But as prison workers repeatedly failed to find a vein strong enough to take the lethal injections, the convicted rapist and murderer began despairing of his protracted end. Witnesses and the execution team log describe how the 53-year-old winced and cried as a shunt inserted in his leg also failed to open a pathway for the fatal drugs. Two hours and 23 minutes after it started, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland halted the execution and scheduled a second attempt for a week later. The aborted execution Tuesday has stirred fresh concern among death penalty opponents about the efficacy of lethal injection, as well as the constitutional question of whether subjecting someone to a second execution amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. On Friday, Broom's attorney filed lawsuits in state and federal court alleging that the convict's civil rights would be violated by another execution attempt. U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost issued a temporary restraining order putting off the second execution attempt for at least 10 days. Broom's attorney, Tim Sweeney, also appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. Only once before in recorded history have state authorities failed to kill their target, legal scholars say. In 1946, 17-year-old Willie Francis stood up and walked away from Louisiana's 'Gruesome Gertie' electric chair after a 2,500-volt current coursed through his body from head to ankle. 'The issue with Willie Francis was, can you re-execute him or would that be cruel and unusual punishment or double jeopardy?' said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor and death penalty expert. A divided Supreme Court decided in 1947 that Louisiana could lawfully subject Francis to execution again. A second electrocution killed him a year and three days after the first one. 'But so many aspects of that case are so outdated or so specific to Willie Francis and that time that even though it is entrenched precedent with the U.S. Supreme Court and frequently cited, one would look at the Broom case very differently,' said Denno, whose writings on execution methods were cited by the U.S. Supreme Court majority in last year's decision upholding the constitutionality of lethal injection in Kentucky. 'I think we're in a new day in our treatment of human beings,' said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit archive of execution data. 'To subject someone to being at the brink of death, then yank them back because the state couldn't carry out its own procedures ... suggests the whole lethal injection process is in need of further review,' said Dieter, who has expressed views against capital punishment. The Supreme Court took what some analysts saw as a narrow look at lethal injection in the Kentucky case, Baze vs. Rees. The state had carried out only one other execution in recent years and, as in the Francis decision, the court found no pattern of flaws with the state's methods. While the Supreme Court examined the Kentucky case, other states held off on executions until the justices in April 2008 ruled lethal injection a humane means of execution if carried out correctly. A similar, but not identical, three-drug process is used in all 35 states that allow the death penalty. It is often administered by corrections officers rather than doctors because the American Medical Association advises against physician participation in executions. Death penalty opponents say the Broom incident should at least compel Ohio to impose a moratorium on executions and review the procedures. 'Ohio has a history here. It's not just him. He's the third guy in three years where we've had essentially variations on the same problem,' said Jeff Gamso, volunteer attorney and former legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. He was referring to the executions of Joseph Clark in 2006 and Christopher Newton in 2007 in which prison workers took more than an hour and two hours, respectively, to kill the inmates because of trouble locating veins. Some legal scholars said they expected little if any legal consequence from the Ohio incident. 'This certainly put someone through anxiety and stress, but whether that rises to cruel and unusual punishment -- I doubt the Supreme Court at the end of the day would agree with that,' said John Eastman, dean of Chapman University's law school. Robert Weisberg, law professor and director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, said public opinion has been little affected by previous cases where executions were botched. What is likely to happen, he said, is an incremental backing off from capital punishment because of the costs, delays and mounting concerns about executing the innocent, with states and local governments seeking death sentences less often. Last year, there were 37 executions nationwide, the lowest number in 14 years, partly due to the states' review of execution procedures. The 111 new death sentences issued compared to more than 300 a year in the mid-1990s. Since 1973, 135 people have been exonerated and freed from death rows, including five people so far this year. 