Richard Cooey Executed

Richard Cooey Now executed.

In Lucasville, Ohio Richard Cooey, 41, was put to death by lethal injection as scheduled.

Cooey and Attorneys argued in numerous legal challenges that his weight problem would make it difficult for prison staff to find a suitable vein to use for the delivery of the deadly chemicals.

However, a prison spokesman reported there were no difficulties with the execution.
Cooey did shout for one of his attorneys during preparations because he was worried the staff would botch the execution.

In his final statement Cooey said “For what? You haven’t paid any attention to anything I’ve said in the last 22 ½ years, why would anyone pay any attention to anything I would have to say now” Cooey made no other comments; he stared at the ceiling and tapped his fingers before he died and his face turned purple.

Dawn McCreery’s and Mary Ann Hackenberg’s family was there to witness the execution.

The family was disappointed that Cooey was vulgar and hateful to the end.

"He still would not apologize and still would not accept responsibility for what he did," she said.

Three of Cooey's lawyers served as his witnesses.

"The government has no conscience, only policy. Today the policy was state-sanctioned murder of Richard Cooey," said one of the lawyers, Eric Allen.

Of course Eric Allen can say this since it was not a member of his family that Cooey raped and murdered.

Cooey was the first inmate executed in Ohio in more than a year, and the state's first since the end of the unofficial moratorium on executions that began last year while the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Kentucky's lethal injection procedure.
Cooey and a co-defendant were convicted in the sexual assaults and slayings of McCreery and Wendy Offredo, 21, in September 1986. His co-defendant was 17 and was sentenced to life in prison because of his age.

The state has now executed 27 inmates since 1999, when Ohio renewed executions after more than three decades.