Ohio will resume executions by lethal injection later this month, after blocking them for the past four months because of legal complaints that prison officials were not following the proper procedures.
U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost denied a request by Mark Wayne Wiles to halt his execution, saying he trusts the state to “avoid the embarrassments” of the past, the
Columbus Dispatch reports.
Wiles’ execution is scheduled for 10 a.m. on April 18 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. He was sentenced to death for the 1985 murder of Mark Klima, 15.
Frost blocked other executions in recent months because the state repeatedly “failed to follow through on its own execution protocol.” By clearing the way for Wiles’ execution, Frost likely opened up Ohio’s execution schedule, which has about one inmate a month scheduled for capital punishment through early 2014.
Even though he denied Wiles’ stay request, Frost still criticized the state’s failures when it comes to carrying out the death penalty.
“Ohio’s new procedures look good on paper,” he said. “The protocol is constitutional as written, and executions are lawful, but the problem has been Ohio’s repeated inability to do what it says it will do.”
Wiles, 49, had worked for Mark Klima’s parents until January 1983. He returned about two years later, and mark caught him stealing family valuables. Wiles stabbed the teenager 24 times with a butcher knife. He fled to Georgia, but eventually confessed to the murder.
Public defender Allen Bohnert, representing Wiles, said he is reviewing the ruling with the thought of a possible appeal.
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