Ohio exe­cut­ed Gary Otte on September 13 after both the United States Supreme Court and the Ohio Supreme Court declined to review his chal­lenge to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of apply­ing the death penal­ty against peo­ple who were younger than age 21 at the time of the offense. 

Otte’s lawyer, super­vi­so­ry assis­tant fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er Carol Wright, said Otte exhib­it­ed ​“abnor­mal” chest and stom­ach move­ments when he was inject­ed with the exe­cu­tion drug, mida­zo­lam, show­ing signs of strug­gling for air and what she described as ​“air hunger.” Wright attempt­ed to leave the wit­ness room to reach a phone to alert a fed­er­al judge to pos­si­ble prob­lems with the exe­cu­tion, but prison offi­cials delayed her exit for sev­er­al min­utes and it took sev­er­al more min­utes to reach the court. By that time, Otte’s stom­ach move­ments had ceased and the court declined to intervene. 

Corrections spokesper­son, JoEllen Smith, said the prison ​“fol­lowed prop­er secu­ri­ty pro­to­col, and once [Wright’s] iden­ti­ty and inten­tion was ver­i­fied she was giv­en per­mis­sion to exit the room.” Smith said the exe­cu­tion was ​“car­ried out in com­pli­ance with the exe­cu­tion pol­i­cy and without complication.” 

Otte had sought stays of exe­cu­tion from the state and fed­er­al courts, ask­ing them to review his claim that his death sen­tence should be over­turned because he was only 20 years old at the time he killed Robert Wasikowski and Sharon Kostura in 1992. Otte’s lawyers cit­ed an August 2017 deci­sion by a Kentucky tri­al court that had found the brain devel­op­ment and mat­u­ra­tion of indi­vid­u­als aged 18 – 20 to be sim­i­lar in crit­i­cal respects to that of ado­les­cents under age 18, and had declared the death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly cru­el and unusu­al for defen­dants under age 21. They argued that “[t]he cur­rent sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing of ado­les­cent devel­op­ment under­scores [that] their moral cul­pa­bil­i­ty is reduced mak­ing them cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly exempt from the death penal­ty.” The Kentucky tri­al court issued a sec­ond rul­ing on September 6 that barred pros­e­cu­tors from seek­ing the death penal­ty against an 18-year-old defen­dant in another case. 

On Tuesday night, September 12, the United States Supreme Court declined to review the issue and denied a stay of exe­cu­tion. The Ohio Supreme Court fol­lowed suit on the morn­ing of September 13. Otte was pro­nounced dead short­ly before 11:00 a.m.

(E. Heisig, ​“Attorney for exe­cut­ed Parma mur­der­er says she believes inmate suf­fered pain dur­ing lethal injec­tion,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sept. 13, 2017; ​“State says Ohio exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols fol­lowed,” Associated Press, Sept. 13, 2017; ​“Killer of two in Parma asks Ohio Supreme Court to delay Wednesday exe­cu­tion,” Associated Press, Sept. 12, 2017). See Juveniles, Lethal Injection, and Executions.

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