Ohio to alter execution for cancer-stricken inmate

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS, AP Legal Affairs Writer

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio will make it easier for an inmate who lost his larynx to cancer to make a final statement at his execution.

Prison officials are using the change as part of their argument that a federal judge should dismiss a lawsuit challenging Ohio's execution procedures.

The state will raise the gurney where Kenneth Smith will lie and let him keep one arm free to make it easier for him to use his artificial voice box. It would be the first time an Ohio inmate has not been completely strapped down since the state resumed the death penalty in 1999.

The 45-year-old Smith is scheduled to die July 19 for killing Lewis and Ruth Ray in their Hamilton home in 1995.
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Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached at http://twitter.com/(hash)!/awhcolumbus

*As a former Otolaryngologist who performed this procedure on cancer patients, this article makes me shudder. Reminds me of justice officials medicating a pyschotic patient to make him sane to be executed. Without the medication he was not. Go figure.