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WASHINGTON: A convicted rapist and murderer was put to death in Ohio on Tuesday after failing to convince courts he would suffer unduly during lethal injection because he was overweight.
Richard Cooey, 41, died at 10:28 am (1428 GMT), according to Andrea Carson, a spokeswoman for the prison in Lucasville, Ohio who was present for the execution. Carson there was no problem with the execution and "he did not look like he suffered."
Cooey was condemned to death in 1986 for the murder and rape of two young women and spent 22 years on death row, isolated 23 hours a day, which caused him to gain weight, his lawyers said.
Cooey weighed around 125 kilos (275 pounds) at the time of his death.
A half-hour before his execution, the US Supreme Court rejected Cooey's last-ditch appeal arguing that due to his obesity and the medicine he was taking, his execution would amount to cruel and unusual punishment, which is unconstitutional.
"The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice (John Paul) Stevens and by him referred to the court is denied," the succinct Supreme Court decision said.
Cooey had argued that his weight would make it difficult for Ohio authorities to find a vein to administer a lethal injection, causing him unreasonable suffering.
He further claimed that his migraine medication could interfere with the anaesthetic used in the execution which he said could lead to his being subjected to an "agonising or excruciatingly painful" death.
The last convict executed in Ohio, on May 27, 2007, was overweight. Prison personnel took more than an hour to insert a needle in each of Christopher Newton's arms before taking him into the execution chamber.
The year before, Joseph Clark's vein burst during execution. Although a curtain hid the condemned man from witnesses, they heard him crying and moaning while technicians searched for another vein.
After that, prison personnel were instructed to take all the time necessary to insert the needles correctly prior to execution.
Cooey was the 25th man executed in the United States since the Supreme Court validated lethal injection on April 16, 2008, following a seven month moratorium on the practice. - AFP/de
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