ELYRIA –  A hearing on the constitutionality of lethal injection veered off course earlier today when Assistant County Prosecutor Tony Cillo accused Common Pleas Judge James Burge of helping defense attorneys.

“How is the state supposed to get notice what arguments it’s supposed to be defending if the court is coming up with arguments from the bench?” Cillo demanded.

Burge replied that Cillo and other attorneys in the case were “supposed to know all of them.”

Cillo then said Burge did the same thing when he was a defense attorney – pointing to a 1997 drug case in which Burge didn’t tell him what a motion was until after producing it in court.

In that case, Burge lost his motion and his client, Devon Wilkerson, was sent to prison for nine years after being found guilty in trial.

Burge told Cillo before taking a brief recess that “I don’t think your recitations of the cheap tricks I used to pull as a defense attorney is going to advance this cause this morning.”

Cillo has been arguing throughout the morning that the state’s lethal injection protocols are constitutional and fulfill the requirements of a state law that requires an execution to be done with a dosage of drugs that will “quickly and painlessly cause death.”

Attorneys for accused killers Ruben Rivera and Ronald McCloud don’t dispute that if the drugs are administered correctly the current execution process in Ohio would be constitutional. But they also say it’s impossible to guarantee that nothing will go wrong.

“There is at least the possibility that lethal injection certainly will not be painless,” said defense attorney Jeff Gamso.

The hearing resumes this afternoon.

“The only question is whether this protocol hurts,” Burge said.

 

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