Johnnie Baston of Ohio - March 10 Execution
LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Ohio appears ready to continue an execution rate of about one inmate per month following a successful procedure putting to death a condemned killer with a single dose of pentobarbital, a drug never before used by itself in an execution.
Johnnie Baston briefly gasped and appeared to grimace during Thursday's execution at the Southern Correctional Facility in Lucasville, but the moment passed quickly and he lay still for most of the 13-minute process. He was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m.
Ohio has an execution a month scheduled for the next 12 months with the exception of December, including an April 12 date for Clarence Carter, sentenced to die for beating to death a fellow Hamilton County Jail inmate in 1998.
"As I close my eyes on the light of this world, I hope to open my eyes to the light in heaven," Baston said Thursday at the conclusion of his final statement.
Baston, 37, said Gov. John Kasich — who denied his request for mercy — should have respected the opposition of his victim's family to the death penalty and commuted his sentence to life without parole. Baston also said he made a bad decision and that he hoped both his family and that of his victim could move on. He asked his brothers, both of whom were witnesses, to watch out for his teenage children as they grow up.
"I want you to tell them stories about me," Johnnie Baston said. "I want them to know the good things about me."
Baston, who grew tearful at times, also said he had hoped he wouldn't cry. "It's OK. It's OK," said his brother, Ron Baston. "You can cry."
A few minutes later, as the drugs began to flow, Ron Baston stood up and slammed his fist against a wall in the viewing area, the noise loud enough to draw the attention of warden Donald Morgan who stood near the inmate on the other side of a viewing window. "Easy, sir," a prisons guard said.
Such a physical outburst is unprecedented in Ohio's forty-plus executions. "We'll clear his name," Richard Baston said as he comforted his brother. "We'll get justice for him. I promise."
Baston stayed up all night before the execution talking on the phone. Shortly after 7 a.m. he prayed with his daughter and his aunt, who adopted and raised him.
Ohio switched to pentobarbital as its execution drug after the company that made the drug it previously used, sodium thiopental, announced production was being discontinued. Oklahoma also uses pentobarbital, a barbiturate, but in combination with other drugs that paralyze inmates and stop their hearts.
States around the country have dwindling supplies of sodium thiopental, and several have looked for supplies overseas.
Johnnie Baston had said the change to pentobarbital didn't matter.
"New drug, old drug, it doesn't matter," he said last month in a pool interview conducted by The Columbus Dispatch. "The whole process should be eliminated."
Baston's execution also marked a change in Ohio's process, giving inmates speedier access to attorneys in case something goes wrong when needles are being inserted.
Ohio has had problems with insertions in a handful of cases, including the botched 2009 execution of Romell Broom, who was sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a teenage girl abducted in Cleveland as she walked home from a football game. The governor stopped the failed needle insertion procedure after two hours.
Now, an attorney concerned about an execution could use a death house phone to contact a fellow lawyer in a nearby building with access to a computer and cell phone to contact courts or other officials about the problem, said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
There's a catch with the change: The state will still allow an inmate only three witnesses. For an inmate to be guaranteed fast access to a lawyer, he would have to give up one of his designated witnesses, usually a family member.
Baston was sentenced to die for killing Chong-Hoon Mah, 53, a South Korean immigrant who was shot in the back of the head. Mah's relatives oppose the death penalty and had spoken out against the execution. No members of the family were at the execution.
The victim was a journalist in South Korea before moving to Ohio and opening two retail stores in Toledo. He started life over as a manual laborer before opening his stores and rarely took a day off, his brother, Chonggi Mah, testified at the end of Baston's 1995 trial.
Baston has given differing accounts of the crime and has suggested he was present but didn't do the killing. But his attorneys say they don't dispute his conviction.
There was some last-minute confusion Thursday over allegations that Baston confessed during a lie-detector test arranged by his family on March 4.
