poledriver
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Secrets of the execution chamber revealed
CONDEMNED child killer Ronald Ray Phillips is due to die next Thursday for raping and murdering his girlfriend's three-year-old daughter.
Phillips will be taken to the southern Ohio Correction Facility's death row facility outside the tiny jail town of Lucasville, where he will be strapped to a lethal injection gurney inside a windowed death room.
Watched by his victim's relatives, Phillips will be injected intravenously with two drugs which will cause irreversible brain and heart damage. He will die within minutes.
Only one thing will keep Phillips from dying.
That is if his lawyers win an appeal in Ohio's state courts, because Phillips is fighting his death sentence all the way to the execution chamber.
He claims a "fear of needles" from an abusive past as the child of drug addicts, and a father who raped him from the age of four.
While "eleventh hour" appeals are common ahead of execution dates, Phillips' case is the first of its kind.
His lawyers are arguing against Phillips becoming the first prisoner to die by a "two drug death protocol" of injection of the drugs midazolam and hydromorphone, never before used in a US execution.
America is running out of its lethal injection drugs of choice, principally pentobarbitol, after its only US supplier ceased production and its Danish manufacturer, Lundbeck, won't sell it for use in executions, saying it is "unsafe".
In the past, virtually all the 32 American states that allow the death penalty relied on a mix of three chemicals to slowly and quietly kill the condemned.
Convicted murderers are now mounting challenges to new "drug cocktails" for capital punishment.
A growing list of inmates among the 3,175 on death row in the US are filing Supreme Court orders against states' rights to use different drugs or change procedures, arguing they "will suffer excruciating pain during execution".
The nationwide dilemma facing prison death wardens and in particular Phillips' legal battle has allowed what actually happens in an execution chamber to be revealed.
And Phillips' story is a textbook case of what happens to a murderer with a date for execution.
Ronald Phillips has been sitting on death row for 20 years.
In January, 1993, he tortured, sodomised and beat Sheila Marie Evans for days before she died with 125 bruises on her head, face, torso, arms, legs, and genitalia.
The little girl's mother, who reportedly held the child down while Phillips raped her, got 30 years for involuntary manslaughter and child endangering.
At the age of 19, Phillips received the death penalty, which back then in Ohio meant the electric chair.
While electrocution, hanging and the gas chamber have all been execution methods in the US, death by lethal injection has been used in most US states for decades.
Murderers customarily pass years on death row, exhausting appeal options and delaying execution until the state authorities set down a date, at which point a prisoner's legal team intensifies its efforts to win a stay of execution.
Execution: the procedure
1. No date set
In Phillips' case, his lawyers appealed to the Ohio Parole Board for clemency, arguing his "dirty, horrific, appalling, drug-infested life" had set him up to become an abuser and a criminal.
Attorney Lisa Lagos argued Phillips grew up in a "house of hell" in which he was raped by his father and a male cousin, was physically and verbally abused and his mother and father sold drugs from the family home.
She said prostitutes trawled for clients outside the the Phillips family's front door.
A girl in a neighbouring home was forced to have intercourse with a dog.
Phillips' father routinely forced the children to strip naked before he whipped them. He would break dishes over their heads
Were his sentence commuted, Lagos argued, Phillips would like to help others who, like him, were abused as children.
The parole board voted 11-0 against clemency for Phillips, reminding those in session of the details of little Sheila Evans' suffering.
The board concluded Phillips' crime was "clearly among the worst of the worst capital crimes" and "its depravity is self-evident".
The months leading up to the execution
After an inmate's appeals have been exhausted, gizmodo.com reports, an execution order is ordered by the court and the date of execution is set.
In the weeks preceding the date, the inmate is interviewed by psychiatrists, clergy, and social workers for pre-execution reports and reviews of their sanity.
Two weeks before execution
In Phillips' case, and increasingly among death row inmates as lethal "drug protocols" change, lawyers will file a challenge to the governing state's authority.
The death warden at the southern Ohio Correction Facility in Lucasville gave notice the state did not have enough pentobarbital for Phillips' execution,
Under new guidelines that took effect last month, the scheduled execution is due to proceed with the two drug protocol of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a morphine derivative, to be injected directly into the inmate's veins.
