On December 31, 2003, Lewis Williams and John Roe, who were both death-sentenced inmates of the Mansfield Correctional Institution in Mansfield, Ohio filed a lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. Williams and Roe asked the Court to stay their executions and issue an injunction against the defendants' use of their current lethal injection protocol, which they alleged would violate their Constitutional rights by torturing them to death. Specifically, they feared that the short-acting anesthetic used by the defendants would wear off too soon, allowing them to feel the excrutiatingly painful effects of the potassium chloride that was used during the lethal injection process. In addition, they argued that the defendants' use of pancuronium bromide would paralyze them, making them unable to cry out or alert their executioners that the anesthetic had worn off too soon.

The defendants argued that the complaint was in reality a successive habeas petition, which needed to be transferred to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and that the District Court had no jurisdiction over the claim. On January 6, 2004, the District Court (Judge James L. Graham) construed the petition as a successive habeas petition and transferred the case to the Sixth Circuit.

On February 3, 2004, the Sixth Circuit granted the defendants' motion to dismiss the case, ruling that this was a successive habeas petition, and that the plaintiffs had not met the requirements for filing a successive habeas petition. The plaintiffs sought review by the U.S. Supreme Court, and on March 5, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the petition for writ of certiorari.

Lewis Williams was executed by lethal injection on January 14, 2004.

John Roe was executed by lethal injection on February 3, 2004.

Kristen Sagar - 09/10/2007


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