Capital punishment

AP:

An overweight inmate was executed by injection on Thursday after a delay of about 90 minutes while prison medical workers struggled to find suitable veins in his arms.      

The inmate, Christopher Newton, died at 11:53 a.m.; his execution was scheduled to start at 10. It was the longest delay since the state resumed executions in 1999. It took 90 minutes to insert the shunts where the needles are inserted.

Mr. Newton, 37, who was sentenced to death in the 2001 beating and choking death of a cellmate, Jason Brewer, continued to talk and smile even when strapped to the execution table at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility....

Mr. Newton refused to cooperate with officials investigating Mr. Brewer’s death unless they sought the death penalty against him, court documents said.

In an interview with reporters last month, Mr. Newton said he had killed Mr. Brewer, 27, because he repeatedly gave up when they were playing chess.

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