Protesters at the Athens County Courthouse Tuesday evening held a vigil for death-row inmate Ronald Phillips, who will be put to death Wednesday morning by a three-drug cocktail at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville.
Phillips raped and beat his then-girlfriend’s daughter to death in 1993. His lethal injection has been delayed numerous times since his first execution date in 2013, largely because those opposing capital punishment persuaded pharmaceutical companies to stop selling barbituate pentobarbital, the drug Ohio used, to executioners.
Phillips is the first person put to death in Ohio since 2014.
“I think what makes Ronald’s (case) unique is that they are using drugs they have had trouble with already,” Rodney Nippert, an Athens County resident, said. “The last person they put to death, they used this same drug and that went on for 20 minutes.”
In 2014, Dennis McGuire underwent the state’s longest execution of 26 minutes, which resulted in a ruling that the method used was unconstitutional, according to cleveland.com.
Since McGuire’s death, Ohio has undergone court battles and an extended search for chemicals in order to enact the death penalty while complying with the U.S. Supreme Court’s constitutional test for lethal injection.
A state review concluded that McGuire did not suffer “any pain or distress” during his execution, according to cleveland.com. State prison officials said in a report they intended to increase the dosage of the drugs to “reaffirm” they will work properly.
If Phillips’ execution is deemed successful by the state, there are 26 inmates awaiting the death penalty in Ohio over the next three years, according to WKSU, a radio station in Northeast Ohio.
Although it was a vigil for Phillips, the protesters were most concerned about the concept of legal killing.
“(Phillips) hasn’t claimed that he didn’t do it, it was a three year old girl, it was a horrible situation so I’m not here saying that this is a person that didn’t do something horrible and doesn’t need to pay for it,” Nippert said. “He does need to pay for what he did, but I just feel like killing him is not a way to make him pay.”
Although only four protesters were at the Courthouse on Tuesday, last week Gov. John Kasich received more than 27 thousand petitions asking him to stop the executions of Phillips and other death-row inmates, according to the Statehouse News Bureau.
Athens community members have held vigils for federal and state death row inmates since the death penalty in Ohio was reinstated in 1999. During that reinstatement, the New Covenant Fellowship took on ensuring a presence of the vigils and over the years, members of the Athens community have continued that.
