COLUMBUS, Ohio – Governor John Kasich has delayed a condemned child killer’s execution to study the feasibility of allowing the man to donate his organs to ailing relatives.
Acknowledging Ronald Phillips’s crime as “heinous,” Kasich rescheduled his lethal injection July 2.
“I realize this is a bit of uncharted territory for Ohio, but if another life can be saved by his willingness to donate his organs and tissues then we should allow for that to happen,” Kasich said in a statement release by his office announcing the decision.
Phillips, 40, was sentenced to die for raping and killing his girlfriend’s three-year-old daughter in Akron in 1993.
Phillips made his request Monday after he’d been denied mercy and his other legal options were exhausted. He says it wasn’t a delay tactic but an attempt to do good. He asked to be allowed to donate his kidney to his mother and heart to his sister.
A prisons spokeswoman said Phillips will be returned to death row to await the assessment’s findings.
Philips was already in the spotlight as the first inmate scheduled to die by a new form of lethal injection.