Johnnie Baston became the second inmate executed by the State of Ohio this year, but the first using another new state procedure, and put death with a single injection of the sedative pentobarbital -- that first also being the first time the drug has been used in a U.S. execution.
Several other procedures were changed as well.
"In the past, executioners inserted the needles in the inmate's cell as witnesses watched on closed-circuit TV. No audio was provided and there was no way to hear an inmate if the process wasn't working correctly.," the Associated Press reported. "But, starting yesterday, the needles will be inserted from behind a curtain in the death chamber, where an inmate could call out to an attorney — separated only by a window — if the insertion process isn't working.
"Now, an attorney concerned about how an execution is going could use a death house phone to contact a fellow lawyer in a nearby building with access to a computer and cellphone to contact courts or other officials about the problem, Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said.
“There is a catch with the change, though: The state will still allow an inmate only three witnesses. For an inmate to be guaranteed fast access to a lawyer, he would have to give up one of his designated witnesses, usually a family member."
The U.S. Southern Ohio District Court, two years ago in Apanovich v. Wilkerson, held that an inmate's constitutional rights weren't violated by having to substitute a witness for an attorney.
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