LUCASVILLE, Ohio – Ohio is looking to the future of its execution procedure after its drug supply expired with the lethal injection of a white gunman who had spewed racial slurs before fatally shooting a black man and a police officer in a 1994 rampage.
Sixty-one-year-old Harry Mitts Jr. died at 10:39 a.m. Wednesday after a lethal injection of the sedative pentobarbital. He had been convicted in the killings of a neighbor's black boyfriend and a white Garfield Heights police sergeant.
Prisons director Gary Mohr says Ohio is on track to tell a court by Oct. 4 how executions will proceed now that its drug supply has expired.
An agency lawyer said earlier this year legislation may be needed to protect specialty pharmacies that might mix supplies of future execution drugs from sanctions.
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