August 25 MISSOURI----impending execution Man awaiting lethal injection says it's unlawful A man who faces execution Wednesday for murdering his wife will get a hearing Friday on his claim that Missouri's method of lethal injection threatens him with an unlawfully painful death. The case of Timothy Johnston, 44, of St. Louis, is to go before U.S. District Judge Charles A. Shaw downtown. Johnston wants Shaw to delay the execution and order a hearing on the argument that lethal injection, as practiced by the state, violates the U.S. Constitution's bar to cruel and unusual punishment. Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon wants the court to let the execution proceed. Johnston's is one of several challenges to the practice of lethal injection that recently have been raised nationwide. Trial courts generally have rejected them, but the issue is on appeal in Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina. On May 17, the U.S. Supreme Court briefly delayed the execution of Vernon Brown of St. Louis, who had strangled a 9-year-old girl, and then voted 5-4 against hearing his last-minute echo of Johnston's suit. Johnston killed his wife, Nancy Johnston, 27, on June 30, 1989, by beating her with his fists, a lawn chair and a rifle butt and by kicking and stomping her with steel-tipped boots. The beating began in her car and ended several blocks later at their home in the 4700 block of Minnesota Avenue. Johnston admitted killing her in a rage over alleged infidelities. "I'd like his death to be very painful," said Mary Federhofer, a sister-in-law of Nancy Johnston. "I don't think it will be. They'll just put him to sleep. ... He has a lot of nerve to try this after what he put her through." Michael J. Gorla, one of Johnston's lawyers, said, "I understand that people would say, 'Look at what he did to that woman. Why should we be concerned about him having pain?' The answer is that the Constitution prevents cruel and unusual punishment. That's why we have laws and courts: to take the emotion out of it." If the executioners don't adequately sedate the condemned, he said, "These guys are going to suffer barbaric deaths." Missouri is one of 27 states that execute by administering intravenously a series of three drugs over a period of less than a minute: sodium pentathol to sedate, pancuronium bromide to stop breathing and potassium chloride to stop the heart. All told, 37 states have the death penalty on their books. Missouri has executed 64 men with the 3-drug series. Strapped to a gurney, the condemned usually coughs once or twice with administration of the 1st drug, then lies motionless. Death usually is announced within 4 minutes. Johnston's suit was filed a year ago. It alleges that Missouri's method of execution does not adequately prescribe the correct amounts of drugs, employs inadequately trained executioners and uses a painful and tricky IV entry into a leg. If the state doesn't administer the correct amounts of sedative or killing drugs, the lawsuit says, a condemned person would suffer "a painful and protracted death." In response, Nixon says Missouri's system is medically proper. State court filings say a doctor and nurse ensure that enough sedative is given, Nixon says, and Johnston's chance of suffering unconstitutional pain is "non-existent." In an interview Monday, Nixon said he believed the Supreme Court eventually would reject the gathering arguments against lethal injection. "This is a long way from arguing over guilt or innocence," Nixon said. "This method is quick, efficient ... and, I think, a relatively painless method of accomplishing this sobering governmental task." He added: "Timothy Johnston did not show the same level of interest in a painless exit for his wife." Deborah Denno, a professor of law at Fordham University in New York, said states had done little medical examination of the procedure since it was proposed in Oklahoma in 1977. Denno, who has written on the issue for law journals and testified in court, acknowledged that states might counter lawsuits by changing their methods. "But these cases expose the system and how slipshod it is," Denno said. "Exposing these weaknesses adds another rock to the pile that shows the death-penalty process in this country is conducted in a very inhumane way." (source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch) INDIANA----impending execution Board rejects clemency for killer----Baird says unseen forces made him murder his parents and pregnant wife Execution would be 4th this year 3 Indiana inmates have been executed this year -- the most in 1 year since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. On Aug. 31, barring a reprieve, Arthur P. Baird II will be the 4th inmate to die by chemical injection at the State Prison in Michigan City. Baird, 59, killed his parents, wife and unborn child in 1985. Gregory Scott Johnson was executed May 25; Bill J. Benefiel on April 21; and Donald Ray Wallace on March 10. Alan Matheney, who beat his former wife to death in 1989 while out of prison on a brief furlough, is the next inmate scheduled to die, but the Indiana Supreme Court has not set an execution date. The Indiana Parole Board voted 3-1 Wednesday against clemency for a convicted murderer who claims unseen forces took over his body and made him kill 20 years ago. Arthur P. Baird II, who killed his parents and pregnant wife in 1985 in Montgomery County, in west-central Indiana, is scheduled to die at midnight Wednesday. The governor still could step in, and appeals of the sentence are pending. "Arthur Baird has played an elaborate game of deceit and misrepresentation that