“I have a team right now that’s disappointed because they think they let me down,” said Collins, who told the team they did not.Ĭollins said he thanked Broom after the reprieve was issued for the respectful way he dealt with the execution team and the demeanor he showed through the difficulties.Īnother lawyer for Broom, Tim Sweeney, wrote Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas J. He said his team wants to be “100 percent perfect 100 percent of the time” but that no one is. The team told him they didn’t believe his veins would accept the saline fluid, or hold if the execution reached the point when the lethal drugs would start being administered.Ĭollins said the difficulty in the process “absolutely, positively” does not shake his faith in the state’s lethal injection procedure. Roughly five minutes later, the team returned to Broom’s arms to again try to access a vein and get the saline solution to work.Īfter speaking with the execution team, Collins said he determined that it was time he ask the governor for a reprieve, at about 4 p.m. A member of the execution team reached over and patted him on the back. He looked up several times during the process and appeared to grimace. “I want to know what he wants me to do.”Īt about 3:20, the team tried to insert shunts through veins in Broom’s legs as he sat upright on the table. “He’s always cooperative,” responded Shank. “I want to know what Romell wants,” Shank told a prison official, who told her that he was being cooperative.

She asked to speak with Broom but was told that once the process started, it’s protocol that attorneys can’t have contact with their client. Collins then insisted on a break and contacted the governor to let him know about the difficulties.īroom, who did not have any witnesses present, requested that one of his attorneys, Adele Shank, come to the witness area.

The team had been asking Broom whether he wanted a break, but he chose to push ahead, as did the execution staff, prisons director Terry Collins said.

The execution team was able to access a vein, but it collapsed when technicians tried to insert saline fluid. He turned over on his left side, slid rubber tubing designed to clarify his veins up his left arm, then began moving the arm up and down while flexing and closing and opening his fingers. That initial delay was due to a final federal appeals request.Īfter the team spent nearly an hour trying to find a workable vein, Broom tried to help them bring him a quicker death. The team began working on Broom, in a holding cell 17 steps from the execution chamber, at about 2 p.m., four hours after his execution was originally scheduled. No Ohio governor has issued a similar last-minute reprieve since the state resumed executions in 1999. Ted Strickland ordered a weeklong reprieve for a condemned inmate on Tuesday after the Ohio execution team had problems finding usable veins for the lethal injection process.Įxecutioners were unable for more than two hours to find veins that would accept fluid from an IV without collapsing for 53-year-old Romell Broom, who was sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a 14-year-old Tryna Middleton in 1984.

Romell broom