COLUMBUS - Convicted murderer Herman (Dale) Ashworth spent his final night trying in vain to reach his family in hurricane-battered Louisiana yesterday, but he insisted on going ahead with the execution he hastened by dropping his federal appeals.
Ashworth, 32, formerly of Newark, was pronounced dead at
10:19 a.m. from a trio of drugs that sedated him, paralyzed his lungs, and stopped his heart for the 1996 robbery and beating death of Daniel Baker, a 40-year-old father.
"A life for a life. Let it be done, and justice will be served," Ashworth said in a raspy, quivering voice while lying on the lethal injection gurney, looking straight up at the ceiling.
As the fourth Ohio death row "volunteer" to prematurely bring about his own execution by halting his appeals, he could have stopped the process at any time with a word. He chose not to.
"He was up all night," said Andrea Dean, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. "He continued to try to make phone contact with his family in Louisiana to no avail. The phone lines are still down in that portion of the country.
"He spoke to them on Sunday night, and he told them that this was what he wanted to do. He wanted to go through with this process," she said. His parents, who adopted him as an infant, had planned to fly to Ohio but were grounded by Hurricane Rita.
Ashworth moved to Licking County from Louisiana a few months before a chance meeting with Mr. Baker in a Newark bar on the night of Sept. 10, 1996. He brutally beat Mr. Baker, stole $40, credit cards, and his driver's license and left him in an alley as he returned to the bar alone. He later returned to the alley to finish Baker off so he couldn't identify him.
"Dan was 40 years old when he was taken from us," said the victim's niece, Tangee Overly. "I realize he was way too young, but I just watched them take Mr. Ashworth away in a van, and it occurred to me that this tragedy has caused the loss of two young men. And it's senseless. Mr. Ashworth's family is a victim as our family was a victim."
Ashworth refused the breakfast offered yesterday to all inmates, but he ate all of his "special meal" Monday of two cheeseburgers with lettuce and mayonnaise, french fries with ketchup, Dr. Pepper, and Mountain Dew.
Ms. Dean said Monday's murder of an inmate at Southern Ohio Correctional Institution near Lucasville, the same prison where Ashworth was put to death yesterday, was unrelated to the execution.
Rex Elam of Hamilton County, serving a sentence of 70 years to life for aggravated murder, robbery, rape, and kidnapping, was murdered by a fellow inmate armed with a shard of glass.
Ashworth's conviction and death sentence were upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court. He halted his appeals just as the federal process had begun. He refused to cooperate with his own clemency hearing.
Ashworth became the 17th man to be executed since Ohio resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1999 with the original volunteer, Wilford Berry. There are 196 men and one woman on Ohio's death row.
As yesterday's execution proceeded, approximately 150 people, most of them students from Catholic high schools in the Cleveland area, protested outside the prison walls.
Contact Jim Provance at:
jprovance@theblade.com
or 614-221-0496.
First Published September 28, 2005, 9:35 a.m.
