COLUMBUS: Ohio has laid out the dosages it would use in a new three-drug combination to be administered when the state resumes executions in January.
Rules for the procedure were filed Friday in federal court, formalizing changes announced Monday.
Since early 2014, Ohio has been under an unofficial execution moratorium blamed on shortages of lethal drugs.
The updated execution policy calls for using 500 milligrams of midazolam (mih-DAY’-zoh-lam), which puts the inmate to sleep; 1,000 milligrams of rocuronium bromide, which paralyzes the inmate; and 240 milliequivalents of potassium chloride, which stops the heart.
Another 500 milligrams of midazolam would be kept in reserve and administered if the first dose is insufficient. Additional doses could be added to assure the inmate is unconscious before the second and third drugs are administered.
Ohio says it’s resuming executions in January with the three-drug protocol. Midazolam has been challenged in court as unreliable.
Midazolam is an anti-anxiety drug in the benzodiazepine class, similar to Valium or Ativan. It can be used to reduce anxiety before surgery as well as sedate patients. Some states have used it to calm inmates before an execution, including Missouri, and in Ohio under the brand name Versed.
Two states, Ohio and Arizona, have used midazolam as the first in a two-drug protocol. In Ohio, inmate Dennis McGuire repeatedly gasped and snorted over 26 minutes during his January 2014 execution. The state abandoned that method afterward and hasn’t put anyone to death since. Arizona put executions on hold after the July 2014 death of convicted killer Joseph Rudolph Wood, who took nearly two hours to die. Louisiana and Kentucky also proposed using it in a two-drug method, with Kentucky later dropping the idea.
Two states, Florida and Oklahoma, have used midazolam as the first in a three-drug protocol.