COLUMBUS – Ohio says it plans to carry out at least three executions next year with a new three-drug combination.
Thomas Madden with the Ohio attorney general’s office says the state will use the drugs midazolam, rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride.
Madden told Columbus federal Judge Edmund Sargus on Monday that a new execution policy will be announced at the end of the week. The Associated Press was the only media outlet present at the court hearing.
The same combination was used in a botched execution in Oklahoma, according to opponents of the move.
“I think it’s disappointing that state is choosing to go to the same protocol that was proven to be extremely ineffective,” said assistant public defender Allen Bohnert.
“Attempts to use new drug combinations or those that have failed in past lethal injections amount to little more than human experimentation, Mike Brickner, senior policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. “Even worse, because of a secrecy law enacted by our legislature, Ohioans cannot have confidence that execution drugs were obtained through legal or ethical means, nor that they have been tested for efficacy or regulated in any way.”
The announcement puts the state on track to execute death row inmate Ronald Phillips on Jan. 12 for the rape and murder of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter in Akron in 1993.
Madden said the drugs are not compounded and are FDA approved.
Attorneys representing death row inmates say they’ll file a new challenge almost immediately.