Ohio Executes Man Convicted Of 1992 Killings In Parma

LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Ohio has executed a man convicted of killing two people in back-to-back robberies in suburban Cleveland in 1992. Death row inmate Gary Otte was put to death Wednesday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

The time of death for the 45-year-old Otte was 10:54 a.m.

His legal avenues for halting the execution closed just hours earlier, when the Ohio Supreme Court refused to halt it or consider his appeal that he shouldn't be executed because of his age at the time of the killings. (To stay up to date on local stories, subscribe to the Patch Cleveland newsletter. As news breaks and the story develops, you will be the first to receive updates from Patch.)

The execution was the second this year. Ohio put to death a condemned child killer in July.

Otte was sentenced to die for the Feb. 12, 1992, killing of Robert Wasikowski and the Feb. 13, 1992, killing of Sharon Kostura.

Otte arrived at the prison on Tuesday. His last meal included a mushroom and Swiss cheese hamburger, a quart of Heath Bar ice cream and a slice of banana cream pie.

Otte unsuccessfully challenged the use of the first drug in Ohio's lethal-injection procedure, a sedative called midazolam, which was involved in problematic executions in Arizona and Oklahoma. Midazolam also has been used in executions without discernible problems, including the execution of Ronald Phillips in Ohio in July.

Image by the Associated Press

Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus.