COLUMBUS, Ohio – An Ohio death row prisoner who survived an attempt to execute him by lethal injection in 2009 died on Monday of possible complications from Covid-19, the state prison system said.
At the time of the 2009 procedure, convicted prisoner Romell Broom was only the second national inmate to survive an execution after it started in modern times.
Broom, 64, was placed on the “list of likely COVIDs” maintained by the Rehabilitation and Correction Department, spokeswoman Sara French said on Tuesday. Inmates on that list are suspected of having died of COVID-19, pending a death certificate, she said.
The state says 124 prisoners died in confirmed or probable cases of the coronavirus. One death row inmate currently has a positive COVID-19 test, and 55 death row inmates tested positive and then recovered, French said.
Ohio unsuccessfully tried to kill Broom, then 53, by lethal injection on September 15, 2009. The execution was canceled after two hours, when technicians were unable to find a suitable vein, and Broom cried out in pain when he received 18 bites of needle .
Broom was returned to death row, where he struggled unsuccessfully to avoid a second execution. Its most recent execution date was in June, but in the spring, Republican Governor Mike DeWine issued an extension and set a new date in March 2022.
His lawyers argued with the United States Supreme Court that he should be spared a second attempt.
Broom survived the 2009 execution “only to live with the growing fear and anguish that the same process would be used with him on the next execution date,” lawyers Timothy Sweeney and Adele Shank said in a statement.
“May your passage in this way, and not in the execution chamber, be the final word on whether a second attempt should have been considered,” they said.
Broom was sentenced to death for raping and killing 14-year-old Tryna Middleton after kidnapping her in Cleveland in 1984 when she was returning home from a football game with two friends.
Ohio is now under a de facto death penalty moratorium, as DeWine said lethal injection is no longer an option because of the state’s inability to find drugs. He says lawmakers would have to choose a new method.
In 2015, the execution team began work in Broom, in a containment cell 17 steps from the execution chamber, at around 2 pm, four hours after the time originally scheduled for its execution due to a final request for federal appeal.
Broom even helped his executioners, trying to help them find the veins. When his help made no difference, he turned on his back and covered his face with his hands. His torso rose and his feet trembled. He wiped his eyes and received a roll of toilet paper, which he used to wipe his forehead.
When the technicians tried to use a vein on his leg, he grimaced and a member of the execution team patted him on the back.
Since the introduction of the electric chair, three other death row inmates in the United States have survived the first attempts to execute them after the process began.
- May 3, 1946: The execution of Willie Francis, 17, was canceled after a poorly prepared electric chair did not work in Louisiana. Francis was sentenced to death for the murder of St. Martinville, Louisiana, by pharmacist Andrew Thomas, who already employed Francis. The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to allow a second execution to proceed, rejecting the double penalty arguments. Louisiana successfully executed Francis at the age of 18 in an electric chair on May 9, 1947.
- November 15, 2017: The execution of Alva Campbell, 69, by lethal injection was canceled after members of the Ohio execution team told the director of state prisons that they could not find a vein. Campbell was sentenced to death for the death of 18-year-old Charles Dials during a car theft in 1997. In preparation for Campbell’s execution, the Ohio prison department decided to provide him with a wedge-shaped pillow to help him to breathe while sentenced to death because Campbell has chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder attributed to decades of smoking two packs a day habit.
- February 22, 2018: The execution of Doyle Lee Hamm, 61, who had battled lymphoma in Alabama, was canceled about 2 and a half hours after the U.S. Supreme Court released the execution to proceed after prison authorities announced that they were suspending the procedure because the medical team did not think they could obtain “adequate venous access” before the midnight deadline. Hamm was sentenced to death in 1987 for the murder of motel employee Patrick Cunningham.