The death row execution of an Ohio man was delayed briefly for one hour on Tuesday after he cried out as he lay on the lethal injection table, according to local media reports.
Joseph Clark (57) reportedly cried out: ”It don’t work. It don’t work.” The death row inmate was eventually executed after technicians adjusted an intravenous line.
Clark’s vein had collapsed, or ”blown out” before the sedatives kicked in and a new intravenous line had to be set up, The Columbus Dispatch reports.
He could be heard ”moaning, crying out and [making] guttural noises” after technicians closed a curtain so that the media and relatives of the man Clark admitted to killing in 1984 could not observe them trying to set up a new IV line.
Clark was eventually executed at 11:26 am local time (15.26pm GMT) at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville.
Legal challenges to lethal injection are pending in several states on the basis that the drugs used can paralyse rather than sedate a prisoner, who can then suffer a silent but painful death during an execution.
Death row opponents say this violates the US Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. – AFP