has served to delay the imposition of the death penalty for nearly two decades," said board member Thor R. Miller. "This is nothing more than a brutally cruel man." Miller joined Valerie J. Parker and Raymond W. Rizzo in voting against clemency. Randall P. Gentry asked Gov. Mitch Daniels to commute Baird's sentence to life in prison without parole. Jane Jankowski, Daniels' spokeswoman, said he has Baird's records and is reviewing the case. Since taking office in January, he has not blocked any execution. Baird, 59, is psychotic, delusional and obsessive, defense lawyers say. "One of the very sad things about (the Parole Board's) recommendation is that it evidences a lack of understanding of mental illness," defense attorney Jessie Cook said. Gentry, the only Parole Board member appointed by Daniels, said Baird's crimes were clearly rooted in mental illness. "I find no benefit in carrying out the death penalty on a person with mental impairment, when the contribution of that mental impairment played a potential role as large as it did in this case," Gentry said. In the months before the murders, Baird was under the belief that the government was going to pay him $1 million for helping to solve the national debt. He had convinced his family and secured a loan to buy a farm worth more than $500,000, his attorneys say. On Sept. 6, 1985, Baird strangled his wife, Nadine, who was seven months pregnant, in their rural Montgomery County mobile home. The next day, he visited his parents, got a haircut from his mother, then stabbed Arthur and Kathryn Baird to death. Seven mental health professionals examined Baird and agreed his mental problems influenced his actions. 5 believe mental illness made him kill. "One minute everything's fine, we're loving each other and everything," Baird told the Parole Board during a hearing Friday at the State Prison in Michigan City. "The next minute it felt like I was being held, my hands were being manipulated. I knew what was happening, I didn't want it to be happening." Deputy Attorney General Steve Creason said jurors knew of Baird's mental illness in 1987 when they recommended the death penalty for the murders of his parents. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison for killing his wife. "He is still trying to cover up and avoid responsibility in his head and in public about what his crimes were," Creason said. (source: Indianapolis Star) OHIO----impending execution Ohio Sup Ct has denied request to reschedule Spirko execution date 1989-0722. State v. Spirko. Van Wert App. No. 15-84-22. This cause came on for further consideration of appellant's motion for admission pro hac vice of Thomas C. Hill, Alvin B. Dunn, and Ashley M. Delja by John J. Callahan and motion to reschedule September 20, 2005, execution date. Upon consideration thereof, IT IS ORDERED by the court that the motion to reschedule execution date is denied. Moyer, C. J., and Pfeifer, J., dissent. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the motion for admission pro hac vice is granted. (source: Ohio Supreme Court) ********************** Coroner, prison reports differ on death Richland County Coroner Stewart Ryckman says his office determined Mansfield Correctional Institution inmate Martin Koliser died about 5:30 a.m. on May 7, based on medical evidence. The inmate's temperature, taken around 8:20 a.m., had dropped to 97.6 degrees, after his suicide by hanging, Ryckman said Tuesday. "This guy didn't have a whole lot of rigor mortis. He didn't have a whole lot of lividity," he said. The coroner's office ruled Koliser -- on death row for killing a Youngstown police officer -- died primarily of asphyxiation from hanging, and secondarily from self-inflicted cuts to his forearms after an attempt earlier that night to kill himself using a razor. There was still fresh blood at the scene, Ryckman said. "We felt like he had not been dead all that long." In a contradictory report, the Ohio Department of Corrections relied on testimony by MANCI employees and inmates. Nurse Sharlene Blevins, who attempted CPR, said Koliser was cold to the touch, and his body was stiff and hard to manipulate. Another nurse said she saw clotted blood on the floor which appeared to have dried out. A corrections officer who was a paramedic for 15 years said the inmate was stiff. Lt. Harold Cope, who had worked in a funeral home and was an EMT for several years, told investigators he believed rigor mortis had set in because the inmate's legs were stiff when he was laid out on the floor. He repeated his opinion that Koliser had been dead five to six or more hours before he was found. He said the body was not as warm as 98 degrees, though he declined to commit to it being "cold." Several other officers said the death row inmate's body appeared stiff. Inmate Grady Brinkley told the state agency he heard Koliser cut himself after a guard made rounds at 1:30 a.m. But coroner's officer employees said neither the MANCI employees nor inmates were experts on determining time of death. Someone who has been hanging in a position for a while may end up with stiff limbs, whether they are dead or alive, Ryckman said. Coroner's investigator Paul Jones said many factors can affect body temperature and stiffness after death, including muscularity, weight and loss of blood. "There's no way he was dead at 1:30," he said. Ryckman said the Ohio Department of Corrections never talked to him during its investigation of what happened or to Ohio Highway Patrol investigator Kevin Smith, who agreed with many of his conclusions. "They didn't talk to me. They didn't ask me," Ryckman said. (source: News Journal)
