The lawsuit was later dropped by the family after the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced it would abandon the execution method it had used on McGuire.

[4] Dennis B. McGuire (February 10, 1960 – January 16, 2014)[5] was sentenced to death on December 8, 1994, for the 1989 rape and murder of 22-year-old Joy Stewart in West Alexandria, Ohio.

No leads came in for the case until December 1989, when McGuire, who was in prison for an unrelated crime, spoke with police, and told them that his brother-in-law had murdered Stewart.

The drug, originally manufactured in Denmark, was subject to strict export licenses that prevented it being sold to departments of correction within the United States.

[18] Following the execution, McGuire's family planned to sue the state of Ohio for inflicting cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the US constitution.

A professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School told an Ohio court that using midazolam was inappropriate in an execution, and that the state ran the risk of McGuire being conscious for up to five minutes while suffocating.

The human rights group Reprieve also released a statement in response, saying they were shocked that the state had gone ahead with the execution, despite the warnings from experts.

Kasich later signed a bill into law that shielded the names of companies that provide the state of Ohio with lethal injection drugs.

[16] It took over three years before Ohio planned to resume executions with a new, three-drug combination: midazolam, rocuronium bromide, and potassium chloride.