Ohio Execution Problems Raise Qualms

It Took 90 Minutes For Lethal Injection; Inmate Heard Moaning

(CBS/AP) 
Lethal injections are used by the federal government and 37 of the 38 U.S. states that have the death penalty. Nebraska still uses the electric chair. Anti-death penalty groups say that legal battles over the injection procedure are ongoing in at least 14 states.

Three states have stopped using lethal injections, reports CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers (video).

A North Carolina inmate was executed last month only after the state changed its procedures to satisfy a federal judge. The state agreed to bring in a brain wave monitor to measure Willie Brown's level of consciousness and have medical personnel ready if needed.

In California, executions are on hold while a federal judge considers the constitutionality of that state's protocol. A hearing is scheduled in September.

"It is not a procedure that can be used without medical expertise and it underscores the dilemma that it created," Dr. Linda Emanuel, a physician and neurophysiologist at Northwestern University, told CBS News. "Physicians don't kill their patients. It's not part of what physicians are supposed to be doing."

Prisons director Terry Collins said Clark's history of drug use could have been factor in the difficulty finding a vein. He said the department would review the execution.

Clark, sentenced to die in November 1984, had been facing execution longer than all but 11 of the 193 men on Ohio's death row.

Manning's widow, Mary Ellen Manning Gordon, witnessed the execution along with Manning's two brothers. "I had no problems waiting," she said when asked about the delay.

In a statement after the execution, Gordon urged legislators to pass harsher laws to punish repeat offenders.

"When it takes 22 years to impose a sentence on a man who readily admitted murdering two vital young men, I have to believe our system is failing us," she said.

Clark shot and killed convenience store clerk Donald Harris the day before killing Manning, who was working the night shift at a Toledo, Ohio, gas station. Clark was arrested three days later after he shot and wounded a man withdrawing money from an automated teller machine.

In his final statement, Clark again expressed his regrets to the families of Manning and Harris.

"I would like to apologize to them for taking away someone that they loved, he said. "Twenty-two years ago I said I was sorry and today I'm still sorry."