Ohio will use a dose of two drugs never tried before in a U.S. execution to put to death a condemned inmate who raped and killed his girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter, the state prisons agency said Monday. 
 
 In this undated photo released by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction shows Ronald Phillips. Phillips, a death row inmate who raped and killed his girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter, wants... (Associated Press) 
 
 Lawyers for death row inmate Ronald Phillips immediately sued to put off his Nov. 14 execution, saying Ohio delayed the announcement so long it didn't leave enough time to fully investigate the new method. 
 
 The agency made the decision because it couldn't obtain a supply of its former execution drug, pentobarbital, from a specialty pharmacy that mixes individual doses for patients, prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said. The agency had considered using a compounding pharmacy after its supply of federally regulated pentobarbital expired last month. 
 
 Instead, the state will use an intravenous combination of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a painkiller, in the Nov. 14 execution of Ronald Phillips of Akron. 
 
 Those drugs already are included in Ohio's never-tried backup execution method, which requires them to be injected directly into an inmate's muscle. No state has put a prisoner to death with that combination of drugs. 
 
 Florida uses midazolam as the first of three drugs, while Kentucky includes the two in its untested backup method. 
 
 Phillips, 40, was sentenced to death for killing Sheila Marie Evans in 1993 after a long period of abusing her. 
 
 Gov. John Kasich is weighing clemency for Phillips following the state Parole Board's unanimous recommendation against mercy last week. 
 
 Attorneys for Phillips filed documents in federal court Friday asking a judge to let them expand a current lawsuit to challenge the use of compounded pentobarbital. They filed an updated complaint Monday just hours after the state's announcement that it was selecting the two other drugs instead. 
 
 The state said it's reviewing the filing. Judge Gregory Frost scheduled a hearing for Friday. 
 
 Phillips' lawyers also are challenging the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction's decision to allow its director to delegate responsibilities for some execution duties. Phillips' lawyers say that breaks an agreement the agency made previously with Frost's approval. 
 
 Ohio's execution policy calls for it to try to buy specialty batches of pentobarbital from compounding pharmacies, which mix individual doses of drugs for specific patients. If that fails, the policy calls for the use of the two-drug approach. 
 
 A plan by Georgia to use a similar specialty batch of pentobarbital has been put on hold by a federal lawsuit challenging the state prison agency's refusal to identify the compounding pharmacy that provided the drug. 
 
 The lawsuit also questions the drug's safety and effectiveness. 
 
 Compounding pharmacies are under increased scrutiny following last year's meningitis outbreak that killed more than 60 people and sickened hundreds and was linked to contaminated ingredients at the New England Compounding Center in Massachusetts. 
 
 Phillips' lawyers have pushed for mercy, arguing he was raped and beaten by his late father as a child and grew up in a chaotic, filthy environment. 
 
 The state says Phillips long denied suffering such abuse and raised it only as his execution became imminent. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus. ||||| Ohio plans to use a new drug cocktail in a November execution, because it does not have enough of the standard drug, pentobarbital. Other death-penalty states face the same problem. 
 
 Ohio said Monday that it will use an untested cocktail of two drugs in an execution scheduled for next month, after reporting that it does not have enough of the drug pentobarbital to carry out the death sentence. 
 
 Ohio is among the states that have in recent months reported shortages of pentobarbital, the drug used in 13 states for lethal injections, after the drug’s manufacturer announced last year that it would no longer sell the drug to prisons. The state’s announcement comes amid a debate over the legality of states tapping into alternative markets for supplies of lethal-injection drugs or turning to new, never before used drug cocktails. 
 
 The Danish manufacturer of pentobarbital, Lundbeck, banned the sale of its product to prisons in 2011 because of Denmark’s membership in the European Union, which opposes the US practice of capital punishment. The announcement sent states with death rows scrambling: Lundbeck holds the sole license to produce pentobarbital in the US. Most states had enough of the drug to get through to this September. After that, their reserves would expire. 
 
 Since then, corrections departments have been pressing for alternative drugs to carry out death penalty sentences. For some states, that has meant turning to a little regulated wing of the pharmaceutical market: compounding pharmacies, which custom brew drugs. Texas and Georgia have announced deals to purchase pentobarbital from compounding pharmacies but are now embroiled in federal lawsuits by death-row inmates, who are challenging the states' right to use the drugs. Pennsylvania and Colorado are also courting compounding pharmacies for lethal injection drugs but have put all executions on hold. 
 
 Just South Dakota has so far used drugs from compounding pharmacies to carry out executions. The state executed two convicts with the drugs in October of last year. 
 
 Meanwhile, other states have turned to invention, hoping to find a replacement drug for pentobarbital. Pentobarbital itself had been ushered in to replace the drug sodium thiopental in 2011, after its Illinois-based producer said it would not sell the drug to prisons. 
 
 Ohio says it will use a combination of the drugs midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a painkiller, in the execution of Ronald Phillips, scheduled for Nov. 14. The state said on Monday that it had looked for a compounding pharmacy as an alternative pentobarbital supplier but had been unsuccessful. 
 
 Both tactics of procuring lethal injection drugs have come under fire from anti-death penalty advocates in recent months, The New York Times reported in August. Compounding pharmacies are not subject to us Food and Drug Administration regulation and do not need to receive accreditation from the Pharmacy Compounding Accreditation Board, advocates note. In 2012, an unaccredited compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts was found to be the source of an outbreak of fungal meningitis that infected over 700 people and killed 61 people. 
 
 In the wake of the incident, advocates have urged states to hold off on using drugs purchased from compounding pharmacies, saying that unregulated brews of the drug could result in botched executions. Advocates have similarly questioned the use of alternatives to pentobarbital, noting that such cocktails are untested and could cause undue pain to the condemned. 
 
 Earlier this month, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon halted what was to be the first execution in the United States using propofol, the drug that killed Michael Jackson in 2009. Over the summer, the Missouri Supreme Court had approved the use of the drug in the state’s executions. The state has since said it is investigating purchasing pentobarbital from compounding pharmacies. 
 
 On Monday, Mr. Phillips's lawyers asked a federal judge to delay the execution, giving them time to contest the state’s right to use an untested drug combination, AP reported. 
 
 Phillips was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter in 1993.
– Another state is looking for alternatives after running out of the execution drug pentobarbital. Ohio says it doesn't have enough of the drug to execute child killer Ronald Phillips next month so it plans to use the untested combination of the sedative midazolam and the painkiller hydromorphone for the lethal injection, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Pentobarbital's Danish manufacturer banned its sale to prisons in 2011. Other pentobarbital-using states, including Texas, the nation's most prolific executioner, have turned to "compounding pharmacies" that custom-make drugs for their supply. Ohio introduced new execution guidelines earlier this month that allowed it to obtain drugs from such pharmacies, but it was unable to find a suitable supplier. Lawyers for Phillips—who was sentenced to die for the 1993 rape and murder of his girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter—are suing to delay his November 14 execution, the AP reports. If they fail, the 40-year-old will become the first person in any state to be executed with the two-drug combination.