Inmate Too Fat to Execute: Just Shoot Me

Convicted killer Richard Cooey knows there have been jokes at his expense. But he insists he’s not afraid to die— just too fat for lethal injection. At 5’ 7”, 267 pounds, Cooey is so rotund that it’s nigh-impossible to find a vein. “It's hard getting access to my veins,” Cooey told CNN. “If it would make people happy, shoot me in the head with a .45. Do it legally.”

Cooey has gained 70 pounds in prison, but says it was a natural product of insufficient exercise, not a plan to avoid the death chamber. He says his lawsuit was a constitutional challenge, and has been unfairly ridiculed. “It has nothing to do with weight gain.” Cooey and another man were convicted of raping and killing a pair of girls after stopping their car with a concrete brick. (More death penalty stories.)