Contract Killings - with Correction

Ohio 2014 - One

Ohio 2015 - Nobody

Ohio 2016 - Eleven

That's executions, actual for 2014 and now 2015, scheduled for 2016.

You know the backstory. Ohio has an unmatched record of demonstrated incompetence in performing lethal injections.* Our last killing, Dennis McGuire in January last year, was particularly ugly. And precisely what they'd been warned would happen with their new experimental murder method. Alan Johnson covered it for the Columbus Dispatch and described what he saw.

Dennis McGuire struggled, repeatedly gasping loudly for air and making snorting and choking sounds, before succumbing to a new two-drug execution method today. . . .After being injected at 10:29 a.m., about four minutes later McGuire started struggling and gasping loudly for air, making snorting and choking sounds which lasted for at least 10 minutes. His chest heaved and his left fist clinched as deep, snorting sounds emanated from his mouth. However, for the last several minutes before he was pronounced dead, he was still.

So, and given the years of ongoing litigation here, the state backed off, called a brief halt, and saod ot would rewrite its protocol for the umpteenth time.  Which they did.  And given the litigation, well, the judge called halts and then everyone kind of agreed to court-ordered halts for a while.  And they decided not to use midazolam and hydromorphone any more.  But that meant finding some other drug and then the secrecy litigation because if you know where we get the drugs we'll have to kill you.

And finally, on Friday, the Governor who probably wants to be President decided to stop it all for a bit.  This year's planned killings, which included some from years past, all got punted into next year. When there are now 11 scheduled.  One a month from January through November.  

Will they all happen?  Probably not.  Some court will likely stop at least one or two.  The Governor may commute one of the sentences.  And of course the whole thing could implode again if we can't get the drugs or fuck another killing up - as we have so many.

And then there's the Supreme Court which is apparently going to decide by June whether killing with midazolam is unconstitutional and, more important really, whether the states can keep all the details of who's doing what a secret. whether a person complaining that the state intends to kill him unconstitutionally must suggest a constitutional method by which he can be killed.** Whatever they decide, expect more litigation.

In the meantime, though, and in 2016:

January 21 - Ronald Phillips
February 19 - Ray Tibbetts
March 23 - Alva Campbell, Jr.
April 20 - Gregory Lott
May 18 - Angelo Fears
June 22 - Warren Henness
July 20 - Cleveland Jackson
August 15 - William Montgomery
September 21 - Kareem Jackson
October 19 - Robert Van Hook
November 16 - Jeffrey Wogenstahl

To what end, exactly?

Each of them was found guilty of aggravated murder.  In each case, it was determined that the aggravating circumstance of the crime outweighed whatever mitigating factors were presented at trial.

Pretend that they got it right.  Every time.  Pretend these men all did terrible things and they had almost nothing to weigh against the crime but themselves.  Hell, maybe it's even true.  Maybe they are, or some of them are, the worst of the worst who did the worst things.  It could be.  (And the beauty of it is that there's no way actually to know, so we can pretend all we like.)

What then?

Van Hook will have been on death row for just over 31 years at his scheduled murder.  Montgomery nearly 30.  For Cleveland Jackson, the fastest of these 11, it will still be nearly 14 years.  And he'll be 38 when they kill him next year.  If they do.  At the other end, Alva Campbell will be 67. 

Whoever these people are that we're planning to kill, they're not who they were back then.  But by god, we're committed to doing it.  They must die.

Just not until next year.

When we kill Ron Phillips next January, if we do, it will have been just over two years since we botched Dennis McGuire's execution.  For just over two years, Ohio will have managed to kill not a single person on death row.  Somehow, the state will have survived unscathed.  Because, really, there's no need.

But if no need?  Then we're killing because we want to.  It's a conscious choice we make.

You, Ron Phillips.  You, Ray Tibbets.  You Alva Campbell, Gregory Lott, Angelo Fears. You, all of you.  We don't need to kill you. But we want to.
It's not that you need to die.  That's not something we can control.  No, we want to kill you.  More precisely, we want some prison guards we don't know to kill you.
We'll arrange it.  Pay for it.  Read about it in the newspaper afterwards.  Our arranged contract killings.  Because we want you murdered.  By those guys over there.

Next year.

 

---------------

*We are, after all, the state that tried for two hours but ultimately failed to kill Romell Broom.  He remains the only survivor of an execution attempt by lethal injection.  (Oral argument in the Ohio Supreme Court on the question of whether the state gets to try again to kill him will be the morning of June 9.)

**Sorry. I knew the right question when I wrote this last night.  I just didn't type the right question.

Another Date, Another Voice

Let's start with the question before we get to the really important stuff.

My guess would be that you don't know just where you'll be on May 14.  At school? The office? On Vacation? Home with a cold?  Digging out from a blizzard or a hurricane?  And if by chance you know where you'll be that day, you surely don't know where you'll be at 10 that morning.  Sitting on the toilet reading the newspaper? Standing in the kitchen pouring a cup of coffee or doing the breakfast dishes?  Hanging around the water cooler shooting the shit with some co-workers and talking about the latest James Bond flick? 

What's that?  You actually think you know?  Wow.  Oh, wait.  You thought I meant May 14 this year?

No, May 14, 2015.  Almost 28 months from now. 

Don't feel bad. I don't know where I'll be, either.  Jeff Wogenstahl knows though.  At least, he knows where he's supposed to be: Strapped down to a gurney, needles in his arms, being killed.

