Killer Says He's Too Obese for Execution
By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS, AP
COLUMBUS, Ohio (Oct. 18) - A federal judge on Tuesday delayed the Oct. 24 execution of cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren to allow him to join a lawsuit filed by five other death row inmates challenging the state's use of lethal injection.
In his request to join the lawsuit, Lundgren, 56, said he is at even greater risk of experiencing pain and suffering during the procedure than other inmates because he is overweight and diabetic.
State Attorney General Jim Petro will appeal the ruling to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, said spokesman Mark Anthony.
Lundgren sentence stems from a conviction for the fatal shooting of a family of five in 1989. The family, which included three children, were killed while they stood in a pit dug inside his barn in northeast Ohio.
Lundgren, who formed a cult after he was dismissed in 1987 as a lay minister of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ, had said passages in the Bible told him to kill the family. Several witnesses said the family was not as enthusiastic about the cult as Lundgren would have liked.
The family he killed had moved from Missouri in 1987 to follow Lundgren's teachings.
2006-10-19
10:26:43
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