This guy has been in jail longer than the women that he raped, mutilated, and murdered were alive.
http://www.ohio.com/news/30733819.html
Convicted murderer Richard Wade Cooey is seeking to join an appeal of a judge's finding that Ohio's execution method is unconstitutional. Cooey's attorneys filed the motion Thursday with the 9th District Court of Appeals.
The appellate judges have yet to rule on whether Cooey is legally entitled to join in the appeal of a Lorain County judge's ruling.
The move is the latest in a flurry of appeals being filed to stave off Cooey's death as his execution date nears. He is scheduled to die by injection on Tuesday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville.
The former Akron man has been on death row for nearly 22 years after being convicted in the murder, kidnapping, robbery and rape of University of Akron sorority sisters Dawn McCreery, 20, and Wendy Offredo, 21.
Also on Thursday, the Ohio Supreme Court denied Cooey's request for a stay. Later in the day, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied his request for a stay.
In the latter appeals, Cooey argued that his obesity and migraine headache medication compromises the state's ability to carry out his execution humanely. Cooey, 41, weighs nearly 270 pounds.
When arrested in 1986, according to Akron police reports, he weighed 191.
His attorneys are expected to further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2003, Cooey was less than 12 hours away from execution when a federal judge granted a stay.
Robert McCreery Jr., the brother of Dawn McCreery, said the family is frustrated by Cooey's attempts to avoid death and by the judicial system in general.
He said the family simply wants the state to carry out a sentence issued more than two decades ago.
''We're just looking forward to never speaking his name again,'' he said of Cooey.
In the Lorain County case, Common Pleas Judge James Burge ruled this year that the three-drug cocktail used to execute Ohio's condemned prisoners does not allow death to occur ''quickly and painlessly,'' as state law mandates.
The drugs used in Ohio sedate, paralyze and then stop the heart of the condemned. Death penalty opponents claim the paralysis masks untold suffering. Burge's decision is being appealed by the state.
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the three-drug injection method in a case from Kentucky. The same drugs are used in Ohio.
Eric Allen, one of Cooey's attorneys, urged the appellate court to accept Cooey in the Lorain County case and request a stay of execution from the state Supreme Court.
''To deny [Cooey] . . . whose life and death is in every moral respect before this court would be an affront to basic notions of justice,'' Allen wrote. He could not be reached for comment.
Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh issued a statement after the Ohio Supreme Court denied Cooey's earlier request for a stay. She called Cooey a remorseless ''monster'' and said her office will work with the Ohio attorney general to see that the execution goes forward.
''Richard Cooey is running out of cards to play,'' she said,
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Originally Posted by KatsMeow
