Career
He was convicted in 1984 of abducting and killing Tryna Middleton, age 14, who was walking home from a football game in East Cleveland, Ohio. In 2003, Broom took up an offer from the state of Ohio for a deoxyribonucleic acid test to prove his innocence—however, the test results failed to exonerate him. The clemency hearing concluded that "the deoxyribonucleic acid report does not indicate an exact match, but does indicate that the likelihood of Broom being the donor is 1 in 2.3 million.
Otherwise stated, eight or nine other people in the country would have the same profile." Broom has repeatedly requested independent deoxyribonucleic acid retesting and a change of legal team
Broom also has convictions for robbery, aggravated robbery and four counts of kidnap of a male child. He was also convicted in a separate incidence of raping a female child.
Broom was scheduled to be executed on September 15, 2009. However, the executioners tried for two hours to maintain an IV line through which they could inject the lethal drugs, before Ohio Governor Ted Strickland issued a one-week reprieve.
Broom"s lawyers argue that his first execution attempt was cruel and unusual punishment, and that executing him would mean that his evidence would be "irretrievably lost" for their broader lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Ohio’s lethal injection procedure.
United States. District Court Judge Gregory L. Frost scheduled a November 30, 2009, hearing on the issues. As of February 2011, Broom was awaiting the outcome of an appeal. Amnesty International started a campaign to inform the public about the failure of the execution attempt.
There is also a documentary on this case, The Second Execution of Romell Broom by Michael Verhoeven, and Broom himself has written his own story in the e-book Survivor on Death Row.
