COLUMBUS — A condemned Ohio killer facing a never-tried lethal injection method has arrived at the state death house a day ahead of his scheduled execution.

The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction plans to use a combination of a sedative and a painkiller to put Dennis McGuire to death for the 1989 rape and fatal stabbing of Joy Stewart in Preble County in western Ohio.

Prisons agency spokeswoman JoEllen Smith says McGuire arrived at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, where executions are carried out, shortly before 10 a.m. today.

McGuire was moved earlier in the day from death row in Chillicothe.

The state announced the two-drug process after supplies of its previous drug dried up when the manufacturer put it off limits for capital punishment.

First Published January 15, 2014, 4:01 p.m.