Judge rejects obese Ohio inmate’s execution claim

ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

AP Legal Affairs Writer

COLUMBUS — A con­demned killer try­ing to delay his exe­cu­tion because of his extreme weight hasn’t raised enough new issues to war­rant the legal chal­lenge, a fed­eral judge ruled Monday.

Death row inmate Ronald Post, who weighs more than 400 pounds, is ask­ing the courts to stop his Jan­u­ary exe­cu­tion on the grounds his weight could cause him to suf­fer severe pain dur­ing the procedure.

Post is pro­hib­ited from chal­leng­ing his exe­cu­tion by injec­tion because he raised sim­i­lar claims in his first set of fed­eral appeals in 1997, Judge Les­ley Wells said Mon­day in Cleveland.

In gen­eral, death row inmates are only allowed one fed­eral appeal when alleg­ing the same set of facts.

Post “has not demon­strated in his new peti­tion that his med­ical con­di­tion has changed so sig­nif­i­cantly, or that Ohio’s new lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures have changed so rad­i­cally, since he filed his first peti­tion in 1997 that his orig­i­nal core com­plaints are trans­formed into some­thing new,” Wells wrote.

How­ever, the judge sent the ques­tion to a fed­eral appeals court in Cincin­nati for a final deter­mi­na­tion accord­ing to fed­eral law gov­ern­ing this type of appeal. The state is oppos­ing Post’s requests to delay his execution.

Post, 53, was sen­tenced to die for the 1983 shoot­ing death of hotel desk clerk Helen Vantz in Elyria. His exe­cu­tion is sched­uled for Jan. 16.

Post also wants his exe­cu­tion delayed to try to prove that claims he made a full con­fes­sion to sev­eral peo­ple have been falsely exaggerated.

Post’s attor­neys declined to com­ment Mon­day. They have pre­vi­ously argued that Post’s med­ical con­di­tion hasn’t been sta­ble. At issue, they say, is his con­di­tion around the time of his exe­cu­tion, not at the time of an orig­i­nal court challenge.

Post “could not have raised this claim in his ear­lier peti­tion because the exe­cu­tion was not immi­nent and his phys­i­cal and med­ical con­di­tion have not been sta­ble in rela­tion to an exe­cu­tion date,” his attor­neys wrote in ear­lier court filings.

Post has also sued to stop his exe­cu­tion as part of a long-running chal­lenge of Ohio’s exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures in fed­eral court in Colum­bus. Judge Gre­gory Frost has sched­uled a Dec. 17 hearing.

Post has tried los­ing weight, but knee and back prob­lems have made it dif­fi­cult to exer­cise, his lawyers say.

They also say Post’s request for gas­tric bypass surgery has been denied, he has been encour­aged not to walk because he’s at risk for falling, and severe depres­sion has con­tributed to his inabil­ity to limit how much he eats.

A doc­tor who exam­ined Post for his defense team says Post does not have acces­si­ble veins in his arms or hands because of his weight and could not receive a lethal injec­tion in his legs because he is so obese.

Posted by AP News on Nov 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.