LUCASVILLE, Ohio - William D. Wickline murdered a Columbus area couple in 1982 over a drug deal gone bad, cut up their bodies, put the parts in bags, and scattered the remains in several trash bins, authorities said.

Yesterday morning, the state executed him at the maximum-security prison here and Wickline appeared to help the execution team find a vein for lethal injection by rubbing his arms.

"May tomorrow see the courts shaped by more wisdom and less politics," Wickline said, moments before three drugs injected into his veins made him unconscious, paralyzed his lungs, and stopped his heart.

Wickline became the 11th man executed in Ohio since the state resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1999.

Time of death was 10:11 a.m. said Andrea Dean, a spokesman for the state prison sytem.

The state executed Wickline, 52, for the Aug. 14, 1982 murders of Peggy and Christopher Lerch in his Columbus apartment.

At Wickline's trial, his former girlfriend, Teresa Kemp, testified that Wickline slit Mr. Lerch's throat over a $6,000 drug debt and used a rope to strangle the unconscious Mrs. Lerch, 24.

The death sentence was for Mrs. Lerch's death because the three-judge panel ruled that she was killed to avoid detection of another crime.

Wickline received a life sentence for murdering Mr. Lerch, 28.

The bodies of the couple, who lived in a township north of Columbus, never were found.

In the death chamber, Wickline looked at his two brothers, Robert and David.

He nodded twice to them and also gave them a thumbs-up sign twice, which they returned.

But he never looked at Nancy Fowler, who held up a framed picture of her sister, Mrs. Lerch, in front of the witness room window.

With Wickline dead, Ms. Fowler clutched the picture to her chest and sighed.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Wickline's last appeal, which argued that his trial attorneys did not pursue information that could have convinced the three-judge panel to sentence Wickline to life in prison instead of the death penalty.

The execution of Wickline was the second since condemned inmate Lewis Williams had resisted as the state prepared to kill him.

On Jan. 14, four guards on the execution team had to carry Williams into the death chamber after he yelled, shook his head, and tried to lift himself off a gurney where execution team members placed shunts in both of his arms.

Williams was convicted of fatally shooting a 76-year-old Cleveland woman in the face during a 1983 robbery in her home.

Before Williams was executed, witnesses chosen by the victim's family and the condemned inmate - and press witnesses - saw the inmate escorted into the death chamber and then strapped to the gurney.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit, charging that the state has violated the law by inserting the needles used to inject lethal chemicals into the inmate's arm "outside the view of witnesses."

In an effort to settle the lawsuit, the state on Jan. 14 allowed witnesses for the first time to watch the execution team prepare the inmate for lethal injection via closed-circuit television.

A camera was mounted in a "prep room" where execution team members placed shunts in both of his arms.

But after anti-death penalty activists said Williams's resistance demonstrated the brutality of the death penalty, the state changed its procedure for the Feb. 3 execution of John Glenn Roe, who was convicted in the 1984 kidnapping and murder of a 21-year-old woman in Columbus.

Like Roe, Wickline was prepared for the execution in his prison cell.

The closed-circuit TV feed began after execution team members had strapped Wickline to the gurney on which the shunts were placed in his arms.

"We think what needs to be shown is the insertion of the [shunts], not the staff walking in or out, not the person being strapped down," said Reginald Wilkinson, director of the state prison system. "It's not a documentary."

The shunts are used to make it easier to inject the inmate with sodium pentothal, which puts the condemned to sleep; pancuronium bromide, which stops the breathing; and potassium chloride, which then stops the heart.

Contact James Drew at:

jdrew@theblade.com

or 614-221-0496.

First Published March 31, 2004, 11:50 a.m.