Death row inmate overdoses hours before execution

[buttmunch]

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Gov. Ted Strickland on Monday postponed the execution of a convicted killer who managed to take an overdose of pills in his death row cell and was found unconscious just hours before he was to be driven to his execution.

Lawrence Reynolds Jr., 43, who was sentenced to die for killing his neighbor in 1994, was found unconscious around 11:30 p.m. Sunday at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn said.

Reynolds, who was scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday, was showing signs of consciousness Monday at a Youngstown hospital, but medical staff weren't prepared to release him, Walburn said. He was upgraded from serious to stable condition.

The inmate took the pills despite being under a 72-hour watch – routine for inmates approaching an execution date – that includes monitoring by prison guards outside the cell, Walburn said.

Guards are supposed to keep inmates under constant observation, making log entries every 30 minutes, she said. Death row inmates have access to a recreation area and, if approved, are allowed interaction with other inmates.

Walburn did not say what kind of pills Reynolds took or how he got them, and an investigation is under way.

Reynolds' injuries were self-imposed, she said, but declined to call it a suicide attempt. Strickland issued a seven-day reprieve and rescheduled the execution for March 16.

No further details about Reynolds' activities Sunday were released. He had been scheduled to leave at 3 a.m. Monday for the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, which houses the state's death chamber.

Reynolds has been challenging Ohio's new lethal injection procedure, which uses a one-drug system instead of three drugs. As expected, his attorneys filed an appeal Monday with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to postpone the execution.

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The Ohio public defender's office, which is representing Reynolds, declined to comment on the overdose until attorneys gathered more information, spokeswoman Amy Borror said.

This appears to be the first time since Ohio reinstated the death penalty in 1999 that an inmate scheduled for execution "has been found unresponsive mere hours from being transported" to the state death chamber, Walburn said.

It's rare, but not unheard of, for condemned inmates to attempt suicide as they approach execution dates, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group opposed to capital punishment.

California has executed 13 inmates since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978 – a period during which 17 condemned inmates committed suicide.

Nine condemned inmates in Texas have committed suicide since death row reopened there in 1974. The last, William Robinson, 49, used a sheet to hang himself in his cell at a psychiatric center in February 2008.

Reynolds was sentenced to die for strangling his 67-year-old neighbor in her Cuyahoga Falls home to get money for alcohol.

Tuesday would have been the second time the state has tried to execute Reynolds. He was scheduled to die in October, but Strickland delayed the execution so the state could review its lethal injection procedure.

Since then, Ohio has switched from a three-drug process, which opponents said could cause severe pain, to the one-drug system. Reynolds lost a bid to have the execution delayed so he could challenge the new system when federal appeals court on Friday denied his request.

Three inmates have been executed with the state's new, one-drug new method, and in each case death came in just a few minutes. Washington last week became the second state to adopt the procedure.Lawrence Reynolds Jr: Death Row Inmate Overdose Delays Lethal Injection

Huh. I guess the state wants it's final vengeance at all costs.

[sprynkles]

So they are going to nurse him back to good health then execute him?

[buttmunch]

^^That's the general reaction to these things. Can't die by your own hand but the state is happy to do it for you.

[WhateverLolaWants]

...which costs everyone more money.

[sprynkles]

I have never understood how it can cost so damn much money to give a guy a shot.

[buttmunch]

That isn't the cost. The cost is in the appeals, which are needed to make sure an innocent person isn't put to death, although it still happens.

[Sarzy]

It makes me feel a bit nauseous that they are trying to save him just so they can then kill him. Fucked up.

[McJag]

Not the slightest sympathy. Here is what he did:

Loretta Mae Foster, 67, was brutally murdered 15 years ago by a Cuyahoga Falls neighbor, Lawrence Reynolds Jr., who was high on drugs and alcohol.

Papp told the Ohio Parole Board on Thursday that Reynolds' request for clemency should be denied and he should be executed as scheduled Oct. 8.

''That was 15 years ago. He is still guilty. My aunt is still dead,'' Papp told the parole board, which will issue a report and recommendation next Thursday to Gov. Ted Strickland.

Reynolds spent six years in the U.S. Army before returning to Cuyahoga Falls, where he was living with his parents when he killed Foster on Jan. 11, 1994.

Brad Gessner, assistant Summit County prosecutor, took issue with attorneys for Reynolds who wrote in their clemency request: ''A murder by an alcoholic with no plans to kill, who was looking for money to buy alcohol, is not as heinous as the other crimes in which death was imposed in Summit County.''

Gessner said Reynolds was a cold-blooded, calculating killer who stalked and eventually murdered Foster.

Using a slide projector, Gessner displayed photos of Foster's life. She is shown in various photos with her husband, who preceded her in death; their son, Michael; grandchildren; and dozens of extended family members and
friends.

Then Gessner showed slides from the murder scene.

He told the parole board that although she lived alone without fear for 18 years after her husband died, Foster was frightened by Reynolds in the days before he killed her. She told her son, a friend and a doctor that Reynolds was acting strange after she hired him to paint her basement in December 1993.

On the night of the murder, Reynolds went to her back door carrying a thick, wooden tent post and rope. When she wouldn't let him in, Reynolds conned her by saying he had a letter from his sister, Lori, for Foster, Gessner said.

When she cracked the door open, Reynolds pushed his way in and started to hit her in the face with the tent post. Foster tried to escape by running into her living room to call her son, who had told her to phone if Reynolds came around.

Reynolds hit her again and again until she collapsed on the floor. As he was ransacking her house, Foster attempted to reach the phone.

Gessner said Reynolds then ripped her clothes off, tied her hands behind her back and attempted to rape her before strangling her first with his hands and then with the rope.

Reynolds left with $40 and a blank check from Foster's account. He went drinking with his brother and some friends.

When police arrested Reynolds, they found the tent post, rope and check in his room.

''This is the worst of the worst,'' Gessner said.

[cmmdee]

Maybe he didn't want The Man to kill him so he did it himself. Am assuming he got those pills from an officer in the jail.

[Ravenna]

Not the slightest sympathy from me either, but I don't care whether the state gets to kill him or whether he kills himself. I would just have preferred he off himself years ago and save taxpayers his keep.

[WhateverLolaWants]

^^^ Qft

[kingcap72]

I don't feel any sympathy for him. He took another life, but didn't want the state to take his life, so he tried to do it himself.

The biggest problem with the death penalty is that we don't use it enough. Prisoners can tie the courts up with appeals for years and too often the death sentence gets commuted to life without parole. And then people wonder why the death penalty isn't a deterrent.

[AliceInWonderland]

^ *applause*

rapists and child predators should all be getting it imo! especially the child predators, sick fucks.

[sputnik]

I don't feel any sympathy for him. He took another life, but didn't want the state to take his life, so he tried to do it himself.

The biggest problem with the death penalty is that we don't use it enough. Prisoners can tie the courts up with appeals for years and too often the death sentence gets commuted to life without parole. And then people wonder why the death penalty isn't a deterrent.

yeah, damn that pesky due process.

[AliceInWonderland]

DNA test first, then convict, then execute.