Defense 101: "I'm Too Fat" To Kill

There are times I think "only in America"...and today's story out of the Richard Cooey saga fits the bill. His defense lawyers now claim being overweight is reason to spare this killer's life.

I remember interviewing Cooey prior to his first trip to the Death Chamber in Lucasville. Even then he was a beefy guy, but I attributed much to muscle from what many inmates take as a daily weight-lifting regimen behind bars. It was my distinct impression, back then, that Cooey could clearly defend himself against anything that came his way while spending time on Death Row.

Anything, including attempts to serve the execution order that has put him away from the public for more than a generation.

Back then, Cooey won a stay from three levels of federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, that gave him the distinction of getting more than one "final meal" while in the cell adjoining Ohio's Death Chamber at the Southern Ohio Correctional Center in Lucasville. Apparently his appetite is now his defense, as his lawyers try to derail a scheduled return trip for another try by the State on October 14th of this year.

The defense in this case has never been about guilt, never about innocence. From the beginning, it has been a death penalty campaign waged by lawyers who cannot point to facts in the case as mitigating factors to spare Richard Wade Cooey his life. Cooey himself admitted to me his defense efforts came simply because he could file.

There's never been much doubt he and a friend murdered Dawn McCreery and Wendy Offredo in 1986; he's been in death penalty lockup ever since, while anti-capital punishment advocates worked the system to the point where even they were removed as his lawyers by an appeals court after running up the tab. His claims that lethal injection itself was "cruel and unusual" failed, so now his 5'7" 270 pound frame poses grounds that killing him isn't right, because executioners will have trouble finding his veins.

I went through gastric bypass surgery; at 6'4" and then-nearly 400 pounds I should have an idea of the pain finding a vein involves, yet the doctors and nurses, medical techs at the hospital, and blood test laboratory workers never seemed to have any trouble that I recall. We have a fellow here at the station who undergoes dialysis treatment three times a week, and he's got a few pounds on Cooey -- yet he still gets his treatments.

I figure there are thousands of patients at AGMC, Summa and even Children's Hospital right here in Akron who could share stories of what a joy it is to have someone find a vein to stick a needle; I'm also imagining not everyone of them is in perfect shape, either. Does that translate to cruel punishment? The courts, for the most part, say no. Now the fat defense...

At what point does cynicism tip the justice scales?