Ohio Murderer Dennis McGuire Gasps for Air at Controversial Execution; Says 'I'm Going to Heaven'
An Ohio murderer may have suffered from a rare medical phenomenon known as "air hunger" while being executed Thursday. The criminal, Dennis McGuire, reportedly said he's "going to heaven" before he gasped and choked for breath for 10 minutes before being pronounced dead.
The death row convict, who was found guilty of the 1989 rape and murder of newlywed Joy Stewart, was the first criminal to receive a new, lethal combination of drugs that had never been tested or used before in U.S. executions. The drugs included a cocktail of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a morphine derivative. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction used the new two-drug combo because its standard execution drug, Pentobarbital, has run out of supply.
McGuire's lawyers had argued against the use of the new drug cocktail in a last minute federal appeals effort, saying that the new lethal injection could prompt a medical phenomenon known as "air hunger," when the receiver experiences feelings of terror or panic as they strain for breath for several minutes.
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McGuire, 53, may have experienced such a phenomenon when he was executed Thursday morning, as he gasped for air, snorted, snored and choked for 10 of the 14 minutes he took to officially die. McGuire had been injected with the lethal combination at 10:29 a.m., and was not pronounced officially dead until 10:53 a.m. His execution is considered to be one of the longest since Ohio re-implemented its death penalty in 1999.
Before receiving the lethal injection in the small, windowless room at Lucasville correctional facility in Ohio, McGuire reportedly told his son, daughter, and daughter-in-law who were present: 'I'm going to heaven, I'll see you there when you come" via a microphone held by the facility's warden.
Allen Bohnert, a federal public defender and one of McGuire's attorneys, called the method of his client's execution a "failed, agonizing experiment by the state of Ohio."
"The people of the state of Ohio should be appalled by what was done in their name," Bohnert added, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
McGuire acknowledged his guilt in the murder of 22-year-old Joy Stewart in a letter to Ohio Gov. John Kasich last month. Stewart was 30-weeks pregnant when she was forcibly removed from her car, raped and stabbed in Preble County, western Ohio in 1989. Stewart's sister, Carol Avery, who was also present at Thursday's execution, wrote a letter discussing the controversial execution method for McGuire.
"There has been a lot of controversy regarding the drugs that are to be used in his execution, concern that he might feel terror; that he might suffer. As I recall the events preceding her death, forcing her from the car, attempting to rape her vaginally, sodomizing her, choking her, stabbing her, I know she suffered terror and pain. He is being treated far more humanely than he treated her."
