since the state resumed putting inmates to death
in 1999, according to an Associated Press analysis of all 53 execution
logs maintained by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
It
remains unclear what McGuire experienced. The AP observed him appearing
to fall unconscious and remaining so while he snorted, gasped and
opened and shut his mouth repeatedly.
McGuire’s execution, during
which his adult children sobbed in dismay, has led to several calls for a
moratorium on capital punishment in the state.
In addition, a
separate federal lawsuit filed Thursday seeks to stop the March
execution of a northeast Ohio killer on the grounds that condemned
inmates could be clinically alive for as long as 45 minutes after a time
of death is announced in the state death chamber.
Attorneys for
Gregory Lott, who is scheduled to die March 19 for setting an East
Cleveland man on fire in 1986 and leaving him to die, also say Ohio is
breaking state and federal law by using the drugs without a
prescription.
The lawsuit by McGuire’s family targets Lake Forest,
Ill.-based Hospira Inc., the manufacturer of the drugs used in
McGuire’s execution.
The company knew its drugs were being used
for executions but continued to sell them to Ohio, according to the
lawsuit, which seeks damages above $75,000.
Hospira should have
known that the drugs "would cause unnecessary and extreme pain and
suffering during the execution process," the lawsuit said.
In
2011, Hospira ended production of sodium thiopental, a drug used by many
states for executions, including Ohio, after it couldn’t guarantee to
Italian authorities where its factory was located that the drug wouldn’t
be used for capital punishment.
The company also has prohibited
other drugs from being used in executions, and took the same steps for
midazolam and hydromorphone, the drugs used in the McGuire execution,
last year, according to a company statement. Hospira said its
distributors have also agreed not to sell the drugs to prisons.
Medical
experts wouldn’t comment on McGuire’s execution or speculate about what
he experienced. They agreed that used for surgeries, the two drugs by
themselves wouldn’t cause pain.
"They are actually used to prevent
any pain or discomfort, in a surgical procedure or any other kind of
procedure as well," said Robert Weber, administrator for pharmacy
services at the Ohio State University medical center.
The first
drug, midazolam — sometimes known by its trade name Versed — is
administered in surgery to help calm patients, said Dr. Howard Nearman,
professor of anesthesiology at Case Western Reserve University. The
second, hydromorphone, known by the trade name Dilaudid, is a strong
narcotic meant to reduce pain.
"By virtue of what they do, they cause unconsciousness and they inhibit pain," Nearman said.

An
anesthesiologist hired by McGuire’s attorneys before his execution
predicted the inmate would suffer "agony and terror" as he experienced a
phenomenon known as air hunger, or the desperate attempt to catch his
breath as he suffocated.
An anesthesiologist hired by the state
disputed that scenario. That doctor, Mark Dershwitz of the University of
Massachusetts, also said McGuire’s airways could become obstructed and
he might snore as a result, though he would not suffer.
The
obstruction of a patient’s airways can be a common reaction to sedation,
especially if the patient is obese, said Dr. Andrew Casabianca, interim
chair of the University of Toledo College of Medicine’s Department of
Anesthesia.
"Their respiratory rate starts slowing down. Their heart rate may slow down. Their ventilation slows
down," he said.
The drugs weren’t designed to cause death, Jon Paul Rion, the McGuire family attorney, told the AP
Friday.
"There’s
a clear distinction between a therapeutic use of a drug in a medical
environment as opposed to using that drug in an execution style," he
said.
"That’s the concern, that we’re taking drugs that have
therapeutic value and we’re not using them for the purposes for which
the FDA approved nor for which the clinical tests were performed," he
said.
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Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus
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