Three condemned men petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution on Tuesday, continuing the ongoing fight over Ohio's lethal injection regime.
Convicted murderers Gary Otte, Ronald Phillips, and Raymond Tibbetts made their appeal to Justice Elena Kagan, who is responsible for such requests for Ohio, according to the Associated Press.
The men's lawyers claim that one of the drugs used in Ohio's three-drug lethal injection cocktail, midazolam, creates a risk of pain severe enough to violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment."
The Supreme Court found the use of midazolam constitutional in Glossip v. Gross. Now, the three Ohio men are hoping that the high court will revisit the issue.
Otte, Phillips, and Tibbetts' lawyers expect that the court will take the midazolam issue back up because it "involves an issue of recurring and national importance, " according to their filing.
Ohio is expected to oppose the request.
Midazolam is a sedative administered to induce a coma before the heart is stopped, and has been associated with a number of controversial executions. Most recently, convicted murderer Ricky Gray was executed using midazolam by the state of Virginia. His autopsy revealed blood in his lungs and other signs that he had struggled, an outcome that some have attributed to the use of the controversial sedative.
A federal appeals court last month overturned a lower court ruling that had, in effect, put a three-year moratorium on executions in Ohio. In the lower court, the convicted men's lawyers claimed that their case was different from Glossip because the execution procedure used by Ohio was different from the one in question in Glossip.
Ohio has more than two dozen executions scheduled over the next three years, none of which would have been able to proceed prior to the federal appeals court ruling. If the Supreme Court grants the stay, those executions may once again be put on hold.