Ohio is set to conduct its first execution in 3 years

Death chamber used for lethal injection.
(Image credit: PAUL BUCK/AFP/Getty Images)

Ohio is scheduled to execute Ronald Phillips, 43, on Wednesday after his final appeal attempt to the Supreme Court was rejected. Phillips was convicted of raping and killing his girlfriend's young daughter in 1993.

This will be the state's first use of capital punishment in three years after a 2014 execution by lethal injection took five times as long as anticipated and caused the inmate, Dennis McGuire, visible distress. "He started struggling for breath," said Father Lawrence Hummer, who witnessed the botched execution. "I was trying to calm his children down when all of a sudden I heard audible gagging. I thought it was another witness, but when I looked back to [McGuire], he was the one gagging."

Anti-death penalty protesters have assembled outside the prison where Phillips is held. The execution was originally set for 10 a.m. Eastern, but it was slightly delayed to give Phillips more time to visit with his family.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.