Pending Execution of Richard Cooey - Ohio

[London Lass]

Killer Richard Cooey readied for execution today

Richard Wade Cooey II, scheduled to die by lethal injection at 10 a.m. today, was served his special request meal at 4 p.m. Monday:

He ordered a T-bone steak with A-1 sauce, onion rings, hash browns, french fries, toast with butter, four eggs over easy, a pint of rocky road ice cream, bear claw pastries and Mountain Dew.

He had all evening to finish it. He also can ask for breakfast this morning.

Cooey, convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering University of Akron students Dawn McCreery, 20, and Wendy Offredo, 21, in 1986, spent much of Monday afternoon speaking with his lawyer, Dana Cole, and Jim Cole, a Christian lay minister from Nashville, Tenn., who is serving as his spiritual adviser. Jim Cole is Dana Cole's brother.

Cooey spent time reading a Bible with Jim Cole, said Andrea Carson, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Cooey arrived at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, the site of Ohio's Death House, at 9:45 a.m. and was described by Carson as in "a very good mood."

He was given a medical and psychological evaluation by prison medical staff, who reported visually identifying two veins that appear suitable as injection sites for his execution procedure.

Cooey and his lawyer unsuccessfully argued in an appeal that his veins were inaccessible due in part to his obesity. He is 5 feet 7 and 270 pounds.

No family members visited the former Akron resident Monday. Carson said family members visited with him several days ago at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown before Cooey's transfer to Lucasville. Cooey did make a phone call to an unidentified family member during the day.

Cooey's lawyers Cole, Eric Allen and Greg Meyers will serve as his witnesses at Tuesday's planned execution. No family members are scheduled to attend.

Dawn McCreery's father, mother, brother and three cousins are scheduled to serve as victim's witnesses. Wendy Offredo's family will not attend.

Carson said some death penalty protesters are expected Tuesday, but said a busload of those in favor of Cooey's execution also could arrive. "There's a lot of emotion surrounding this case from the Akron community. A lot of emotion."

The Ohio Supreme Court denied Cooey's request for a stay of execution. Only the U.S. Supreme Court can save Cooey after his various appeals have been denied and his bid for clemency was rejected by Gov. Ted Strickland.

http://www.cleveland.com/crime/plaindeal....3861.xml&coll=2

[London Lass]

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/10/14/toofat.execution/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An Ohio death row inmate was executed Tuesday after the Supreme Court rejected his last-minute plea that he was too overweight to be executed.


Richard Cooey, 41, and an accomplice were convicted of the 1986 murders of two college students.

Richard Cooey was executed as scheduled at 10 a.m. ET, the Ohio Department of Corrections told CNN.

Cooey had exhausted his legal appeals and Gov. Ted Strickland earlier denied the 41-year-old prisoner's clemency petition. Cooey murdered two college students in 1986.

The justices turned down a stay of execution, and the opportunity to address the larger constitutional claims over when a convicted person is medically unfit for capital punishment. The court was also asked to review Ohio's lethal injection procedures, and whether they were cruel and unusual punishment.

His lawyers have argued that the inmate-- at 5-foot-7 and 267 pounds -- is "morbidly obese," and has gained about 70 pounds since his incarceration at age 19. Prison food and confinement in his cell for 23 hours a day, limiting his opportunities for exercise, contributed to his weight problem, his legal team asserted in recent court filings.

Cooey also contends regular medication he takes for migraines will weaken the effectiveness of an anesthetic used in the a three-drug cocktail administered during execution. He says his veins are weakened because of his health issues, and the lethal drugs would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

In 2003, a judge stopped Cooey's execution a day before he was to die on issues unrelated to his health claims.

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Cooey waited too long raise the medical issues, saying Cooey "knew of and could have filed suit over vein access prior to July 2005."

Cooey and a then-17-year-old accomplice were convicted of the brutal murders of Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery, students at the University of Akron. The men had been tossing concrete slabs onto Interstate 77, and one of them struck Offredo's car.

Pretending to "rescue" the women, Cooey and Clinton Dickens took the victims to a remote field, according to prosecutors. There the students were subjected to a three-and-a-half-hour period of rape, torture, stabbing, and fatal bludgeoning. Cooey carved an "X" into the stomachs of both women, prosecutors said.

Each man blamed the other for delivering the fatal blows, but both were convicted of murder. Dickens received a life sentence because of his age.

Cooey tried to escape from death row in 2005, when corrections officials said he constructed a ladder from magazines and bed sheets in an effort to scale the barrier around an outdoor recreation area.

At an August clemency hearing, Jon Offredo, brother of one of the victims, said, "Our family has never gotten an apology from Richard Cooey. We've gotten blatant lies and excuses. Is an apology too much to ask? How could he commit such an heinous act and not feel regret?"

But Cooey's lawyer, Dana Cole, said his client is sorry for his crimes.

The high court has not offered clear guidelines on what medical standards need to be met before an inmate is eligible for death. But in a case five years ago, the justices allowed inmates to at least make a claim that their specific physical or medical issues could be cause to block an execution.

The high court had sided with a convicted Alabama killer who claimed his veins were so damaged from years of drug abuse that executioners might have to cut deeply into his flesh to administer the deadly drugs.

Writing for the unanimous court, then-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the court was not going to "open the floodgates to all manner of method-of-execution challenges," as Alabama feared. "Our holding is extremely limited." That inmate is still on death row.

Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, a data-resource group that opposes capital punishment, said the Supreme Court indicated that "how you're going to be executed is a civil rights matter, the same as if you were discriminated on the basis of race or gender or something like that."

A Washington state killer was given a 1994 reprieve after claiming he was too obese to hang. Mitchell Rupe at one time was more than 425 pounds, but weight-loss surgery in prison had reduced that to 275 pounds over the years. Subsequent legal efforts to execute him failed. He died in prison two years ago from a long illness.

[Tracian]

He was executed, Justice has been served.

[Ross]

Good,he was trying to get a stay saying he was to fat for the injection to work.WRONG