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Killer of UA students says he's too fat for death penalty

Suit claims lethal injection unlikely to work fast enough on Richard Cooey

Published on Tuesday, Aug 05, 2008


Associated Press
COLUMBUS: A death-row inmate convicted of raping and murdering two University of Akron students says he's so fat that Ohio executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the drugs used in lethal injections.

Lawyers for Richard Cooey argue in a federal lawsuit that Cooey had poor veins when he faced execution five years ago and that the problem has been worsened by weight gain.

They cite a document filed by a prison nurse in 2003 that said Cooey had sparse veins and that executioners would need extra time.

''When you start the IVs, come 15 minutes early,'' wrote the nurse who examined Cooey. ''I don't have any veins.''

The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in
Columbus, also says prison officials have had difficulty drawing blood from Cooey for medical procedures. Cooey is 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs 267 pounds, according to the lawsuit.

Cooey, 41, was sentenced to die for raping and murdering two University of Akron students in 1986. A federal judge granted Cooey a last-minute reprieve in 2003. In April, he lost a challenge to Ohio's lethal injection process when the U.S. Supreme Court said he had missed a deadline to file a lawsuit.

Cooey's execution is scheduled for Oct. 14. He would be the first inmate put to death in Ohio since Christopher Newton was executed last year for killing a prison cellmate over their chess games.

 

It would also be the first execution in Ohio since the end of an unofficial national moratorium that began last year while the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Kentucky's lethal injection procedure.

Since the court upheld the procedure in April, 16 inmates have been executed around the country.

Attorneys for Cooey in his latest lawsuit say a drug he is taking for migraine headaches could diminish the effectiveness of the first of three drugs Ohio uses in its execution process.

Cooey's use of the drug Topamax, a type of seizure medication, may have created a resistance to thiopental, the drug used to put inmates to sleep before two other lethal drugs are administered, Dr. Mark Heath, who was hired by the Ohio Public Defender's Office, said in documents filed with the court.


Get the full article here.



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