‘Botched’ Prison Execution Requires 10 Attempts, Almost Two Hours

By Anastacia Mott Austin

The scheduled execution yesterday of death-row inmate Christopher Newton, 37, took almost two hours and 10 different tries to find a suitable vein for the lethal injection.

Southern Ohio Correctional Facility representatives blamed Newton’s large size for the delay. Newton weighed 265 pounds at the time of his death, and had reportedly told Joe Wilhelm, who leads Ohio’s public defender’s death penalty division, that it was hard to find veins for blood samples because of his weight.

Newton was sentenced to death for the beating and murder of his cellmate in 2001 after a chess game. In a recent interview, Newton explained that his cellmate Jason Brewer, 27, infuriated him because he would want to start a new game right at the end. "Every time I put him in check, he’d give up and want to start a new game, and I tried to tell him you never give up. I just got tired of it," Newton told reporters. He apparently stepped on Brewer’s throat, beat his head onto the floor, and strangled him with a piece of fabric cut from his prisoner’s jumpsuit.

Newton himself had requested the death penalty for his crime, and some felt he had intentionally committed a capital crime in order to be executed. Indeed, during the procedure the prisoner appeared to be in good spirits and joked with prison staff.

Scheduled to begin at 10 am Thursday, the execution was delayed when prison medical staff could not find appropriate veins in which to insert the shunts needed for the lethal chemical cocktail. Most lethal injections take approximately 20 minutes. It reportedly took 10 different attempts before a suitable vein was located. The procedure began to take so long that Newton was offered a bathroom break.

Opponents of the death penalty were outraged and demanded that the state of Ohio suspend executions. A lawsuit has been filed by a number of inmates, saying that the method of lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

"What was clear from today’s botched execution is that the state doesn’t know how to execute people without torturing them to death," said an ACLU representative to the press, adding that yesterday’s fiasco amounted to the second "botched" execution in the state in two years. Last year the execution of Joseph Lewis was delayed for over an hour because the staff could not find a vein.

The public defender’s office decided not to intervene on their client’s behalf during the delay because Newton didn’t want them to. "You have to remember that Newton wanted to die," said Ohio Public Defender Greg Meyer to reporters. "Our job isn’t to oppose the death penalty, it’s to represent our clients." Despite this, Meyer added that he felt the delay was too long. "That’s a lot of time messing around trying to get a needle in a vein."

Ohio state governor Ted Strickland also did not intervene. "There was not cause to intervene," a spokesperson for the governor reported.

Newton was pronounced dead at 11:53, and a public defender read a statement in which he apologized to Brewer’s family. "If I could take it back, I would," Newton wrote. The statement also included a note to Newton’s family. It read, "To my family, I love you and I’m sorry."

The ACLU is not content to let the matter settle, telling reporters, "Having one botched execution is too many. That Ohio has now had two botched executions in as many years is intolerable."