Once again, Akron's Ronald Phillips breathes easier because a judge has stepped in to halt his last breath.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Merz ruled Ohio's plans to use a new three-drug cocktail to deliver the lethal injection that would kill Phillips is unconstitutional, a victory for opponents of capital punishment who've successfully out-maneuvered states where lethal injection is the form of execution by denying access to lethal drugs previously used because pharmaceutical and chemical companies won't sell them for the purposes of executions.

Phillips has been on Death Row for over a generation for raping his then-girlfriend's three year old daughter; Sheila Marie Evans died weeks later from the severe injuries. He had been scheduled for execution in the Death Chamber at the Ohio Correctional Insitution in Lucasville in January, but appeals put that schedule on hold until a scheduled February 15th date. Now that schedule is also on hold.

Ironically, the ruling by Judge Merz came almost to the day of the anniversday of the death of Evans on January 18, 1993.

Lawyers for Phillips and two other inmates argued before Merz that the use of a sedative, midazolam, couldn't meet a U.S. Supreme Court threshold of not causing "serious harm." Merz also barred the use of the two other drugs, rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride, ruling the State was not consistent in his offerings in the past on the new lethal cocktail as an alternative. The first two chemicals sedate and paralyze the inmate, while the potassium chloride stops the heart.