death penalty news September 24, 2005
OHIO: Inmate is fourth man to drop death-penalty appeals Herman Dale Ashworth has always believed in capital punishment, and his eight years on death row haven't changed his opinion. Ashworth says he beat Daniel Baker to death and robbed him of $40 while out drinking in 1996 and deserves to be executed. The 32-year-old high school dropout gave up the right to appeal his death sentence and is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday. "The Baker family deserves to have their justice," Ashworth told a psychologist who evaluated him to determine if he was competent to volunteer for execution. "What's it going to hurt to have them have their day of justice? A needle isn't all that bad and I'm going to go to sleep." Ashworth is the fourth condemned prisoner to drop his appeals since Ohio resumed executions in 1999 with another volunteer, Wilford Berry. The state has put 16 men to death, including seven last year, since then. Nationally, 116 people have volunteered for executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center. That's about 12 percent of the total over that period. Except for a brief time earlier in the case, Ashworth has refused to put on a defense or to let attorneys do it for him. He pleaded guilty in 1997 to aggravated murder and aggravated robbery. In May, he dropped his lawyers because they were trying to keep him alive, and no other appeals were planned. Gov. Bob Taft denied clemency Friday, following the recommendation of the Ohio Parole Board, which held a hearing even though Ashworth didn't ask for one. The clemency process is in state law. "I appreciate that he has accepted responsibility for his actions," said police Detective Sgt. Scott Snow. "I think that's unique." Baker, a 40-year-old engineer, was beaten so badly a deputy coroner testified that his injuries were consistent with a high-speed traffic accident or plane crash. Ashworth met him at the Wagon Wheel bar in Newark, a central Ohio city of about 46,000 people, on Sept. 10, 1996. The two, who had never met before, had a few drinks and then went to another bar. They were on their way back to the Wagon Wheel around 9 p.m. when Ashworth lured Baker into an alley and beat him with his fists and a 6-foot board and kicked him, according to Licking County Common Pleas Court documents and Ashworth's interview with police. He then took about $40 from Baker and went back to the bar. Ashworth's girlfriend at the time, Tanna Brett, testified that he told her that night about the beating and took her to the alley, where she saw Baker lying on the ground, still alive. After the couple went to another bar, Ashworth said he had to go back to finish off Baker so he couldn't be identified, she said. Brett said she thought she persuaded Ashworth to leave Baker alone. However, when she went looking for him later she heard a metal sound coming from the alley and found Baker in a different position near a metal loading dock door. A couple walking their dog found the body around 3:45 a.m., about 30 minutes before Ashworth made an anonymous 911 call to tell authorities about the beating. Ashworth became a suspect after authorities traced the call to a phone near where he was staying and Brett and a cousin he had confessed to reported him to police. Ashworth told police that Baker, a divorced father of a then-12-year-old girl, came onto him and he freaked out. "You had the impulsiveness of the original attack and then he went back," Snow said. "That's not impulsive." Police found three credit cards belonging to Baker in the jeans Ashworth was wearing and blood matching Baker's blood type on his clothes. Although Ashworth pleaded guilty, state law requires a three-judge panel hear testimony to decide whether the state has established the crime is serious enough to warrant the death penalty. The panel accepted Ashworth's plea and sentenced him to die. Ashworth had worked several places since he was a teenager, including a saw mill, drilling company and an egg farm. His former lawyer Carol Wright, now a standby attorney, was frustrated by his refusal to allow his attorneys to present witnesses. "The picture that has been presented in court, in a clemency hearing and in any newspaper report is very one-sided and very limited so the state is killing someone that they know one narrow slice about," Wright said, declining to elaborate. Baker's family and Ashworth declined requests for interviews. Tangee Overly, Baker's cousin, said at the clemency hearing that her family agrees with the sentence. Ashworth was staying with a cousin, Ron Sillin, at the time of the slaying. Sillin said they haven't spoken for a long time. "He was outgoing," he said. "If anybody needed anything done or if he could help somebody out, he would do it. He would do what he could for people." ___ On the Net: Death Penalty Information Center: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/ Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction: http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ (source: AP / Ohio News Network)
