“Ohio doesn’t let condemned man kill himself”

The title of this post is the headline of this article from the Columbus Dispatch, which updates how the state of Ohio is dealing with a condemned murderers suicide attempt just before his scheduled execution:

Inmate Lawrence Reynolds’ decision to attempt death on his terms before the state could execute him left Ohio officials with a dilemma. Save him or let him die?

Reynolds, 43, who was to be lethally injected at 10 a.m. today, got a one-week reprieve yesterday as he regained consciousness in a Youngstown hospital after an apparent suicide attempt late Sunday. The Akron man now has until next Tuesday to recover from the overdose before the state injects him with a dose of thiopental sodium, a powerful anesthetic that will most likely kill him within minutes.

The state will pay for Reynolds’ medical treatment until he can be returned to Death Row at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, where he was housed, or to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville, where executions take place.

Reynolds was convicted and sentenced to death for the Jan. 11, 1994, murder of Loretta Foster, 64, his neighbor in Akron. Reynolds tried to rape the woman before strangling her and beating her with a tent pole. He later took friends back to the house to see her body.

Many Dispatch.com readers who commented on the story yesterday seemed to agree with this reaction: “We were gonna kill him anyways, why not just let him … die from the overdose?”

Julie Walburn, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said the state has two legal obligations. “We have a constitutional duty to provide health care for this inmate until the execution commences. And we are legally responsible to carry out executions under the law. We will meet both our legal obligations.”

Walburn said a full investigation is being conducted into how Reynolds, while on Death Row at the state’s maximum-security prison, obtained drugs sufficient to cause an overdose.