Cooey was waiting Monday for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on his appeal as the state prepared for its first execution in more than a year. He was transported from a Youngstown prison to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, where he is scheduled to die.

 

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The Ohio Board of Parole and Gov. Ted Strickland have refused Cooey's plea for clemency. The Ohio Supreme Court and a federal appeals court in Cincinnati have declined to grant Cooey a stay of execution based in his claim that he is too fat to be executed humanely. He missed a deadline for filing appeals, the courts said.

His attorneys say the weight problem could make it difficult for prison staff to access a suitable vein.

Cooey is 5-foot-7 and weighs 267 pounds - 75 pounds heavier than when he went to death row - the result of prison food and 23-hour-a-day confinement, his lawyers said.

His attorneys also say that Topamax, a migraine medicine prescribed by a prison physician, could reduce the effect of the anesthetic used as part of the three-drug lethal injection, making death excruciatingly painful.

The last Ohio inmate to be executed was Christopher Newton - who was similar in size to Cooey - in May 2007. The execution team had trouble putting IVs in his arm, delaying his execution nearly two hours, and there were similar problems in the execution of Joseph Clark in 2006.

The trip was Cooey's second to the death house. A U.S. District Court judge intervened hours before his scheduled execution in July 2003 when the Ohio Public Defender's office said it needed more time to assess the case after an appeals court dismissed his previous attorneys for inadequate representation.

A pre-execution exam in 2003 determined that Cooey had a vein suitable for the shunt by which the chemicals would be delivered.

Cooey ordered a special meal Monday that included a T-bone steak with A-1 sauce, onion rings, french fries, four eggs over easy, toast with butter, hash browns, a pint of rocky road ice cream, a Mountain Dew soft drink and bear claw pastries, Carson said.

Cooey and a co-defendant were convicted of killing two female students from the University of Akron after disabling their car with a chunk of concrete thrown from an overpass and then offering to help them.

Prosecutors said the women were taken to a secluded spot where they were sexually assaulted, stabbed and bludgeoned, and had the letter "X" carved into their stomachs.

Cooey was a 19-year-old soldier on leave from the U.S. Army at the time. His co-defendant, Clinton Dickens, was 17 and was sentenced to life in prison because of his age.

By TERRY KINNEY
Associated Press Writer

 

ANN's Chris Keppler contributed to this story

On the Net:

Ohio Death Row: http://www.drc.ohio.gov/Public/deathrow.htm

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