Execution of Dennis McGuire

Dennis B. McGuire (February 10, 1960 – January 16, 2014) was convicted for the 1989 rape and murder of 22-year-old Joy Stewart in West Alexandria, Ohio. Stewart disappeared on February 11, 1989, and her body was discovered the following day by hikers near Bantas Creek. An autopsy determined she died after her throat was cut, severing her carotid artery and jugular vein. The case went unsolved until December 1989, when McGuire, already incarcerated for an unrelated offense, contacted police and claimed his brother-in-law was responsible. Investigators initially took the claim seriously because McGuire knew non-public details of the crime, but subsequent evidence pointed to McGuire himself as the perpetrator. DNA testing in 1992 confirmed McGuire had raped and murdered Stewart. He was charged on December 22, 1993, with aggravated murder, two counts of rape, and kidnapping, and was found guilty of all charges on December 8, 1994, with a jury recommending the death penalty. Separately, Joy Stewart's husband, Kenny Stewart, had been questioned as a suspect and died by suicide in 1990 prior to being cleared.

McGuire spent over nineteen years on death row before his execution was scheduled for January 16, 2014. In September 2013, Ohio's supply of pentobarbital, the drug previously used in executions, ran out after European manufacturers restricted its sale to U.S. corrections departments for use in executions. As a result, Ohio adopted a new, previously untried combination of midazolam (a sedative) and hydromorphone (an opioid painkiller) for McGuire's execution. His attorneys had warned that the combination could cause "air hunger" and suffocation; a state prosecutor argued McGuire was not entitled to a painless execution, and a judge allowed it to proceed.

On the morning of January 16, 2014, at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, McGuire was injected with the two drugs at 10:27 a.m. Witnesses reported that, roughly four minutes in, he could be seen struggling and gasping loudly for air, making snorting and choking sounds for ten to fifteen minutes; his stomach reportedly swelled unusually, and he clenched his fists. He was pronounced dead at 10:53 a.m., after an execution lasting more than 26 minutes—longer than the roughly eight minutes typically expected and the longest recorded execution in Ohio history.

The execution prompted McGuire's family to pursue a civil rights lawsuit against the state and an Illinois drug company, alleging cruel and unusual punishment. A Harvard Medical School anesthesia professor had testified that midazolam was inappropriate for executions and that McGuire risked remaining conscious for up to five minutes while suffocating. The human rights group Reprieve criticized the state's decision to proceed despite such warnings. Ohio Governor John Kasich subsequently paused all pending executions, creating an unofficial moratorium that lasted more than three years, and later signed legislation shielding the identities of lethal-drug suppliers. The family's lawsuit was dropped after Ohio's Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced it would abandon the midazolam-hydromorphone method. Ohio resumed executions in July 2017 using a new three-drug protocol, beginning with the execution of Ronald Philips.