Ohio executes man who killed 3-years-old
Lethal injection used in state for first time since January 2014.
Ohio executed LUCASVILLE — death row inmate Ronald Phillips on Wednesday for the rape and murder of his girlfriend’s 3-yearold daughter, Sheila Marie Evans, more than two decades ago.
The execution came more than 3 1/2 years after Ohio prison officials used a previously untested lethal injection combination to put Dennis McGuire to death on Jan. 16, 2014. Witnesses said McGuire struggled, choked and
gasped during the 26-minute execution. No such complications occurred
with Phillips’ execution, which took about 11 minutes. It could
open the way for Ohio to move forward with 26 scheduled executions between now and 2020.
The Ohio Parole Board twice voted against recommending
clemency for Phillips, 43, who has been on Death Row since September 1993. Doctors who tried to save the little girl documented
more than 125 bruises on her, indicating she had been severely beaten in the head, torso, arms, legs and genitalia within a few hours of death, and they found evidence that she was sodomized.
Phillips had been granted earlier reprieves to allow legal arguments over Ohio’s lethal injection process. Ohio ditched the combo used on McGuire and replaced it with a three-drug protocol, starting with midazolam.
The McGuire ordeal put Ohio into the national spotlight and triggered a series of legal challenges to the constitutionality of the use of
the drug combo. A federal appeals court ruling in June permitted Ohio to use midazolam, which was used in the McGuire execution and others.
Opponents of the death penalty made an all-out push to stop Phillips’ execution, holding news conferences and vigils, sending 27,000 signatures on a petition to Gov. John Kasich and filing legal briefs in support of Phil- lips’ request for a stay.
Ohio adopted its current death penalty statute in 1981. Since executions resumed in 1999, Ohio has put 54 men to death.
In 2014, a 22-member task force convened by the Ohio Supreme Court called for a sweeping overhaul in how the death penalty is applied in Ohio. The group, made up of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, academics and others, made 56 recommen- dations, including eliminating some crimes from being eligible for a capital sentence, requiring strong evidence such as DNA or videotaped confessions in capital cases, and banning the execution of prisoners who suffered from serious
mental illness at the time of the crime or at the time of the execution.
In the three years since the report, very few of the recommendations have been implemented.
Six in 10 Americans still support the death penalty for convicted murderers, down from 80 percent support in 1994, according to Gallup Poll. Opposition to capital punishment has climbed to 37 percent, up from 16 percent in 1994, the poll found. The number of executions nationwide has tapered off since peaking at 98 in 1999 to 20 in 2016, according to the Death Penalty Informa
tion Center. Capital punishment laws are in place in 31 states.