Execution of Dennis McGuire

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The death of Dennis McGuire occurred on January 16, 2014, at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, in what was considered to be a botched execution. McGuire was executed via lethal injection using a new combination of untried and untested drugs: midazolam and hydromorphone. During the execution, witnesses reported that McGuire could be seen struggling to breathe, and reportedly gasped loudly while making snorting and choking sounds for at least ten minutes. It took over twenty-five minutes for McGuire to die, in a process that should normally take just over eight minutes. The execution led to an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment in Ohio for over three years. McGuire's family filed a civil rights lawsuit against the state and an Illinois drug company. The lawsuit was later dropped by the family after the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced it would abandon the execution method it had used on McGuire. The state did not carry out another...

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