Retired Akron police and firefighters have sued about their health benefits, and an immigrant whose robbery charges were dismissed is now worried about deportation. These are two of the six appeals before the Supreme Court in early June.

Retired Akron police and firefighters have sued about their health benefits, and an immigrant whose robbery charges were dismissed is now worried about deportation. These are two of the six appeals before the Supreme Court in early June.

In 2009, the state tried to execute Romell Broom, who was sentenced to death for the 1985 kidnapping, rape, and murder of a 14-year-old Cleveland girl. But medical staff members tried unsuccessfully for two hours to insert IV lines that enable them to inject the lethal drugs. At the request of prison officials, the governor stopped the execution.

Broom has raised constitutional claims about a second execution attempt in an appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court, which will consider his case on Tuesday.

He argues that the execution team didn’t complete mandated training, neglected to do one of the required exams of his veins, and brought in an outside doctor during the process – all in violation of the state’s protocol for executions at the time, he maintains. He adds that the repeated needle sticks he was subjected to caused needless pain and suffering. Because the execution failed through no fault of his own, a second try at executing him is cruel and unusual punishment, he contends. Citing a 1947 U.S. Supreme Court case, he calls another attempt an impermissible “death by installments.”

Mentioning the same ruling, the state responds that carrying out a death sentence isn’t cruel or unusual when an accident or equipment failure prevents the first execution. The state also argues that Broom’s execution hadn’t actually begun because no lethal drugs were injected into his body. Nothing rare or shocking enough took place in 2009 to justify a constitutional claim of cruel and unusual punishment, and Broom’s sentence must be imposed, the state concludes.

Broom v. State is the first of three cases to be argued before the court on June 9. The court will consider three more cases on Wednesday, June 10. The court’s sessions begin at 9 a.m. each day at the Thomas J. Moyer Ohio Judicial Center in Columbus. The arguments will be streamed live online at sc.ohio.gov and broadcast live on The Ohio Channel.

Along with the brief descriptions below, the Office of Public Information today released summaries of the six cases.

Other Cases for Tuesday, June 9

• Retired police and firefighters in Akron receive medical benefits through a state fund along with supplemental coverage from the city. The retirees in Akron v. Department of Insurance have sued the city, the fund, and an insurance company claiming that the health benefits haven’t been coordinated properly. The question before the court is whether the state’s insurance department has jurisdiction over the self-funded health plans on this issue.
• A southern Ohio town hired a construction company in 2007 for a road project installing a new traffic light, and the contract included a provision that damages of $700 per day would be paid to the village if the project wasn’t completed on time. The company finished its work more than a year after the deadline. In Piketon v. Boone Coleman Construction, the village contends that courts must review the reasonableness of only the daily rate for damages rather than the reasonableness of the total amount assessed based on how late a project is finished.

Cases for Wednesday, June 10

• In Johnson v. State, a federal appeals court returned the death-penalty case to Hamilton County to hold a new trial for sentencing only. On a different jury’s recommendation, the court again sentenced the Cincinnati man, Rayshawn Johnson, to death for the 1997 murder of his neighbor. The man contends that potential jurors were removed by the prosecutor because of their race; that photos, a 9-1-1 call, and media clips used at the original trial shouldn’t have been admitted during this sentencing hearing; and that the prosecutor committed misconduct. He asks the court to set aside his death sentence and order another penalty-phase trial.
• A Palestinian man entered a pretrial diversion program after submitting a statement that he had stolen a battery charger in 2006 from a Cleveland home store. He completed the program, and the trial court dismissed the robbery charges against him. The U.S. government then informed him that he may be deported because his admission of guilt in the diversion program documents is equivalent to a conviction for immigration purposes. The immigrant in Kona v. State notes that the state courts didn’t warn him of this potential consequence. He asks the Supreme Court to correct a “manifest injustice” by allowing the trial court to set aside its judgment and him to withdraw his “plea” to avoid deportation.
• While speeding with her 1-year-old in the car, a drunk woman hit a pole on a Cleveland street in 2013 resulting in serious injuries to her child. She pled guilty and received three years in prison for child endangering, aggravated vehicular assault, and operating a vehicle while intoxicated (OVI). She maintains in Earley v. State that the vehicular assault and OVI offenses should have been merged before she was sentenced.