Ohio lethal injection takes 2 hours, 10 tries

[lizzymahoney]

Clarification: this man was not said to be an intravenous drug user. That reference was to the previous 'botched' execution of another prisoner where they could not establish an IV line.

This man was larger than usual and that was the reason the line was difficult to establish.

Also consider that most health professionals accustomed to putting in IVs would not participate in an execution. Totally my guess here, but it probably is done by a military trained field medic rather than a practicing medical specialist. There would have to be a doctor to certify the death and oversee the injections, but the doc is nowhere near the condemned man. That person is in a separate room.

A PICC is probably too invasive, being an order of magnitude more involved than a simple IV lock.

Can you tell I'm in a death penalty state? ugh.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by lizzymahoney

Clarification: this man was not said to be an intravenous drug user. That reference was to the previous 'botched' execution of another prisoner where they could not establish an IV line.

This man was larger than usual and that was the reason the line was difficult to establish.

I misread the article. Thanks for pointing this out. Even so, 265 pounds is not that fat.

I would doubt that some sort of a field medic, whether military or paramedic, was the one to establish an IV line.

Rule of thumb ... doctor = 10 tries, no starts.
Medic = 1 try, one start, while in the back of an ambulance doing 45 mph over potholes, with lots of turns. There was a line in an episode of Saved that made me laugh, because it's so true ... "Give me 10 seconds of smooth," because that's really all they need.