2023-07-14 05:43:00
“We can’t execute him because we can’t get the drugs needed for lethal injections.” After more than 30 years on death row in an Ohio jail, the execution of Keith LaMar It was scheduled for November, but has been postponed until 2027, because the state of Ohio won’t get pharmaceutical suppliers to supply the drugs used in the deadly “cocktail” of executions.
“The new date for execution has been moved to January 13, 2027,” the Ohio governor said in a statement. Mike DeWineblaming the situation on the “Issues of Pharmaceutical Suppliers’ Willingness to Provide Drugs to Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction”.
Last April, DeWine had already postponed until 2026, for the same reasons, other executions scheduled for August, September and October of this year. No executions have been carried out in Ohio since 2018. As they point out, a growing number of pharmaceutical companies refuse to manufacture the lethal injection given to death row inmates.
Keith LaMar, sentenced to death in Ohio.
Who is Keith LaMar, sentenced to death in Ohio
Keith LaMar, 54, He was sentenced to death for the murder of five of the 9 companions and a guard who died in a riot in April 1993 in prison where he was already serving a sentence, after a trial, according to him, marred by irregularities, such as the destruction of evidence and the concealment of information that could have exonerated him.
The African-American, who has always denied his guilt in the deaths of any of the inmates, has spent most of his three decades awaiting execution in solitary confinement at a maximum security prison in the state of Ohio.
“Three years can go by in the blink of an eye, so we will redouble our efforts and energy to solve this madness once and for all.”says LaMar in a message sent to the AFPin which he thanks those who have supported him for having instilled in him “the faith and belief that the best things are still possible.”
In jail since he was 19 for the murder of an old friend over a drug dispute, In the 1980s, LaMar claims that after the riot, the prison authorities asked him to expose those responsible, in exchange for a reduced sentence, which he refused.
United States: the first executed in 2022, victim of a terrible lethal cocktail
LaMar, who wrote a book telling his story and claiming his innocence, has fought for his case to be reopened and given a fair trial. “When you are poor, black in a racist country, we are condemned poor”, he said in an interview last year to AFP from death row.
In the past two years, his cause has turned upside down. In addition to a team of lawyers trying to reopen the case, a group of jazz musicians – the music that saved him from the confines of his solitude – wage a campaign to demand “Justice for Keith LaMar”.
From the phone on death row, LaMar has recorded an album with the Spanish band Albert Marqués, and has participated in the numerous concerts they have given in countries like Spain, France, Chile and in various cities in the United States, as one of the group. “Let’s keep asking for justice, we are almost there”, says LaMar in his message of hope. Meanwhile, the lethal injections that did not arrive will allow him to continue his fight at least until 2027.
AFP/HB
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