On Monday, the state of Ohio postponed all of its scheduled executions until at least 2017 because of issues obtaining lethal injection drugs.
The delay comes just months after state officials announced a similar postponement, one which would delay all state executions scheduled for 2015.
The more recent decision to postpone executions comes as the result of compounding pharmacies refusing to sell the lethal injection drugs to prison officials on what United Press International reports to be ethical and legal grounds.
As a result of the temporary hold on state executions, some of the state’s 25 death row inmates will see their lives extended more than three years beyond their original execute date.
One such inmate, Ronald R. Phillips, was previously scheduled to be executed on January 12, however, Monday’s decision to postpone all executions has pushed his own all the way back to January 12, 2017.
Phillips is on a death row after having been convicted of raping and beating a 3-year-old girl to death in 1993.
While state officials previously obtained an import license from the DEA that allows them to purchase execution drugs from overseas, the FDA has warned the state that attempts to import the drugs — particularly sodium thiopental and pentobarbital — would be in violation of federal law.
As a result, the state must either look towards small-scale drug manufacturers known as compounding pharmacies to obtain its preferred execution drugs, either that or risk violating federal law by importing them from overseas.
The state’s initial decision to place a stay on all executions came in January of 2014, after convicted murder Dennis McGuire took an unexpectedly long time to die — nearly half an hour. McGuire’s lethal injection was concocted from midazolam and hydromorphone, which was a previously untested combination.
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