Trumbull officials to appeal ruling in Lorraine execution delay

By Marc Kovac

news@vindy.com

COLUMBUS

State officials said they would appeal a ruling by a federal judge to delay next week’s execution of Charles Lorraine.

The judge ruled prison officials again failed to meet their own lethal-injection protocols.

In a scathing decision Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost said the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction did not follow its own written procedures for putting inmates to death, even after promising the court that it would.

“Ohio has unnecessarily and inexplicably created easily avoidable problems that force this court to once again stay an execution,” Judge Frost wrote. He added, “In other words, if Ohio would only do what it says it will do, everyone involved in this case can finally move on.”

The stay came one day after Gov. John Kasich rejected clemency for Lorraine, convicted in the brutal knife killings of an elderly Warren couple more than 25 years ago.

He’s supposed to be executed Wednesday.

The attorney general’s office will appeal Judge Frost’s decision to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and, depending on the decision, the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This is grossly unfair to the victims’ families,” said Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, who said Ohio’s execution procedures surpass those of other states that the U.S. Supreme Court has deemed constitutional. He added, “In my opinion, this is an undue and unfair interference with the administration of justice in Ohio.”

DRC spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said prison officials will stand ready to transfer Lorraine to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville in advance of his scheduled execution Wednesday, in case the stay is lifted.

Lorraine received the death penalty for the May 1986 murder of Raymond and Doris Montgomery, the latter confined to a bed at the time of the killing.