Ohio Stops Death Penalty Executions Via Lethal Injection After Inmate's Shocking Prolonged Death

The state of Ohio is set to defer all six executions for this year as it needs more time to arrange a new procedure for capital punishment and to obtain a new supply of execution drugs, according to the state prison department.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has stopped the use of a two-drug lethal injection following the prolonged death of an inmate last year.

The combination drug is composed of the sedative midazolam and painkiller hydromorphone, according to a Reuters report.

The execution of Dennis McGuire, who was convicted for the 1993 rape and murder of a pregnant woman, took 25 minutes. Witnesses said the convict gasped and had seizures for 15 of those minutes before he died. Ohio was the first state to use the combination when it executed McGuire.

The state's prison system wants to add thiopental sodium, used for lethal injections from 1999 to 2011, and pentobarbital for future lethal injections.

Ohio and other states implementing capital punishment are trying to find new formulations for execution drugs as some pharmaceutical firms cut off supplies because they no longer wanted to be linked with the death penalty.

In May, a federal judge ordered Ohio executions to be halted to allow lawyers of condemned inmates to have more time to prepare their position to the state's new plans for lethal injections.

Ohio passed a law in December that shielded compounding pharmacies that prepare the lethal formulations by giving them confidentiality. Four death row convicts have already filed a federal lawsuit against the new law, saying it violates their right to due process.

One of the convicts who filed a complaint, Ronald Phillips, had his execution moved to Jan. 21, 2016 from originally Feb. 11 for the rape and murder of his girlfriend's three-year-old daughter.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to temporarily halt the death penalty of three Oklahoma inmates who are challenging the procedure of the state's lethal injection.