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View Slideshow Kantele Franko | Associated Press Dennis McGuire’s wife, Missie, center, is flanked by his children, Amber and Dennis, at a Dayton news conference to discuss the elder McGuire’s execution on Thursday. Dennis McGuire





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By Alan Johnson The Columbus Dispatch • Saturday January 18, 2014 5:22 AM

State prison officials remained silent yesterday about what happens next after Thursday’s troubled execution of convicted killer Dennis McGuire. His children have vowed to sue the state.



Media inquiries from around the world flooded the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, but officials are refusing to answer questions about whether the two-drug combination will be used for the next execution, of Gregory Lott on March 19.



McGuire, 53, struggled, gasped for breath, and clenched his fists while apparently unconscious for about 10 minutes before he was pronounced dead.



The department did release a 13-page execution log showing minute-by-minute details of what happened at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. However, the log makes no mention of McGuire gasping for air.



Ohio is among the states with death-penalty laws that are scrambling for execution drugs. They have found it increasingly difficult to obtain drugs, often because manufacturers refuse to sell products to states that plan to use them for executions. Some states are using different drug combinations from what Ohio used Thursday, while others still have a supply for one-drug executions.



Ohio exhausted the last of its supply of pentobarbital in an execution late last year.



There was no clear indication that the drug combination of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a morphine derivative — never before used in a U.S. execution — triggered McGuire’s death struggles. But Allen Bohnert, one of McGuire’s federal public defenders, called the execution a “failed, agonizing experiment by the state of Ohio.”



Dennis and Amber McGuire, the executed man’s children, held a news conference at the office of a Dayton lawyer yesterday and said they plan to sue the state because of how their father’s execution was handled.



“Yesterday my dad was killed by the state of Ohio,” Dennis McGuire said. “The agony and terror of watching my dad suffocate to death lasted more than 19 minutes. ... I can’t think of any other way to describe it than torture.



“After watching my dad’s execution, I know what cruel and unusual punishment is. I witnessed it.”< /p>



Attorney Jon Paul Rion said he plans to file the lawsuit next week in federal court alleging the state violated McGuire’s Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment, and raising other issues about the testing and purity of the drugs used.



McGuire was executed for the brutal 1989 murder of Joy Stewart, 22, who was newly married and 30 weeks pregnant at the time of her death. McGuire raped Stewart, choked her, stabbed her in the chest, and slit her throat so deeply it severed her carotid artery and jugular vein. He dumped her body in the woods near Eaton, Ohio, where it was found the next day by two hikers.



While there was sharp criticism of the execution from Ohioans to Stop Executions and Amnesty International, many people commented online at Dispatch.com and in emails that they had no sympathy for McGuire.



“His death should have taken 14 hours, not 14 minutes,” one commenter said.



State Sen. Edna Brown, D-Toledo, called on Gov. John Kasich to “institute an immediate and indefinite moratorium on capital punishment in Ohio” and to make sure the two-drug combination is never used again.



Rep. Robert F. Hagan, D-Youngstown, had a different solution: make sure the governor is there to watch executions.



“The administration of the death penalty is a solemn and grave duty that is entrusted to the state,” Hagan said in a statement. “I believe it would only be fitting for the public’s top representative and his director to be present.”



The governor’s spokesman, Rob Nichols, declined to comment on the execution.



@ohioaj



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