COLUMBUS, OH - The nominee recommended to head the state prisons department again defended the state's process for executions on Wednesday despite troubles with this month's execution of a prisoner whose vein collapsed and asked officers to find another way to kill him.

An Ohio Senate committee unanimously recommended confirming Terry Collins as director of the state Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, to replace the retiring Reginald Wilkinson.

Senate committees don't usually have full hearings on Gov. Bob Taft's agency director appointments, but Democratic Sen. Marc Dann requested one in part because of the problems with the May 2 execution of Joseph Clark.

The execution team had trouble finding a suitable vein in the arms of Clark, a former intravenous drug user, and the vein they chose collapsed as the chemicals started flowing. At one point, Clark asked the execution team if they could give him something by mouth to kill him.

Collins said after the execution that he didn't think the process went wrong but appointed a group of prisons staff to review the events and determine if procedures should be fine-tuned.

Before the committee, Collins repeated that the Ohio execution likely will be used as evidence in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of lethal injection. But he added that 20 executions before Clark's were completed without medical problems, and prisons staff could not have predicted that Clark's vein would collapse.

"There's no way anybody can absolutely prevent that," he said after the vote, which sends his confirmation decision to the full Senate.

He said a hospital probably has a higher rate of collapsing veins.

No doctor or nurse was present, and Collins said he didn't want to ask them to start attending executions because helping an execution would violate their medical oath to do no harm.

Dann, a candidate for attorney general, said he wants to ensure the problems don't entangle the legal appeals of others waiting on death row.

Sen. Jim Jordan, a Republican and chairman of the Judiciary and Criminal Justice Committee, said Collins "handled himself well," and that he's willing to wait for the department's internal review of the execution.