LUCASVILLE, Ohio — The first inmate to die by lethal injection in Ohio in more than a year argued to the end that his obesity would make it difficult for prison staff to find suitable veins in his arms to deliver the deadly chemicals.
During preparations for his execution Tuesday, Richard Cooey shouted for one of his attorneys as prison staff tried to insert a shunt in his left arm.
“He was worried that we were on the brink of another botched execution,” said Greg Meyers, an attorney with the Ohio Public Defender’s Office.
There were no difficulties, said Larry Greene, a spokesman for the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, where Cooey was executed for killing two University of Akron students in 1986. His was the first of two executions scheduled Tuesday; a Texas inmate was to be put to death Tuesday evening.
Cooey, who stood 5-feet-7 and weighed 267 pounds, said in numerous legal filings that his obesity made death by lethal injection inhumane. Problems finding veins on other inmates had delayed previous executions in Ohio.
In east Texas, a former truck repair-shop owner convicted of fatally shooting a 22-month-old boy in a spree that also killed the child’s parents headed to the death chamber Tuesday evening. Alvin Kelly, 57, denied involvement in the 1984 slayings, but he confessed to a previous killing and was in prison for that conviction when he was charged in the triple murder.
Kelly would be the 10th Texas prisoner executed this year in the nation’s busiest capital-punishment state.
Also Tuesday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for a Georgia man to be put to death for killing a police officer, despite calls from his supporters to reconsider the case because seven of nine key witnesses have recanted their testimony.
The high court granted Troy Davis a reprieve Sept. 23, less than two hours before his scheduled execution. But the justices declined Tuesday to give his appeal a full-blown hearing, clearing the last hurdle toward his death by lethal injection. It was not immediately clear when his execution would take place.
Davis, 39, was sentenced to die for the 1989 murder of a Savannah police officer. But doubts about his guilt and a high-profile publicity campaign have won him the support of prominent advocates, including former President Carter.
