Ohio Executions Face Obstacles After Unusual Death
Source: Associated Press
Ohio Executions Face Obstacles After Unusual Death
LUCASVILLE, Ohio January 17, 2014 (AP)
By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS AP Legal Affairs Writer
Ohio's capital punishment system likely faces new challenges following an unusually long execution in which the condemned man appeared to gasp several times.
Family members of death row inmate Dennis McGuire planned a Friday news conference to announce a lawsuit over McGuire's death, which they are calling unconstitutional. And it's almost certain lawyers will use McGuire's Thursday execution to challenge Ohio's plans to put a condemned Cleveland-area killer to death next month.
"All citizens have a right to expect that they will not be treated or punished in a cruel and unusual way," defense attorney Jon Paul Rion, representing McGuire's adult children, said Thursday. "Today's actions violated that constitutional expectation."
McGuire's attorney Allen Bohnert called the convicted killer's death "a failed, agonizing experiment" and added: "The people of the state of Ohio should be appalled at what was done here today in their names."
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A few minutes before McGuire was put to death, Ohio prison director Gary Mohr said he believed the state's planning would produce "a humane, dignified execution" consistent with the law.
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ohio-executions-face-obstacles-unusual-death-21567792
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A historically quaint custom used to eliminate evil
Joy Stewart was last seen alive on February 11, 1989. That morning, she had breakfast with her neighbors between 9 and 10. She went there alone that morning because her husband, Kenny Stewart, a truck driver, worked that day from approximately 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
The following day, February 12, two hikers found the body of Joy Stewart in some woods near Bantas Creek. The front of her shirt was saturated with blood. One deputy sheriff at the scene, Larry Swihart, also noted that there appeared to be a “blood wipe mark” on her right arm.
The body was taken to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office, where an autopsy was performed. The autopsy revealed that Joy had been stabbed twice. One wound, located above the left collarbone, caused no significant injury. The critical wound was a four-and-a-half-inch-deep cut in the throat, which completely severed the carotid artery and jugular vein. The doctor determined that Joy was alive when she received the wound, and that such a wound could have been caused by a single-edged blade shorter than four and a half inches, due to “how soft and moveable the tissues are in the neck.”
The autopsy also revealed abrasions around the neck, impressed with the cloth pattern of Joy’s shirt. The coroner’s office also took vaginal, oral, and anal swabs. The coroner found an abundant amount of sperm on the anal swab, some sperm on the vaginal swab, and none on the oral swab. The coroner indicated that sperm could be detected in the vagina for days or sometimes weeks after ejaculation; however, sperm in the rectum could be detected for a lesser time “because the environment is fairly hostile for sperm, and a bowel movement usually will purge the rectum of any sperm.”
Investigator David Lindloff of the Preble County Prosecutor’s Office investigated the murder, but to no immediate avail. However, in December 1989, Lindloff was notified that McGuire wanted to talk to him about information concerning a murder in Preble County. McGuire was in jail at the time on an unrelated offense and told a corrections officer that he needed to talk to Investigator Lindloff and Deputy Swihart. Joseph Goodwin, the corrections officer McGuire initially talked to, took him to a private room to talk, where McGuire told him that he knew who had killed Joy Stewart. McGuire stated that Jerry Richardson, McGuire’s brother-in-law, had killed Joy with a knife, and he could lead investigators to it.
McGuire explained to Officer Goodwin that Richardson had wanted to have sex with Joy, but she had refused. McGuire claimed that Richardson then pulled a knife on her, and forced her to have oral sex with him. McGuire then said Richardson anally sodomized her because he “couldn’t have regular sex with her because she was pregnant.” He also said Richardson stabbed her “in the shoulder bone” and “cut her throat.”
Based on these details, Goodwin contacted Investigator Lindloff, who talked to McGuire on December 22, 1989. McGuire told Lindloff that Richardson committed the murder, that he stabbed Joy twice in the neck, and that “the first time it didn’t go in. He pulled the knife back out and stuck her again.” Lindloff was interested, since the fact that Joy had been stabbed twice in the neck and anally sodomized had not been revealed to the public at that time.
McGuire also described in detail the area where Joy’s body had been found. McGuire then led Lindloff and deputies to the murder weapon, on a local farm where he and Richardson had occasionally worked. McGuire led the officers to the hayloft and showed them where a knife was hidden behind a beam.
He ended up killing Joy for fear that he would go to jail for raping a pregnant woman.
On December 22, 1993, McGuire was indicted on one count of aggravated murder, with one felony-murder specification for rape and was also indicted on two counts of rape (vaginal and anal) and one count of kidnapping. On December 8, 1994, the jury returned a guilty verdict on the aggravated murder and specification charge. McGuire was also convicted of anal rape and kidnapping. After a sentencing hearing, the jury recommended a sentence of death for the aggravated murder. The trial judge sentenced McGuire to death, and the court of appeals affirmed.
