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Death row inmate Romell Broom was given 11 more years of life after executioners tried and failed to find a vein 18 times while trying to administer a lethal injection into him.
Officials reported on Wednesday that the condemned Ohio inmate has likely died from complications of COVID-19.
Broom was a 64-year-old Black male convicted of murder and rape of 14-year-old Tryna Middleton, kidnapped while walking home from a football game with two friends.
Broom passed away Monday at the Franklin Medical Center, NBC News reports.
“As of today, his death is considered a probable Covid-19 related death, pending his death certificate,” Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokeswoman Sara French said in a statement.
Broom was scheduled to be executed back in September of 2009, but executioners couldn’t find a vein that would allow the injection to go through. His execution was put off after he was stuck 18 times over two hours.
Officials set his next execution date for March 16, 2022.
“We are sorry that he is gone and sorry that he lived his last days on death row,” Broom’s lawyer Adele Shank said in a statement on behalf of her and the inmate’s other attorney, Tim Sweeney.
“Due to a painful and traumatic botched execution procedure, Broom survived that day only to live with the ever-increasing fear and distress that the same process would be used on him at his next execution date. Let his passing in this way, and not in the execution chamber, be the final word on whether a second attempt should ever have been considered.”
Ohio is operating under a de facto moratorium against capital punishments. The state is unable to get the drugs needed to administer lethal injections. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine says that state lawmakers have to find a new method of execution.
According to the news outlet, a handful of prisoners have survived their executions, including Willie Francis, 17, who survived an electric chair execution attempt in 1946 due to improper setup. He was executed the next year at the age of 18.
Broom is not the first Ohio inmate who survived their execution attempt. Alva Campbell, 69, survived after executioners failed to find a vein but died four months later while in custody.
