Ohio dismemberment killer, delay denied by federal judge, asks appeals court to stop execution

Ohio killer asks appeals court to stop execution

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A condemned killer scheduled to become the first person in the U.S. put to death with a single drug on Tuesday is asking a federal appeals court to delay his execution.

The office of attorney Tim Sweeney said Monday that 51-year-old Kenneth Biros requested a delay from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

A divided appeals court on Friday rejected a similar request by Biros, but that involved Ohio’s old, three-drug process. Biros has appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A federal judge earlier Monday refused to delay Biros’ execution based on the one-drug method.

Biros arrived at the death chamber in southern Ohio Monday morning where prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn says he is resting and appears relaxed.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A condemned killer scheduled to become the first person in the U.S put to death with a single drug — in an execution that could take longer than previous procedures — arrived Monday at the Ohio death house.

Kenneth Biros reached the holding area for death row inmates at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville shortly before 10 a.m. Monday. The small cell is about 15 feet away from the chamber where inmates are put to death.

It’s the second trip to Lucasville for Biros, who spent more than 30 hours in the holding cell in March 2007 before the U.S. Supreme Court stopped his execution.

Biros, 51, was sentenced to die for killing and dismembering a woman he met in a bar in 1991.

It would be the first injection under Ohio’s switch from using three drugs to a new one-drug execution method.

A backup method allows executioners to inject drugs directly into muscles.

Injection experts agree the execution will take longer with the single dose of thiopental sodium than the previous three-drug system. Ohio inmates have generally taken about seven minutes to die. Mark Dershwitz, an anesthesiologist that consulted with Ohio, estimates it could take 15 minutes.

Witnesses will be allowed to stay and watch for as long as it takes, prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn said Monday.

A federal judge earlier Monday refused to delay Biros’ execution. The next step would be an appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. That court on Friday refused to delay the execution but indicated that it anticipated further appeals. Biros’ attorney, Timothy Sweeney, did not immediately return calls Monday to ask how he planned to proceed.

The 6th Circuit on Friday rejected a related request to delay Biros’ execution, a decision he appealed Monday to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Monday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost in Columbus said Ohio’s execution system still has flaws that “raise profound concerns and present unnecessary risks.”

But the judge also wrote, it appears unlikely that Kenneth Biros can “demonstrate that those risks rise to the level of violating the United States Constitution.”

Ohio overhauled its execution procedure following the botched execution of Romell Broom that was halted by Gov. Ted Strickland in September. Executioners tried unsuccessfully for two hours to find a usable vein for injection, painfully hitting bone and muscle in as many as 18 needle sticks.

Broom, 53, has appealed the state’s attempt to try again. Frost holds a hearing expected to last at least three days beginning Wednesday.

In asking Frost for a stay, Biros had argued that the new execution method still left vein access issues unresolved, subjecting him to the risk of severe pain, and had described the new one-drug approach as “impermissible human experimentation.” The judge in his ruling called the arguments “unpersuasive.”

Lethal injection experts and defense attorneys for death row inmates have said the one-drug method, a single dose of an anesthetic, would not cause pain.

All 36 death penalty states use lethal injection, and 35 rely on the three-drug method. Nebraska, which recently adopted injection over electrocution, has proposed the three-drug method but hasn’t finalized the process.

Biros killed 22-year-old Tami Engstrom near Warren in 1991 after offering to drive her home from a bar, then scattered her body parts in Ohio and Pennsylvania.