The man whose execution was called off after officials failed to find a vein

The man whose execution was called off after officials failed to find a vein

Ohio killer Romell Broom survived a 2009 botched execution. He was sentenced to die for raping and killing 14-year-old Tryna Middleton after abducting her in Cleveland in 1984 as she walked home from a football game with two friends. Then-Gov. Ted Strickland stopped the execution after officials tried for two hours to find a suitable vein. The inmate said he was stuck with needles at least 18 times, with pain so intense he cried and screamed. An hour into the execution, the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction recruited a part-time prison doctor with no experience or training with executions to try—again, unsuccessfully—to find a vein. Broom has been back on death row since. He tried to appeal his sentence, but lost. Despite the ruling, a second execution is years away because of other scheduled executions and uncertainty over the state's supply of lethal injection drugs.

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Ohio called off the execution of a condemned killer with multiple health problems on Wednesday, because members of the state’s execution team were unable to find a vein to insert an IV that would administer the lethal drugs. It was only the third time in US history that an execution has been called off after the process had begun. The execution team first worked on both of Alva Campbell’s arms for about 30 minutes Wednesday while he was on a gurney in the state’s death chamber and then tried to find a vein in his right leg below the knee. Members of the execution team used a device with a red flashing light that appeared to be a way of locating veins while also periodically comforting Campbell, patting him on the arm and shoulder. About 80 minutes after the execution was scheduled to begin, the 69-year-old Campbell shook hands with two guards after it appeared the insertion was successful. About two minutes later, media witnesses were told to leave without being told what was happening. Gary Mohr, head of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said the team humanely handled the attempt, but the condition of Campbell’s veins had changed since checks Tuesday. He said he called off the execution after talking with the medical team. “It was my decision that it was not likely that we’re going to access veins,” Mohr said. Campbell, who was scheduled to die for killing a teenager during a carjacking two decades ago, will be sent back to death row and there will be some consideration for a future execution date, Mohr said. Prison officials brought him into the death chamber in a wheelchair and provided him a wedge pillow on the gurney. Campbell’s attorneys had warned the inmate’s death could become a spectacle because of his breathing problems and because an exam failed to find veins suitable for IV insertion.

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