Filings reveal details about Ohio executioners

Filings reveal details about Ohio executioners

A pair of court filings Friday challenging Ohio’s execution process provided additional details about the state’s executioners, whose names are not released by the state. The team members gave anonymous court depositions in October that are sealed and not available for public review. The team members:

—Team Member No. 9 is a phlebotomist employed by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction who draws blood as part of her daily work and has been on the execution team for several years.

—Team Member No. 10 is responsible, along with the prisons director and the warden at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, for screening potential execution team members, for establishing the policies, practices, customs and procedures for adding a member to the execution team, and for making the decision to have a person join the execution team.

—Team Member No. 17 is a full-time prison guard who does not establish IV catheters as part of his job. The only exposure he has to establishing IVs comes from his part-time work as a volunteer emergency medical technician-Intermediate. He has also served on the team for several years.

—Team Member No. 21 is also a full-time DRC employee whose job does not require him to establish IV catheters on a regular basis. He is a primary member of the medical team for executions and has been involved in the last several executions. He is licensed as an EMT, but he has not worked as an EMT for several years. He testified that he has not established an IV or administered drugs intravenously outside executions for at least the past year.