IT WAS COLD outside the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility on the morning of November 15, where some two dozen people formed a circle in the parking lot. They had traveled to Lucasville from various parts of the state, wearing heavy jackets and carrying handmade signs. A large banner read: “We remember the victims … BUT NOT WITH MORE KILLING.”
Inside the prison, officials were getting ready to kill 69-year-old Alva Campbell, convicted of murder in 1997. His execution was scheduled for 10 a.m. For weeks, Campbell’s lawyers had fought for a reprieve, warning that his severe health problems posed serious risks to carrying out lethal injection. Campbell had been diagnosed with an array of chronic illnesses in recent years, from cancer to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He used a walker and an external colostomy bag and relied on oxygen treatments four times a day. During a recent examination at the prison hospital, medical staff found he could not breathe lying down.
Of particularly grave concern were Campbell’s veins, which his attorneys repeatedly said were not viable for inserting an IV.
As the execution approached, the state never explained how it planned to get around this problem. But officials did agree to provide Campbell a wedge-shaped pillow that would prop him up on the gurney so that he could breathe – at least until the state stopped his breath for good.
The execution had been delayed for nearly an hour that morning as staff reportedly examined Campbell’s arms and legs one last time. Then, just before 11 a.m., the protesters got word that witnesses were being led to the death chamber. The execution would soon be underway. One by one, they struck a large homemade bell, brought by Abraham Bonowitz, head of Death Penalty Action. Bonowitz constructed the bell from a retired gas canister. Its sound was startlingly loud by design. After the last execution in Lucasville, relatives of the condemned man had said they could hear the bell inside the prison – it was comforting to know someone cared.
The protesters were solemnly waiting their turn to toll the bell when they saw people leaving the death house. It was 11:27 a.m. The execution appeared to be over. But moments later, a Columbus Dispatch staffer posted a tweet from inside the prison. “Media and pool are back,” he wrote. “Alva Campbell has not been executed. Apparently a vein could not be found.”
“He’s alive,” Bonowitz said cautiously. It was not clear what would come next. But before long, a flurry of phone calls and tweets confirmed what people were hoping: the execution had been called off.
In the parking lot, there were hugs and relieved laughter. Some looked pained, unsure what to feel. Whatever had happened was surely traumatic for Campbell and prison staff alike. As people got in their cars and headed home, state troopers began pulling away from the prison as well. Just before noon, the prison gates opened and a black hearse drove past the parking lot where the remaining protesters stood. There was no body inside.
"In 2007, Ohio’s execution team took so long to find a vein to kill 37-year-old Christopher Newton, he was given a bathroom break."
Campbell’s attorney, David Stebbins, approached the parking lot just before 1 p.m. “We had a difficult morning,” he said. He had watched as his client was stuck with needles four times in different parts of his body, the last time in his right shin. Stebbins and other witnesses could not hear the sounds from the execution chamber, but he saw his client throw his head back and cry out in pain. After some 25 minutes, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction head Gary Mohr halted the execution with the approval of Governor John Kasich, who denied clemency to Campbell just a week before. “That’s the only way they can stop it,” Stebbins said.
Stebbins only had a few minutes with Campbell before he was transported back to his death row cell at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, just north of Lucasville. “He did say it’s a day he’ll never forget,” Stebbins said. “I don’t think I’ll forget it either.” He did not know how long the reprieve would last. “We simply haven’t been told.”
But by that evening, Ohio Governor John Kasich had answered the question. Campbell’s new execution had already been set, for June 5, 2019.
The failed execution of Alva Campbell was historic — it was the third time a person has survived an execution in the United States since 1946. Yet it was the second time a man has left the gurney alive in Ohio in less than 10 years.
The same thing happened at the Lucasville prison in 2009 after the attempted execution of Romell Broom. For two hours on September 15, 2009, execution team members tried and failed to find a vein in order to carry out his lethal injection. At one point, they took a 45-minute break, then tried again. It was only after 18 failed attempts to insert the IV lines that Governor Ted Strickland stopped the execution.
A prison spokesperson would later praise Broom for being “extremely cooperative and respectful” during the ordeal. “He actually attempted to help the team find an access point,” she said.
➤ Click here to read the full article
Source: The Intercept, Liliana Segura, November 19, 2017
⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us:
deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.
Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
