An Ohio inmate, convicted of killing and dismembering a 22-year-old woman in 1991, was executed Tuesday using a new, untested one-drug method of lethal injection, state officials said.
Kenneth Biros, 51, was pronounced dead at 11:47 a.m. at a prison in Lucasville, Ohio, the state attorney general's office said in a written statement.
His last words, according to Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokeswoman Julie Walburn, were: "Sorry from the bottom of my heart. I want to thank all of my family and friends for my prayers and who supported and believed in me.
"My father, now I'm being paroled to heaven," Biros said, according to Walburn. "I will now spend all of my holidays with my lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Peace be with you all. Amen."
Biros' execution is the first in Ohio since September, when the governor and federal courts halted capital punishment in the state after a botched attempt to execute another prisoner, Romell Broom. The prison staff could not find a suitable vein for the injections.
The one-drug method had never been tried on a U.S. death row inmate. It relies on a single dose of sodium thiopental injected into a vein. A separate two-drug muscle injection was available as a backup, officials said. The one-drug method has been used to euthanize animals.
The same drug, sodium thiopental, at a much lower dosage, is the first ingredient in the three-drug method previously used in Ohio, as well as in all but one of the other 34 states that allow the death penalty.
Some capital punishment opponents claim the sodium thiopental, which renders the prisoner unconscious, can wear off too quickly, and that some prisoners would actually be awake and able to feel pain as the procedure continues.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/12/08/ohio.execution/index.html
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