Execution reduces Ohio’s death roll to 138

The state of Ohio now has 138 people sentenced to death, among the nation’s highest death row populations.

The number of those on death roll has dropped by one in the state of Ohio, following an execution on Wednesday; the first time the state will carry out a death sentence in more than three years.

At 10:43 a.m. Wednesday, inmate and convicted murderer Ronald Phillips was pronounced dead, executed via lethal injection.

He was executed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

Phillips’ death may mark the end of one chapter in the state’s battle to find a legally permissible means of execution.

The state may soon begin carrying out many more death sentences.

Ohio paused its executions after a lethal injection in 2014 caused inmate Dennis McGuire to gasp and snort during the 15 minutes before he died.

Ohio has executed 54 people since 1999. And it has a number of executions scheduled through 2020, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

As NPR’s Debbie Elliott reported in April, the number of executions in the United States has declined significantly in recent years, as states have struggled to find drugs that can kill death row inmates in a constitutional manner.

Phillips, 43, was convicted in 1993 of the rape and murder of Sheila Marie Evans, his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter.

He was 19 at the time, and his lawyers had argued that his young age should have been taken into consideration.

Phillips had appealed to the Supreme Court for a stay, saying that he “bears no resemblance to that teenager” sentenced to death long ago, and asking for more time to pursue legal arguments in his case, the Associated Press reports.

But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court denied his request, and the state went forward with his execution. Phillips was killed using the three drugs that comprise Ohio’s new method, including “a sedative, midazolam, used in some troubled executions in Ohio, Arkansas and Arizona.