In an unprecedented move, Phillips testified in court as part of a lawsuit brought by his attorneys to delay his execution while they gathered evidence against the new protocol.
The inmate said a prison doctor couldn't find his veins during a pre-execution check-up,
"I guess the Lord hid my veins from them," said Phillips, whose legal team have argued he has changed and found God during his incarceration.
Phillips' lawyers argued the two drugs could cause severe side effects, including painful vomiting.
Ohio lawyers countered the state was "committed to carrying out the execution in a humane, dignified and constitutional manner" and Phillips would die within minutes.
Ronald Ray Phillips is fighting his execution due next Thursday on the grounds he is
One week before the execution
In the days leading up to the scheduled execution, the inmate is allowed priority visiting rights for family, spiritual advisers and legal representation.
In Ronald Phillips' case, he will be transported from the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, where he has been living on death row, 55 kms south to the Southern Ohio Correction Facility death house which lies on the outskirts of Lucasville.
Family members of both Phillips and his victim, Sheila Evans, will arrive in town.
Anti-death sentence protesters will set up outside the execution chamber.
Day of the execution
The condemned prisoner is given a fresh pair of prison overalls, and an electrocardiograph (ECG) monitor.
He is allowed a last visit from family and loved ones and a free choice of his last meal.
He then has the option of taking last rites from a priest or minister, after which he will be taken to the execution chamber and strapped to a gurney.
The final moments
Until recently, most US states relied on a lethal injection method known as Chapman's Protocol, after the Oklahoma medical examiner who invented it in 1977.
This relies on a trio of powerful drugs, an anaesthetic to render the inmate unconscious, a paralytic to stop the inmate's breathing and a drug to stop the heart.
Each drug is individually lethal in its administered dose - and even more so when used together, but the combination is intended to induce a swift and painless death.
The prisoner is strapped to the gurney inside a room with glass observation panels for the victims' family to watch the procedure.
IV lines are inserted into two usable veins (one as a backup), and a slow saline drip is started.
The condemned man is given the opportunity to say some last words to the witnesses.
When that is completed, the death warden issues the execution order and the process begins.
Five grams (14 times the .35g recommended dosage) of sodium pentothal, a fast-acting barbiturate, is administered first.
Typically used as an anaesthetic for medically induced comas, this should render the condemned inmate unconscious within ten seconds.
Following a saline flush of the IV line, 100mg of Pancuronium bromide is injected next.
This drug is a muscle relaxant that effectively paralyses the inmate and arrests his breathing.
After a final IV flush, the inmate receives an injection of 100 mg of potassium chloride.
Potassium is an electrolyte used by bodies to help transmit electrical signals among neurons and muscles.
However, when large amounts of potassium are injected into the bloodstream, it throws off the body's electrolytic balance and causes a condition called hyperkalemia.
This lowers the resting electrical potential of the heart muscle cells, preventing them from repolarizing and refiring - effectively stopping the heart and inducing cardiac arrest.
Once the ECG registers "asystole", or flatline, a physician will inspect the inmate and declare an official time of death.
Sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a 14-year-old Tryna Middleton in 1984, death row inmate, Romell Broom, survived dea
While execution candidates like Ronald Phillips argue new drug cocktails may not effectively kill without causing pain, the Chapman Protocol hasn't always worked either.
On 15 September 2009, Romell Broom was scheduled to die in the same execution chamber for which Phillips is headed.
After waking up to what he thought was the last day of his life, Broom, who was convicted of the murder, kidnapping and rape of a 14-year-old girl in 1984, won an unexpected reprieve when the execution team couldn't find a suitable vein for the IV line.
Chapman's Protocol has spread abroad, becoming the preferred method used by China, Thailand, Guatemala, and Taiwan.
But even the method's inventor, Dr. Chapman himself, is in favour of discontinuing its use in executions.
He told CNN news in 2007, "The simplest thing I know of is the guillotine and I'm not at all opposed to bringing it back.
"The person's head is cut off and that's the end of it."
