The Shadow
LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) – Ohio has executed a man who shot and killed a Toledo shopkeeper during a 1993 robbery, successfully using its new one-drug lethal injection method for the second time.
Thirty-seven-year-old Vernon Smith was pronounced dead at 10:28 a.m., nine minutes after the single dose of sodium thiopental began flowing at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. That was faster than the 10 minutes it took for Ohio killer Kenneth Biros to die during the nation’s first execution with the one-drug method last month. Experts had predicted the method would result in more drawn out executions.
Smith had changed his name to Abdullah Shariff Kaazim Mahdi after he was arrested.
Among those witnessing the execution were the widow and two teenage daughters of Smith’s victim, 28-year-old Sohail Darwish.
