On January 16, Ohio car­ried out the first lethal injec­tion in the U.S. using a new pro­to­col, result­ing in a lengthy and dis­rup­tive exe­cu­tion. Ohio employed a back-up pro­ce­dure to exe­cute Dennis McGuire, using mida­zo­lam, a seda­tive, and hydro­mor­phone, a painkiller. Witnesses to the exe­cu­tion report­ed that McGuire snort­ed, gasped, and strug­gled dur­ing the exe­cu­tion, which took longer than usu­al for death to occur. Deborah Denno, a pro­fes­sor at Fordham Law School and lethal injec­tion expert, said, ​“Whether there were chok­ing sounds or it was just snort­ing, the exe­cu­tion didn’t go the way it was sup­posed to go.” Anesthesiologists had warned that the new cock­tail of drugs could cause a con­di­tion called ​“air hunger,” in which the inmate would gasp for air but be unable to absorb oxy­gen. On January 9, Oklahoma exe­cut­ed Michael Wilson using dif­fer­ent drugs, and the inmate on the gur­ney said, ​“I feel my whole body burn­ing,” as the drugs began to flow.

Ohio had pre­vi­ous­ly used pen­to­bar­bi­tal, an anes­thet­ic, but changed drugs after the sup­ply of pen­to­bar­bi­tal expired and the man­u­fac­tur­er put restric­tions in place to stop it from being used in executions.

(R. Lyman, ​“Ohio Execution Using Untested Drug Cocktail Renews the Debate Over Lethal Injections,” New York Times, January 16, 2014). See Lethal Injection. The 4 states (Florida, Oklahoma, Ohio, and Texas) car­ry­ing out the first exe­cu­tions of 2014 are using 4 dif­fer­ent lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures, an indi­ca­tion of how unset­tled this area is.

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