COLUMBUS - The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday set two new execution dates even as the state continues to rework its procedures for putting condemned inmates to death by injection.
The execution dates are the first in four and a half months set by the court, which had been scheduling executions about once a month.
Trumbull County death row inmate Kenneth Biros, formerly of Brookfield, still is scheduled to die Dec. 8 and could be the next execution if a new lethal injection protocol is developed.
The death penalty is temporarily on hold in Ohio while the state develops the new policies. The update follows a botched execution on Sept. 15 that was halted after two hours when executioners couldn't find a usable vein on inmate Rommel Broom.
The court's decision Wednesday set a May 13 execution date for Michael Beuke, 47, convicted of the 1983 murder of Robert Craig, a man he met while hitchhiking on Interstate 275 in southwest Ohio.
Beuke shot Craig twice in the head and once in the chest, dumped his body in the bushes and stole his car.
The court also set a June 10 execution date for Richard Nields, 59, sentenced to die for the 1997 death of his girlfriend, 59-year-old Patricia Newsome, at their home in Finneytown in southwest Ohio.
Nields beat and strangled Newsome after she asked him to move out of her house.
The decision by Gov. Ted Strickland to stop Broom's execution was unprecedented since the United States resumed executions in the 1970s.
U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost further delayed Broom's execution pending a hearing on the inmate's request that the state not be allowed to try to put him to death again.
Strickland, a Democrat, then granted five-month reprieves to inmates scheduled to die in October and this month, and Frost issued a stay on Biros' December execution while the state revises its injection policies. Strickland hasn't granted any reprieve in Biros' case.
Among the changes the state is considering is injecting lethal drugs into inmates' bone marrow or muscles as an alternative to - or a backup for - the traditional intravenous execution procedure. Broom complained in an affidavit following the execution attempt that execution staff painfully hit muscle and bone at times during as many as 18 attempts to reach a vein.
Broom was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a 14-year old girl in 1984.
Ohio has put 32 people to death since 1999, when executions resumed in the state.
Among 10 Trumbull County death row inmates, one was executed in August, and Biros was scheduled to be the second.
The Ohio attorney general last week filed a motion with the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the stay in the Biros case.
And Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, along with crime victims, are preparing to rebut any claims Biros has brought up in his second clemency proceeding scheduled for Monday in Columbus.
Biros, 51, was convicted in the slaying and dismemberment of Tami Engstrom, 22, of Brookfield, after he offered to drive her home from a bar Feb. 7, 1991.
He came close to being executed in 2007, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the execution should be stayed to allow Biros to argue against lethal injection to a panel of federal judges. Since it has been two years, the state requires another clemency hearing to consider any new evidence.
Engstrom's family had traveled to Lucasville to witness Biros' scheduled execution at that point, only to learn that Biros was getting more time to argue against the penalty.