COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio on Friday rescheduled executions for seven death-row inmates as it tries to find new lethal drugs, meaning no inmate will be put to death in the state in 2015.
The announcement affects six executions this year, including one set for Feb. 11 for condemned child killer Ronald Phillips, and one previously scheduled for 2016 that was pushed further back.
The move, which was expected, comes after a federal judge's previous order delaying executions while the state puts a new execution policy in place, the state said.
The delays also allow the state time to find supplies of new drugs, according to the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
The new execution policy calls for Ohio to use drugs it doesn't have and has had difficulty obtaining in the past.
The delays mean that for the first time Ohio won't execute anyone in a calendar year since the state resumed putting inmates to death in 1999. The state put one inmate to death last year and three in 2013. A total of 11 executions are scheduled for 2016.
Under the revised schedule, the next execution is Jan. 21, 2016, when Phillips is scheduled to die for the 1993 rape and killing of his girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter.
Tim Young, the state public defender, applauded the move, saying there was no need for executions "until we have answers to the numerous legal and medical questions posed by lethal injection."
Earlier this month, the state ditched its two-drug method after problematic executions in Ohio a year ago and Arizona in July. Ohio's supplies of those drugs, midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a painkiller, were already set to expire this year.
Ohio's execution policy now calls for it to use versions of thiopental sodium or compounded pentobarbital, neither of which it has.
A Section on 01/31/2015