user: Ohio death row inmate risks 'air hunger' from untried execution method

An Ohio inmate facing execution next week from an untried method is at substantial risk of a medical phenomenon known as air hunger, which will cause him to experience terror as he strains to catch his breath, an anesthesiologist testified Friday at a federal court hearing.

Because condemned killer David McGuire has several characteristics of someone with sleep apnea, or the struggle to breathe while asleep, the chances are even greater he will be subjected to feelings of suffocation, said David Waisel, a professor at Harvard Medical School.

"Mr McGuire is at a substantial risk of experiencing the terror of air hunger during the first five minutes of the execution," Waisel testified as a witness for defense attorneys trying to stop McGuire's execution Thursday.

"Air hunger is a horrible feeling," Waisel added. "It's the inability to get your breath."

Waisel testified at the beginning of a two-day hearing on the state's new lethal drug process.

Ohio plans to use intravenous doses of two drugs, midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a painkiller, to put McGuire to death. The method has been part of Ohio's execution process since 2009, though never used. It was chosen because of a shortage of other lethal injection drugs.

The US Constitution bans executions that constitute cruel and unusual punishment. But that doesn't mean procedures that are entirely comfortable, an assistant Ohio attorney general told Frost.

"You're not entitled to a pain-free execution," attorney Thomas Madden said.

The state also says its own anesthesiology expert is ready to argue that experiments disprove the air hunger experience alleged by McGuire's attorneys.

Such dueling arguments have taken place often in federal judge Gregory Frost's courtroom over the years. Frost has heard numerous arguments for and against Ohio's lethal injection process.

He has never ruled the drugs themselves unconstitutional, but he has at times harshly criticized the state for conducting haphazard executions by not closely following its own policies.

McGuire, 53, was sentenced to die for the 1989 rape and fatal stabbing of Joy Stewart in Preble County in western Ohio. The 22-year-old Stewart was newly married and pregnant.

"McGuire will experience the agony and terror of air hunger as he struggles to breathe for five minutes after defendants intravenously inject him with the execution drugs," the inmate's attorneys said in a Monday court filing.

Higher courts have twice rejected claims that the drugs pose a risk of severe pain, the state argued in opposing McGuire's attempt to stop his execution.

The state says that because courts have upheld the use of those drugs in the backup method, McGuire can't challenge their use just because they are to be given intravenously.

There is no excuse for not raising this claim years ago, "much less presenting it for the first time in an eleventh-hour stay of execution," lawyers for the Ohio attorney general's office said in their filing.

Late Wednesday, McGuire's attorneys filed a separate appeal with the US supreme court, saying information about his chaotic childhood of abuse and neglect could have prevented him from being sentenced to death if it was presented at trial.

The filings argue McGuire was so malnourished as a child that his stomach was swollen and distended. He also had to frequently steal food for himself and his younger sister, the appeal said.

McGuire was physically abused by at least four different parental figures and shows signs of brain damage from head trauma, the attorneys said.

The filings say jurors who sentenced McGuire to death never got to hear the full extent of his chaotic childhood because his trial attorneys didn't properly investigate reasons he should be spared.

Even without the full picture of McGuire's life, a juror held out for 12 hours before relenting, a sign that a full investigation might have led to a different outcome, the lawyers said. In Ohio, one juror can block a death sentence by voting against it.

The state's response to that claim is expected Monday.

summary: US bans executions that constitute 'cruel and unusual punishment', but anaesthesiologist testified that inmate would experience terror,

Second Tayshana (Chicken) Murphy killer sentenced to 25 years to life in prison

Even as he learned he would spend many years behind bars, the second thug to be convicted in the brutal murder of Tayshana (Chicken) Murphy more than 2 1/2 years ago insisted he was getting a raw deal.

“I didn’t have no say in what went down,” deep-voiced Robert Cartagena, 23, said Wednesday, minutes after a Manhattan judge tossed him in prison for 25 years to life for the shooting death of the beloved high school hoops star.

Justice Thomas Farber showed more emotion than the killer in the moments before he slapped Cartagena with the maximum sentence.

“This is horrible,” Farber said. “A young woman in the prime of her life brutally executed in a way that can only be described as a cold-blooded execution. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have that loss.”

Cartagena and an accomplice, Tyrone Brockington, confronted Tayshana outside her home in the Grant Houses the morning of Sept. 11, 2011, prosecutors said. They chased her inside the building and shot her in a stairwell as she begged to be spared.

The horrid act was a product of the perpetual blood feud between youth crews from the neighboring Grant and Manhattanville Houses.

“That was a coward act,” Taylonn Murphy, Tayshana’s father, told the baby-faced Cartagena on Wednesday.

“To cut her life short — and to cut her life so coldly . . . what did you expect the outcome would be?” Murphy said from a podium in the seventh-floor courtroom, his family and friends at his back.

“You don’t get no points,” he added. “No accolades for that, brother.”

Brockington was sentenced to 25 years to life last year.

The aspiring WNBA player, who was beginning her senior year at Manhattan’s Murry Bergtraum High School, had been ranked one of the top point guards in the country in the graduating class of 2012.

Cartagena, who lived in the Manhattanville Houses, was out for revenge on a group of thugs from the Grant Houses who had attacked him earlier, prosecutors said.

Brockington has said it was Cartagena who pulled the trigger, but prosecutors said it didn’t matter who actually did it.

Cartagena’s mother, Denise, said they will appeal the conviction.

“We’re going to get him home,” she said.

The young man maintained his innocence, but his actions likely prevented him from watching his daughters grow up.

“I have four kids myself, and I would never do anything like that to a female.

“And I just wish y’all all have a good life,” he added. “That’s it.”

summary:

assistant: Robert Cartagena, 23, was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years to life in prison for the shooting death of beloved high school hoops star Tayshana (Chicken) Murphy.