TOLEDO: Ohio is moving its death row for the third time in little over a decade, this time because of the growing number of aging inmates serving death sentences, state prison officials said Friday.
Death row will go from Chillicothe in southern Ohio to the Toledo Correctional Institution, a trip of more than three hours. Toledo’s prison is newer and designed to handle inmates with physical and mobility limitations, including those in wheelchairs, the state said.
The state will relocate 126 death row inmates in the “near future,” said prisons department spokeswoman JoEllen Smith. She said she couldn’t provide exact details because of security reasons. Three other inmates at a medical facility in Columbus are being evaluated to see if they are healthy enough to be transferred.
The average age of Ohio’s death row population is just under 50, with inmates’ ages ranging from 21 to 75.
Executions still will be carried out at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.
Ohio said earlier this month that it plans to resume executions in January following an unofficial moratorium of nearly three years that was blamed on shortages of lethal drugs.
The state hasn’t put anyone to death since January 2014, when Dennis McGuire repeatedly gasped and snorted during a 26-minute procedure using a never-before-tried two-drug combo.
Prison officials also hope the switch will help reduce crowding at the Chillicothe prison and other sites across the state. Areas now used to hold death row inmates in individual cells could be converted to double-bunked cells that could house twice as many high-security inmates.