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/re...chamber-revealed/story-fnixwvgh-1226755634436
CONDEMNED child killer Ronald Ray Phillips is due to die next Thursday for raping and murdering his girlfriend's three-year-old daughter.
Phillips will be taken to the southern Ohio Correction Facility's death row facility outside the tiny jail town of Lucasville, where he will be strapped to a lethal injection gurney inside a windowed death room.
Watched by his victim's relatives, Phillips will be injected intravenously with two drugs which will cause irreversible brain and heart damage. He will die within minutes.
Only one thing will keep Phillips from dying.
That is if his lawyers win an appeal in Ohio's state courts, because Phillips is fighting his death sentence all the way to the execution chamber.
He claims a "fear of needles" from an abusive past as the child of drug addicts, and a father who raped him from the age of four.
While "eleventh hour" appeals are common ahead of execution dates, Phillips' case is the first of its kind.
His lawyers are arguing against Phillips becoming the first prisoner to die by a "two drug death protocol" of injection of the drugs midazolam and hydromorphone, never before used in a US execution.
America is running out of its lethal injection drugs of choice, principally pentobarbitol, after its only US supplier ceased production and its Danish manufacturer, Lundbeck, won't sell it for use in executions, saying it is "unsafe".
In the past, virtually all the 32 American states that allow the death penalty relied on a mix of three chemicals to slowly and quietly kill the condemned.
Convicted murderers are now mounting challenges to new "drug cocktails" for capital punishment.
A growing list of inmates among the 3,175 on death row in the US are filing Supreme Court orders against states' rights to use different drugs or change procedures, arguing they "will suffer excruciating pain during execution".
The nationwide dilemma facing prison death wardens and in particular Phillips' legal battle has allowed what actually happens in an execution chamber to be revealed.
And Phillips' story is a textbook case of what happens to a murderer with a date for execution.
Ronald Phillips has been sitting on death row for 20 years.
In January, 1993, he tortured, sodomised and beat Sheila Marie Evans for days before she died with 125 bruises on her head, face, torso, arms, legs, and genitalia.
The little girl's mother, who reportedly held the child down while Phillips raped her, got 30 years for involuntary manslaughter and child endangering.
At the age of 19, Phillips received the death penalty, which back then in Ohio meant the electric chair.
While electrocution, hanging and the gas chamber have all been execution methods in the US, death by lethal injection has been used in most US states for decades.
Murderers customarily pass years on death row, exhausting appeal options and delaying execution until the state authorities set down a date, at which point a prisoner's legal team intensifies its efforts to win a stay of execution.
Execution: the procedure
1. No date set
In Phillips' case, his lawyers appealed to the Ohio Parole Board for clemency, arguing his "dirty, horrific, appalling, drug-infested life" had set him up to become an abuser and a criminal.
Attorney Lisa Lagos argued Phillips grew up in a "house of hell" in which he was raped by his father and a male cousin, was physically and verbally abused and his mother and father sold drugs from the family home.
She said prostitutes trawled for clients outside the the Phillips family's front door.
A girl in a neighbouring home was forced to have intercourse with a dog.
Phillips' father routinely forced the children to strip naked before he whipped them. He would break dishes over their heads
Were his sentence commuted, Lagos argued, Phillips would like to help others who, like him, were abused as children.
The parole board voted 11-0 against clemency for Phillips, reminding those in session of the details of little Sheila Evans' suffering.
The board concluded Phillips' crime was "clearly among the worst of the worst capital crimes" and "its depravity is self-evident".
The months leading up to the execution
After an inmate's appeals have been exhausted, gizmodo.com reports, an execution order is ordered by the court and the date of execution is set.
In the weeks preceding the date, the inmate is interviewed by psychiatrists, clergy, and social workers for pre-execution reports and reviews of their sanity.
Two weeks before execution
In Phillips' case, and increasingly among death row inmates as lethal "drug protocols" change, lawyers will file a challenge to the governing state's authority.
The death warden at the southern Ohio Correction Facility in Lucasville gave notice the state did not have enough pentobarbital for Phillips' execution,
Under new guidelines that took effect last month, the scheduled execution is due to proceed with the two drug protocol of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a morphine derivative, to be injected directly into the inmate's veins.