LoParo said Baston had confessed, while Richard Baston, in an unusual pre-execution appearance before reporters about 40 minutes before the procedure, refuted the notion, calling it a miscommunication.
Johnnie Baston briefly gasped and appeared to grimace during Thursday's execution at the Southern Correctional Facility in Lucasville, but the moment passed quickly and he lay still for most of the 13-minute process. He was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m.
Ohio has an execution a month scheduled for the next 12 months with the exception of December, including an April 12 date for Clarence Carter, sentenced to die for beating to death a fellow Hamilton County Jail inmate in 1998.
"As I close my eyes on the light of this world, I hope to open my eyes to the light in heaven," Baston said Thursday at the conclusion of his final statement.
Baston, 37, said Gov. John Kasich — who denied his request for mercy — should have respected the opposition of his victim's family to the death penalty and commuted his sentence to life without parole. Baston also said he made a bad decision and that he hoped both his family and that of his victim could move on. He asked his brothers, both of whom were witnesses, to watch out for his teenage children as they grow up.
"I want you to tell them stories about me," Johnnie Baston said. "I want them to know the good things about me."
Baston, who grew tearful at times, also said he had hoped he wouldn't cry. "It's OK. It's OK," said his brother, Ron Baston. "You can cry."
A few minutes later, as the drugs began to flow, Ron Baston stood up and slammed his fist against a wall in the viewing area, the noise loud enough to draw the attention of warden Donald Morgan who stood near the inmate on the other side of a viewing window. "Easy, sir," a prisons guard said.
Such a physical outburst is unprecedented in Ohio's forty-plus executions. "We'll clear his name," Richard Baston said as he comforted his brother. "We'll get justice for him. I promise."
Baston stayed up all night before the execution talking on the phone. Shortly after 7 a.m. he prayed with his daughter and his aunt, who adopted and raised him.
Ohio switched to pentobarbital as its execution drug after the company that made the drug it previously used, sodium thiopental, announced production was being discontinued. Oklahoma also uses pentobarbital, a barbiturate, but in combination with other drugs that paralyze inmates and stop their hearts.
States around the country have dwindling supplies of sodium thiopental, and several have looked for supplies overseas.
Johnnie Baston had said the change to pentobarbital didn't matter.
"New drug, old drug, it doesn't matter," he said last month in a pool interview conducted by The Columbus Dispatch. "The whole process should be eliminated."
Baston's execution also marked a change in Ohio's process, giving inmates speedier access to attorneys in case something goes wrong when needles are being inserted.
Ohio has had problems with insertions in a handful of cases, including the botched 2009 execution of Romell Broom, who was sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a teenage girl abducted in Cleveland as she walked home from a football game. The governor stopped the failed needle insertion procedure after two hours.
Now, an attorney concerned about an execution could use a death house phone to contact a fellow lawyer in a nearby building with access to a computer and cell phone to contact courts or other officials about the problem, said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
There's a catch with the change: The state will still allow an inmate only three witnesses. For an inmate to be guaranteed fast access to a lawyer, he would have to give up one of his designated witnesses, usually a family member.
Baston was sentenced to die for killing Chong-Hoon Mah, 53, a South Korean immigrant who was shot in the back of the head. Mah's relatives oppose the death penalty and had spoken out against the execution. No members of the family were at the execution.
The victim was a journalist in South Korea before moving to Ohio and opening two retail stores in Toledo. He started life over as a manual laborer before opening his stores and rarely took a day off, his brother, Chonggi Mah, testified at the end of Baston's 1995 trial.
Baston has given differing accounts of the crime and has suggested he was present but didn't do the killing. But his attorneys say they don't dispute his conviction.
There was some last-minute confusion Thursday over allegations that Baston confessed during a lie-detector test arranged by his family on March 4.
LoParo said Baston had confessed, while Richard Baston, in an unusual pre-execution appearance before reporters about 40 minutes before the procedure, refuted the notion, calling it a miscommunication.