This morning the Ohio Supreme Court set the date.  Wogenstahl is now joins Fred Treesh, Steven Smith, Billy Slagle, Harry Mitts, Jr., Ronald Phillips, Dennis McGuire, Gregory Lott, Arthut Tyler, William Montgomery, Raymond Tibbetts, and Warren Henness - the other 11 men in Ohio with very real execution dates.  He's at the end of that list, of course.  Treesh is due to be killed on March 6 of this year, less than two months from now.  Wogenstahl is, once again, looking at 28 months.

Albert Camus said, as I've noted before in this space

What then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be an equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal, who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him, and who from that moment onward had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.

And as I've said after quoting that, I'm not sure he's right about what you can't find in private life.  I am certain, though, that it shouldn't be a competition.  The test of how we should act isn't to see if there's not someone worse somewhere.  Yeah, Hitler oversaw vastly more executions than any governor of any state.  But "Hitler was a whole lot worse" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.

So Wogenstahl will sit.  And wait.  For 28 months.  While his lawyers will scramble and argue.  And try to save a life.  And while the state of Ohio will try to stop them.

Just another in the line of 12 cases now lined up.

* * * * *

That's the stuff that's just the day-to-day reality of what happens in the courts of the Buckeye State. But there's also this.

When the Justices of the Supreme Court of Ohio raised their hands or said "Aye" or checked a box or whatever it was precisely that they did in selecting and approving May 14, 2015 as the day to kill Jeff Wogenstahl, only six of them did it.

• Chief Justice O'Connor
• Justice Pfeifer
• Justice O'Donnell
• Justice Lanzinger
• Justice Kennedy
• Justice French

The seventh Justice, Justice O'Neill, dissented.

It's not that he thought there was a problem with that date.  It's not that there was some issue that would take longer to resolve.  It's not that maybe Wogenstahl's crime wasn't that bad or that he didn't do it.  None of that.

If there exists a case that is appropriate for the imposition of the death sentence, this case clearly qualifies. 

Well then?

Without expressing an opinion as to appellant’s guilt or innocence, however, I would hold that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and Article I, Section 9 of the Ohio Constitution.  The death penalty is inherently both cruel and unusual and therefore is unconstitutional. 

Oh.  That.

The time to end this outdated form of punishment in Ohio has arrived.  While I recognize that capital punishment is the law of the land, I cannot participate in what I consider to be a violation of the Constitution I have sworn to uphold.

Which takes some balls.

One vote's not enough, of course.  But it's a start.  A voice.  Another.  Add 'em together, and you've really got something.  (The complete text of Justice O'Neill's dissent is just below the YouTube.  It's pretty short.  You should read it all.

O’NEILL, J., dissenting.
 {¶ 1} I would deny the state’s motion to set an execution date, and I therefore dissent from the order issued by this court.  If there exists a case that is appropriate for the imposition of the death sentence, this case clearly qualifies.  Appellant was convicted of kidnapping a ten-yearold girl from her home, taking her to a secluded area, and stabbing her to death.  75 Ohio St.3d 344, 662 N.E.2d 311 (1996).  There can be no disputing that this was a horrific act that is deserving of the strongest penalty possible.
 {¶ 2} Without expressing an opinion as to appellant’s guilt or innocence, however, I would hold that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and Article I, Section 9 of the Ohio Constitution.  The death penalty is inherently both cruel and unusual and therefore is unconstitutional.
 {¶ 3} Capital punishment dates back to the  days when decapitations, hangings, and brandings were also the norm.  Surely, our society has evolved since those barbaric days.  The United States is one of just a few civilized countries that still permit state executions.
 {¶ 4} To date, 17 states and the District of Columbia have eliminated the death penalty altogether.  It is clear that the death penalty is becoming increasingly rare both around the world and in America.  By definition it is unusual.
 {¶ 5} As Justice William J. Brennan of the United States Supreme Court stated in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972):

Death is truly an awesome punishment.  The calculated killing of a human being by the State involves, by its very nature, a denial of the executed person’s humanity.  The contrast with the plight of a person punished by imprisonment is evident.  An individual in prison does not lose “the right to have rights.”

 Id. at 290 (Brennan, J., concurring).
 {¶ 6} Additionally, death, even by lethal injection, is a cruel punishment.  One need
only look at the recent Ohio case of Romell Broom for a demonstration of that proposition.  Cooey v. Kasich, 801 F.Supp.2d 623 (S.D.Ohio 2011).  Although the executioners spent over two hours attempting to find a vein through which to administer the lethal injection, they ultimately failed.  Subsequently, the governor granted a one-week reprieve.  State v. Broom, case No. 1987-1674, available at http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/pdf_viewer/pdf_viewer.aspx?pdf= 651254.pdf.
 {¶ 7} Broom remains on death row today.  A more chilling definition of cruel is hard to imagine.
 {¶ 8} As stated by Justice Brennan in his dissent in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96
 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976):

This Court inescapably has the duty, as the ultimate arbiter of the meaning of our Constitution, to say whether, when individuals condemned to death stand before our Bar, “moral concepts” require us to hold that the law has progressed to the point where we should declare that the punishment of death, like punishment on the rack, the screw, and the wheel, is no longer tolerable in our civilized society.

 Id. at 229 (Brennan, J., dissenting).
 {¶ 9} The time to end this outdated form of punishment in Ohio has arrived.  While I recognize that capital punishment is the law of the land, I cannot participate in what I consider to be a violation of the Constitution I have sworn to uphold.  I must respectfully dissent.