Romell Broom, Who Survived Botched Execution, Dies of COVID-19 on Ohio Death Row

Romell Broom (pic­tured), who sur­vived a botched exe­cu­tion attempt in September 2009, has died on Ohio​’s death row of sus­pect­ed COVID-19 com­pli­ca­tions. He was 64 years old and had spent more than half his life on death row.

A Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokesper­son said Broom died on December 28, 2020. Corrections author­i­ties placed him on their ​“COVID prob­a­ble list” of pris­on­ers sus­pect­ed to have died of COVID-19, pend­ing final con­fir­ma­tion of his cause of death. At least 17 death-row pris­on­ers in four states have died of COVID-19, match­ing the num­ber of exe­cu­tions this year. At least 124 pris­on­ers in Ohio have died from the coro­n­avirus, includ­ing Ohio’s old­est death-row pris­on­er, James Frazier, 79, who died on November 19 after 15 years on death row.

Broom was con­vict­ed of kid­nap­ping, rape, and mur­der in Cuyahoga County and was sen­tenced to death in October 1985. Ohio first tried to exe­cute him on September 15, 2009, but abort­ed the exe­cu­tion after two hours of unsuc­cess­ful attempts by exe­cu­tion­ers to estab­lish a viable IV line. Despite insert­ing the IV in 18 dif­fer­ent sites on Broom’s arms and legs, prison per­son­nel failed to find a suit­able vein, and in one case instead struck bone.

Broom then chal­lenged the state’s author­i­ty to attempt to exe­cute him a sec­ond time, argu­ing that to do so would vio­late the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion against twice plac­ing a per­son in jeop­ardy of life. In a divid­ed 4 – 3 deci­sion, the Ohio Supreme Court on March 16, 2016 ruled against his claims and autho­rized the state to try for a sec­ond time to execute him. 

Writing for the major­i­ty, Justice Judith Lanzinger said the botched effort to put Broom to death was not a failed exe­cu­tion because set­ting the IV line was only a ​“pre­lim­i­nary step” to an exe­cu­tion and the exe­cu­tion itself ​“com­mences when the lethal drug enters the IV line.” The major­i­ty rea­soned that ​“because the attempt did not pro­ceed to the point of injec­tion of a lethal drug into the IV line, jeop­ardy never attached.”

The court also denied Broom’s claim that a sec­ond exe­cu­tion attempt would con­sti­tute cru­el and unsu­al pun­ish­ment. Assuming that prison per­son­nel would com­ply with the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col and suc­cess­ful­ly car­ry out the exe­cu­tion, Lanzinger wrote: ​“We sim­ply are unable to con­clude that Broom has estab­lished that the state in car­ry­ing out a sec­ond attempt is like­ly to vio­late its pro­to­col and cause severe pain.”

The state resched­uled Broom’s exe­cu­tion for June 17, 2020, but Governor Mike DeWine issued a reprieve on April 14, 2020, cit­ing the unavail­abil­i­ty of exe­cu­tion drugs. DeWine resched­uled Broom’s exe­cu­tion for March 16, 2022.