14 January 2012 :

U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost delayed next week’s execution of Charles Lorraine, saying the state had once again failed to follow its own rules for executions. Judge Frost said he does not want to micromanage Ohio executions but added that the Department of Corrections has left him no choice by disobeying his previous orders. Lorraine was scheduled to die by injection on Jan. 18. Both the prisons system and the Ohio attorney general’s office were reviewing the decision and could not immediately comment. The state has usually, but not always, appealed similar decisions by Frost to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Records show Lorraine, 45, stabbed 77-year-old Raymond Montgomery and his wife, 80-year-old Doris Montgomery, before burglarizing their Trumbull County home in 1986. Frost acknowledged in his opinion that the state’s departures from the rules seemed minor on the surface, but that Lorraine’s attorney had provided enough evidence that they mattered. Frost said the issue was the state’s failure to follow its own protocol to the letter, not the seriousness of any violations. In the Nov. 15 execution of Reginald Brooks, evidence indicates that Ohio failed to review Brooks’ medical chart upon his arrival at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, home to Ohio’s death house, as required by the state’s policies. An inmate’s medical status, especially the condition of his veins, has been an issue since 2009 when executioners tried unsuccessfully to insert needles into an inmate’s veins before the execution was finally called off. Inmate Romell Broom remains on death row, appealing the state’s right to try to execute him again. Executioners also failed to properly “document the name or description, the expiration date, and the lot number of the execution drugs used” in Brooks’ execution, Frost said. Frost called the case frustrating: “Ohio has been in a dubious cycle of defending often indefensible conduct, subsequently reforming its protocol when called on that conduct, and then failing to follow through on its own reforms,” he said.