WARREN — A convicted murderer from Trumbull County is among three death row inmates who were granted execution reprieves by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday.

Sean Carter, 46, who was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Jan. 22, 2025, had his execution moved to Nov. 17, 2027, according to DeWine’s office.

“Governor DeWine is issuing these reprieves due to ongoing problems involving the willingness of pharmaceutical suppliers to provide drugs to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC), pursuant to DRC protocol, without endangering other Ohioans,” the release states.

Carter was convicted in March 1998 in the rape and fatal stabbing of his adoptive grandmother.

He was 18 when Veader Prince was slain Sept. 13, 1997, at her Southington home.

After passing through several foster homes, Carter was adopted by Evelyn Prince Carter when he was 10. In February 1997, Carter was kicked out of his home and went to live with Evelyn Carter’s mother, Prince.

After being jailed, Carter tried to return to Prince’s home to live on Sept. 13, 1997. However, she wouldn’t have it, according to court records, and gave him car keys to leave. Carter left the home, but shortly returned to try to convince the woman to change her mind. An argument ensued, it turned physical, and Sean Carter got a knife, according to court documents.

An autopsy revealed that Prince had been stabbed 18 times, suffered blunt-force trauma to the head and had been sodomized.

The next day, Carter was caught in Beaver County, Pa., and later confessed.

In a trial during March 1998, a Trumbull County jury convicted Carter of aggravated murder and two counts of the capital specifications — aggravated robbery and rape. The jury also found Carter guilty of aggravated robbery, rape and the lesser included offense of aggravated burglary.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Trumbull County ruled in August 2018 to uphold the murder conviction of Carter, who had attempted to avoid execution by claiming that he was incompetent at the time of his original trial. On Oct. 11, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case.

On Friday, Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said, “I am saddened by the delay and the state needs ro find alternative methods to get the job done and follow the law. Too many family members of murder victims, like Miriam Fife, are left twisting in the wind.”

Fife is the mother of murder victim Raymond Fife, who was raped, tortured and murdered in 1985 by Danny Lee Hill, who also is on death row. She also was the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office first victim / witness advocate.

Carter is housed at the Warren Correctional Institution in Lebanon, Ohio.

Ohio Republican Attorney General Dave Yost put his weight behind a legislative effort in January that would bring nitrogen gas executions to the state, ending a yearslong unofficial death penalty moratorium. Yost made remarks in a news conference about a bill sponsored by Republican state Reps. Brian Stewart and Phil Plummer. It would require that the nitrogen hypoxia pioneered in Alabama in early January be used in cases where lethal injection drugs are not available.

Ohio hasn’t executed anyone since 2018. In 2020, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine declared lethal injection “no longer an option,” citing a federal judge’s ruling that the protocol could cause inmates “severe pain and needless suffering.”

“Perhaps nitrogen — widely available and easy to manufacture — can break the impasse of unavailability of drugs for lethal injection,” Yost wrote the day after Alabama’s execution. “Death row inmates are in greater danger of dying of old age than their sentence.”

Ohio’s last execution was on July 18, 2018, when Robert Van Hook was put to death by lethal injection for killing a man he met in a Cincinnati bar in 1985. His was the 56th execution since 1999.

The state has since faced challenges finding the chemicals for lethal injection.Ohio has 118 men and one woman on death row, according to the most