Judge allows Ohio execution to proceed

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COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 5 (UPI) -- A U.S. District Court judge Wednesday gave Ohio the go-ahead for the first execution in the state since November.

U.S. District Court Judge Gregory L. Frost had blocked other executions scheduled in recent months because of legal complaints that Ohio prison officials had not followed their protocol for lethal injections, The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch reported.

Frost denied a request by Mark Wayne Wiles of Portage County to halt his execution, scheduled for April 18 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville.

"Ohio's new procedures look good on paper. ... Ohio has time and again failed to follow through on its own execution protocol," Frost wrote. "The protocol is constitutional as written, and executions are lawful, but the problem has been Ohio's repeated inability to do what it says it will do."

The Dispatch did not say how Ohio had failed to follow protocol for lethal injections.

Wiles was sentenced to death for the Aug. 7, 1985, killing of Mark Klima, 15, in Rootstown, in northeastern Ohio.

Wiles, 49, had worked for Klima's parents at their Rootstown farm until January 1983. More than two years later, Klima found Wiles stealing family valuables, and Wiles killed the teen, stabbing him 24 times with a butcher knife, court records said.