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'Obese' Inmate Dies Of Lethal Injection

POSTED: 6:21 pm EDT October 13, 2008
UPDATED: 12:16 pm EDT October 14, 2008

Ohio has executed a 5-foot-7, 267-pound double murderer who argued he was too fat to die humanely by lethal injection.

Richard Cooey died at 10:28 a.m. Tuesday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

When asked if he had any last words, he said, "You (expletive) haven't paid any attention to what I've had to say over the past 22½ years. Why are you going to pay attention to what I have to say now?"

There were no immediate reports of problems finding suitable veins to deliver the deadly chemicals.

A news conference is under way. Be sure to check back for updates from NewsChannel5's Curtis Jackson.

His attorneys had argued that his weight problem could make it difficult for prison staff to access a vein. A prisons spokeswoman said earlier that Cooey received a pre-execution exam and was cleared.

Cooey was the first inmate executed in Ohio in more than a year, and the first since the end of an unofficial national moratorium on executions that began last year while the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Kentucky's lethal injection procedure.

The 41-year-old Cooey killed two University of Akron students in 1986.

Cooey and a co-defendant were convicted of killing two female students from the University of Akron after disabling their car with a chunk of concrete thrown from an overpass and then offering to help them.

Prosecutors said the women were taken to a secluded spot where they were sexually assaulted, stabbed and bludgeoned, and had the letter "X" carved into their stomachs.

Cooey was a 19-year-old soldier on leave from the U.S. Army at the time. His co-defendant, Clinton Dickens, was 17 and was sentenced to life in prison because of his age.

The last Ohio inmate to be executed was Christopher Newton -- who was similar in size to Cooey -- in May 2007. The execution team had trouble putting IVs in his arm, delaying his execution nearly two hours. There were similar problems in the execution of Joseph Clark in 2006.

Cooey ordered a special meal Monday that included a T-bone steak with A-1 sauce, onion rings, french fries, four eggs over easy, toast with butter, hash browns, a pint of rocky road ice cream, a Mountain Dew soft drink and bear claw pastries, Carson said.





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