ROMELL BROOM v. TIM SHOOP, WARDEN - Articles

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ROMELL BROOM v. TIM SHOOP, WARDEN

Posted by: Karen Belcher on Jun 23, 2020

Court: 6th Circuit Court (Published Opinions)

Attorneys 1: ARGUED: Timothy F. Sweeney, LAW OFFICE OF TIMOTHY FARRELL SWEENEY, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellant.

Attorneys 2: ARGUED: Charles L. Wille, OFFICE OF THE OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee.

Attorneys 3: ON BRIEF: Timothy F. Sweeney, LAW OFFICE OF TIMOTHY FARRELL SWEENEY, Cleveland, Ohio, S. Adele Shank, LAW OFFICE OF S. ADELE SHANK, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant.

Attorneys 4: ON BRIEF: Charles L. Wille, OFFICE OF THE OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee.

Judge(s): BATCHELDER, MOORE, and GIBBONS, Circuit Judges

Court Appealed: Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio at Cleveland

KAREN NELSON MOORE, Circuit Judge. In an infamous September 2009 incident, the state of Ohio tried to execute death-row inmate Rommel Broom, and failed. More specifically, the state tried to execute Broom by way of lethal injection, but was forced to abandon the effort when the execution team concluded—two hours into the process—that it could not maintain a viable IV connection to Broom’s veins. The state then returned Broom to his cell, to await a second execution attempt on another day. That second execution attempt has not yet happened, however, because the parties have spent the last eleven years litigating whether the U.S. Constitution bars Ohio from ever trying to execute Broom again—Broom relies on both the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual” punishment and the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on “double jeopardy.” The state courts, including the Ohio Supreme Court, have rejected Broom’s contentions on the merits, as did the district court below on habeas review. Broom’s case now comes before us.

We in no way condone Ohio’s treatment of Broom; that it took two hours of stabbing and prodding for the state to realize that it could not maintain a viable IV connection to Broom’s veins is disturbing, to say the least. But because the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”) permits us to reverse state court merits decisions in only a narrow set of circumstances, and because the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision rejecting Broom’s constitutional claims on the merits does not fall within that set of circumstances here, we AFFIRM the district court’s judgment denying Broom habeas relief.

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