LUCASVILLE, Ohio, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- Dennis McGuire, convicted of raping and killing a 22-year-old woman, was executed Thursday with an untested two-drug cocktail, Ohio prison officials said.
Dennis McGuire was convicted in 1994 of aggravated murder in the raping, choking and stabbing of Joy Stewart in 1989.
The state Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said McGuire, 53, was executed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Institute in Lucasville, the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported.
Last month McGuire admitted responsibility in Stewart's murder in a letter to Gov. John Kasich two days before his clemency hearing. Kasich eventually accepted the recommendation of the Ohio Parole Board and rejected McGuire's clemency request.
Ohio, as many states, was forced to find new drug protocols after European-based manufacturers banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs, including pentobarbital, which Ohio uses in its lethal injections, in executions. the Plain Dealer said..
McGuire was the first inmate in the country to be executed with the untried cocktail of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a painkiller, the Plain Dealer said.
The state announced the new protocol in October and had planned to use it in the execution of Ronald Phillips, 40, who scheduled to die in November for killing a 3-year-old girl, the Plain Dealer said. Kasich delayed Phillips' execution to allow time to study whether Phillips could donate his organs as he had requested.
A federal court last week rejected a delay request by McGuire's lawyers who argued against use of the new method.
