with his own execution:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a13607091/ohio-alva-campbell-death-penalty/
Here's as Crazy a Death Penalty Story as You'll Find
The state of Ohio, ladies and gentlemen.
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By Charles P. Pierce
Nov 14, 2017
680
If all goes to plan, and we’ll get to the insanely detailed plan in a moment, the state of Ohio—John Kasich, moderate Republican, governor—will execute a 69-year-old man named Alva Campbell for a 1997 murder that was admittedly heinous, and also was the second time he’d killed somebody. Campbell already was on parole for killing someone when he killed Charles Dials during a carjacking.
Campbell has a galaxy of medical problems. He uses a walker. He is hitched to a colostomy bag. He has chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, and he takes four breathing meds a day. His lawyers think Campbell may have lung cancer, and in any case, he has so much trouble breathing that Ohio has had to make modifications in its procedures to kill him properly. Hence, the insanely detailed plans we mentioned earlier, courtesy of WCPO-TV in Cincinnati:
Ohio will provide a wedge-shaped pillow to help a condemned inmate breathe as he’s being executed this week, among other accommodations the state is considering. Death row prisoner Alva Campbell, who has said he is too ill for lethal injection, became mildly agitated when officials tried lowering him to a normal execution position, according to a medical review by a physician contractor for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Then, there is the problem with his veins.
Dr. James McWeeney noted there were no objective findings such as increased pulse rate or breathing to corroborate Campbell’s anxiety. Nevertheless, he recommended allowing Campbell to lie “in a semi-recumbent position” during the execution. The same exam failed to find veins suitable for inserting an IV on either of Campbell’s arms.
(We should note here that Campbell offered to save Ohio all this fuss and bother. He asked to be killed by a firing squad, a method that does not require either wedge-shaped pillows or functioning veins. This seems awfully civic-minded for a convicted murderer. A judge put the kibosh on that, because, in 2015, moderate Republican Governor John Kasich eliminated that option and, thus, it would have required an act of the Ohio legislature to allow the state to kill Alva Campbell by shooting him. The judge didn’t think the legislature could get its act together in time to do that, so here we are.)
"Ohio will provide a wedge-shaped pillow to help a condemned inmate breathe as he’s being executed this week..."
The guy who prosecuted Campbell called him “the poster child” for the death penalty. The prosecutor may be more right than he knows, if any of what Campbell’s lawyers presented on behalf of a plea for clemency is true. According to his attorneys, and as reported by The Columbus Dispatch, Campbell’s childhood could be called Dickensian, if Dickens were reincarnated as Pol Pot.
Campbell was the mixed-race son of a racist, alcoholic father who would make his children watch as he beat their mother bloody and often unconscious, Stebbins said. His father also beat the children and molested Campbell’s sisters and mostly likely molested Campbell as well, Stebbins said. Then, after his father was imprisoned for incest, a 10-year-old Campbell began a journey through state facilities that didn’t protect him. Lighter than 90 percent of boys his age and shorter than 80 percent, Campbell was an easy target for older, bigger boys who beat and raped him, said Bob Stinson, a psychologist who has examined Campbell.
Unbelievably, that’s not the half of it. Sister Helen Prejean, the anti-death penalty activist who was the subject of Dead Man Walking, has been on the electric Twitter machine, sharing what she knows about Campbell’s upbringing. It is downright otherworldly.
Alva's father beat his mother "like he was in the boxing ring" while the children watched. He would throw Alva's mother out of the house in cold weather and threaten to kill the children if they let her back inside…Alva's father also beat Alva and three of his other siblings severely. Only two of Alva's sisters were exempted - one, who suffered from Down Syndrome, and another who has his favorite child….Alva's father subjected his children to sadistic games. He would stick his finger into a live electrical socket and then force the children to join hands with him and feel the electricity course through their tiny bodies.
Logic, folks. The state of Ohio could find no way to give Alva Campbell comfort as a child, but, now that he’s dying, the state of Ohio is doing everything it can to make sure he’s comfortable while the state of Ohio is killing him. We are a Christian nation, after all. There will be a wedge-shaped pillow, so he’ll have no trouble breathing until he can’t anymore.
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