COLUMBUS, Ohio — Governor John Kasich delayed a condemned child killer’s execution on Wednesday to study the feasibility of accommodating the man’s request to donate his organs.
Kasich’s decision came less than 24 hours before Ronald Phillips was scheduled to die for the rape and death of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter in Akron in 1993. His lethal injection Thursday was to be the first time a new two-drug combination was tried in the United States.
In stopping the execution, Kasich said he wanted to allow time to study the request the 40-year-old inmate made Monday to see whether it could help someone else. Phillips’s execution was rescheduled to July 2.
Kasich said that while Phillips’s crime was heinous, his willingness to donate organs and tissue could save another life and the state should try to accommodate a donation.
Kasich said if Phillips is found to be a viable donor to his mother, who has kidney disease and is on dialysis, or to others awaiting live transplants of non-vital organs, the stay would allow time for those procedures to be performed and for Phillips to be returned to death row.