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blog 12 Broom

Romell Broom

Romell Broom, 53 year old death row inmate, began to help the executioners do their job. He scuffled to put pressure on the left side of his body while he slid the rubber tubing up his left arm. They attempted to stick him with a needle, it didn’t hold. Romell continued by moving his arm in a vertical motion, while he flexed and clinched his fist tight into a ball, as the doctors (AKA grim reapers AKA the execution team), once again stuck him with a needle while searching for a vein, and once again it didn’t hold. Finally, after two hours of this struggle, the execution team was able to find a vein, but it literally collapsed when the technicians attempted to insert saline fluid.

If you can’t tell by now, I am already against the death penalty. And in my opinion this event, that occurred yesterday(September 16, 2009) should be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio (where I worked this summer) called on state officials to immediately put a halt to executions, following the attempted execution of Romell Broom. The procedure was botched after the execution team failed to locate a viable vein after several hours of searching. Governor Strickland delayed Broom’s execution for one week in light of these problems.

This follows two other botched executions in Ohio beginning with Joseph L. Clark in May 2006 and Christopher Newton in May 2007. Both of these executions were eventually completed despite officials struggling to find viable veins on the men.

ACLU of Ohio Staff Counsel Carrie Davis said, “Governor Strickland must not allow another execution to happen in Ohio . The system used to carry out executions has been shown to be faulty and dangerous. If the state is going to take a person’s life, they must ensure that it is done as humanely as possible. With three botched executions in as many years, it’s clear that the state must stop and review the system entirely before another person is put to death,”

no death penalty button blog 13

Hopefully someone will get the picture and realize that state sponsored killing is not the best way to go. It is actually more expensive to kill a person with lethal injection, than it is to sentence an individual with life in prison and it is still racially unequal. Furthermore, with the advancement of technology and DNA samples, individuals that were killed on death row had later been found innocent of the crime. MEANING THE STATE HAS KILLED INNOCENT PEOPLE. Well, keeping in mind the wars we have been involved in just within the last 50 years (and recent torturing episodes at guantanomo), it definitely is not the first time.