In an unprecedented move, Phillips testified in court as part of a lawsuit brought by his attorneys to delay his execution while they gathered evidence against the new protocol.
The inmate said a prison doctor couldn't find his veins during a pre-execution check-up,
"I guess the Lord hid my veins from them," said Phillips, whose legal team have argued he has changed and found God during his incarceration.
Phillips' lawyers argued the two drugs could cause severe side effects, including painful vomiting.
Ohio lawyers countered the state was "committed to carrying out the execution in a humane, dignified and constitutional manner" and Phillips would die within minutes.
Ronald Ray Phillips is fighting his execution due next Thursday on the grounds he is
One week before the execution
In the days leading up to the scheduled execution, the inmate is allowed priority visiting rights for family, spiritual advisers and legal representation.
In Ronald Phillips' case, he will be transported from the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, where he has been living on death row, 55 kms south to the Southern Ohio Correction Facility death house which lies on the outskirts of Lucasville.
Family members of both Phillips and his victim, Sheila Evans, will arrive in town.
Anti-death sentence protesters will set up outside the execution chamber.
Day of the execution
The condemned prisoner is given a fresh pair of prison overalls, and an electrocardiograph (ECG) monitor.
He is allowed a last visit from family and loved ones and a free choice of his last meal.
He then has the option of taking last rites from a priest or minister, after which he will be taken to the execution chamber and strapped to a gurney.
The final moments
Until recently, most US states relied on a lethal injection method known as Chapman's Protocol, after the Oklahoma medical examiner who invented it in 1977.
This relies on a trio of powerful drugs, an anaesthetic to render the inmate unconscious, a paralytic to stop the inmate's breathing and a drug to stop the heart.
Each drug is individually lethal in its administered dose - and even more so when used together, but the combination is intended to induce a swift and painless death.
The prisoner is strapped to the gurney inside a room with glass observation panels for the victims' family to watch the procedure.
IV lines are inserted into two usable veins (one as a backup), and a slow saline drip is started.
The condemned man is given the opportunity to say some last words to the witnesses.
When that is completed, the death warden issues the execution order and the process begins.
Five grams (14 times the .35g recommended dosage) of sodium pentothal, a fast-acting barbiturate, is administered first.
Typically used as an anaesthetic for medically induced comas, this should render the condemned inmate unconscious within ten seconds.
Following a saline flush of the IV line, 100mg of Pancuronium bromide is injected next.
This drug is a muscle relaxant that effectively paralyses the inmate and arrests his breathing.
After a final IV flush, the inmate receives an injection of 100 mg of potassium chloride.
Potassium is an electrolyte used by bodies to help transmit electrical signals among neurons and muscles.
However, when large amounts of potassium are injected into the bloodstream, it throws off the body's electrolytic balance and causes a condition called hyperkalemia.
This lowers the resting electrical potential of the heart muscle cells, preventing them from repolarizing and refiring - effectively stopping the heart and inducing cardiac arrest.
Once the ECG registers "asystole", or flatline, a physician will inspect the inmate and declare an official time of death.
Sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a 14-year-old Tryna Middleton in 1984, death row inmate, Romell Broom, survived dea
While execution candidates like Ronald Phillips argue new drug cocktails may not effectively kill without causing pain, the Chapman Protocol hasn't always worked either.
On 15 September 2009, Romell Broom was scheduled to die in the same execution chamber for which Phillips is headed.
After waking up to what he thought was the last day of his life, Broom, who was convicted of the murder, kidnapping and rape of a 14-year-old girl in 1984, won an unexpected reprieve when the execution team couldn't find a suitable vein for the IV line.
Chapman's Protocol has spread abroad, becoming the preferred method used by China, Thailand, Guatemala, and Taiwan.
But even the method's inventor, Dr. Chapman himself, is in favour of discontinuing its use in executions.
He told CNN news in 2007, "The simplest thing I know of is the guillotine and I'm not at all opposed to bringing it back.
"The person's head is cut off and that's the end of it."
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/re...chamber-revealed/story-fnixwvgh-1226755634436
