A condemned Ohio killer gasped, snorted and snored during a prolonged execution using a controversial, never-before-tried lethal injection this morning.
Death row inmate Dennis McGuire took 15 minutes to die by the two-drug combination, a method adopted after supplies of the state's previous drug dried up, and declared that he was going to Heaven before succumbing to the cocktail.
'I'm going to heaven, I'll see you there when you come,' he said in the small, windowless room in the Lucasville correctional facility. He was pronounced dead at 10:53 a.m., after one of the longest executions since Ohio resumed capital punishment in 1999.
The 53-year-old's attorneys had argued against using intravenous doses of the sedative midazolam and the painkiller hydromorphone, claiming the combination would cause 'air hunger' - where someone experiences immense terror and agony as they strain for breath during the execution.
McGuire's snorts and gasps, and prolonged death, suggest he may have indeed suffered the medical phenomenon and could prompt Ohio officials to review using the drug cocktail.
Previous executions with the former execution drugs took much less time, and typically did not include the loud sounds that McGuire uttered.
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