Prison log: Execution trouble due to drug use

updated 1:14 p.m. ET Sept. 16, 2009

LUCASVILLE, Ohio - A prison log blames a condemned inmate's past drug use for problems finding a usable vein during an execution attempt that was stopped Tuesday after an unprecedented two hours.

The log of Tuesday's scheduled execution of Romell Broom indicates that executioners made the observation at 3:11 p.m., more than an hour after first trying to find a vein.

"Medical team having problem maintaining an open vein due to past drug use," said the log reviewed by The Associated Press.

Broom said at one point he was a heavy heroin user, but then said at another time that he wasn't, prison spokeswoman Julie Walburn said Wednesday.

Broom, 53, has been placed in a cell in the infirmary at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville where he is on close watch similar to the constant observation of death row inmates in the three days before an execution.

Gov. Ted Strickland on Tuesday issued a one-week reprieve to Broom, who spent more than two hours awaiting execution as technicians searched for a vein strong enough to deliver the three-drug lethal injection. The issue arose three years after Ohio revised its lethal injection protocol due to problems with another inmate's IV.

No Ohio governor has issued a similar last-minute reprieve since the state resumed executions in 1999.

'Ready to die'
The night before his scheduled execution, Broom told his brother over the phone that he was ready to die.

"He is tired of being in prison and having people tell him what to do every day," according to the prison log.

Richard Dieter, director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said he knows of only one inmate who was subjected to more than one execution.

A first attempt to execute Willie Francis in 1946 by electrocution in Louisiana did not work. He was returned to death row for nearly a year while the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether a second electrocution would be unconstitutional.

Dieter said he expects legal challenges will mean Broom will not face execution again in a week's time.

"I think this is going to be challenged, whether under our standards of decency subjecting someone to multiple executions is cruel and unusual ... whether this is in effect experimenting on human beings, whether or not they're sure what works in Ohio," he said.

Broom was sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a 14-year-old Tryna Middleton after abducting her in Cleveland in September 1984 as she walked home from a Friday night football game with two friends.

Prisons director Terry Collins said the execution team eventually told him they didn't believe Broom's veins would hold if the execution reached the point when the lethal drugs would be administered.

Collins said he contacted the governor at about 4 p.m. to let him know about the difficulties and request a reprieve.

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