An Ohio man was granted eight extra months of life after being put back on death row Wednesday, a day before he was to be executed by the state.
Ronald Phillips was convicted of the murder and rape of a three-year-old child — the daughter of his girlfriend at the time — in 1993. He was sentenced to die Thursday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, but Gov. John Kasich granted a request from Phillips to figure out if his nonvital organs could be salvaged for donation.
This is a first for Ohio, said Ricky Seyfang, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
“I am unsure if this has happened elsewhere in the country before, but this is the first situation of this kind at our agency,” Seyfang said.
Phillips’ execution date is rescheduled for July 2, according to a news release from Kasich’s office. He would have been the fourth prisoner to be put to death in 2013.
“Ronald Phillips committed a heinous crime for which he will face the death penalty,” Kasich said in the release. “I realize this is a bit of uncharted territory for Ohio, but if another life can be saved by his willingness to donate his organs and tissues then we should allow for that to happen.”
Timothy Sweeney, Phillips’ attorney, requested Phillips donate his organs three days before the scheduled execution. The department declined the request, and that’s when Kasich stepped in.
“The governor has the power to do this, so that’s what he did,” Seyfang said.
The Chillicothe Correctional Institution, where Ohio’s death row inmates are held, has a policy that allows inmates to become donors, but any organs harvested would have to go to living relatives.
Reforming that policy could be a good turn for prisons, Seyfang said.
“It can possibly save a life of someone else,” Seyfang said, adding that requiring death row inmates to donate their organs “could be a possibility” though “no definitive decisions have been made.”
She added: “It’d be a way to turn a positive out of a negative.”
However, JoEllen Smith, another spokeswoman for the department, said no conversations have taken place at all.
“I am the official spokesperson for the department and I can tell you that we are not considering forcing inmates to be organ donors,” Smith said.
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