Death row paedo Romell Broom who killed girl, 14, then SURVIVED botched execution dies ‘of Covid’

A MURDERER who survived the death chamber more than a decade ago has died of possible Covid complications.

Condemned killer Romell Broom was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 14-year-old Tryna Middleton in 1984.

AP:Associated Press

Romell Broom died on Monday after surviving a botched execution attempt more than a decade ago[/caption]

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Tryna Middleton was stabbed to death by Romell Broom in 1984[/caption]

He abducted her in Cleveland as she walked home from a football game with two friends, before fatally stabbing her.

The 64-year-old is believed to have died from coronavirus on Monday, the state prison system said – 11 years after a botched execution attempt in 2009 saw Broom pierced with a lethal injection a total of 18 times over a period of two hours.

Broom reportedly cried and screamed with pain during the ordeal as executioners couldn’t find a vein, after which officials gave up and returned him to his cell on death row in Ohio.

At the time in 2009, Broom was only the second inmate nationally to survive a modern-day execution.

In 2016, the Ohio Supreme Court gave the go-ahead for Broom to be put to death ‘again’.

Broom’s lawyers had argued that a second try would constitute a “cruel and
unusual punishment”, which is banned under the US Constitution.

They also claimed it would violate America’s double jeopardy law, which states people can’t be punished for the same offence twice.

But the court ruled 4-3 that the last try didn’t count as no lethal drugs were
administered, clearing the way for another attempt.

His death date had been scheduled for June this year, but in the spring, Governor Mike DeWine issued a reprieve and set a new date for March 2022.

Broom’s attorneys had filed arguments with the US Supreme Court that he should be spared a second attempt.

In a statement, attorneys Timothy Sweeney and Adele Shank said: “Let his passing in this way, and not in the execution chamber, be the final word on whether a second attempt should ever have been considered.”

Broom has been placed on the “Covid probably list” maintained by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, spokesman Sara French said on Tuesday.

Inmates on the list are suspected to have died of the virus, pending a death certificate.

The state says 124 inmates have died from confirmed or probably cases of Covid.