LUCASVILLE, Ohio - John W. Byrd, Jr., dined on a “last meal” of T-bone steak with A-1 sauce, chef's salad, and grape soda yesterday as he prepared to become the third man executed in Ohio in as many years.
His taxpayer-supplied attorneys worked to try to persuade the Ohio Supreme Court and U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to delay today's execution a third time.
The circuit court of appeals turned down the request for a delay late last evening.
Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery had asked the three-judge panel to dismiss the request, saying Byrd's attorneys raised the same arguments several courts already had rejected.
The court agreed, saying Byrd cannot start a second round of appeals after the first had failed.
Sharon Tewksbury said she's convinced that the right man was convicted of stabbing her husband, Monte, 40, during a convenience store robbery nearly 19 years ago, slicing his liver and leaving him to bleed to death.
Byrd's sister, Kim Hamer, said she's equally convinced that the state is about to put the wrong man to death. Byrd and his mother, Mary Ray, suggested in a filing before the Ohio Supreme Court yesterday that there could be a civil action against the state for wrongful death.
“We are still praying Governor [Bob] Taft will sign an indefinite reprieve in this case to give my brother a chance for a new trial, with an objective investigation into all of the evidence, before a jury of his peers,” said Ms. Hamer in a written statement.
Byrd, 38, is scheduled to die at 10 a.m. today at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville for killing Mr. Tewksbury, a Procter & Gamble employee moonlighting at the King Kwik near his suburban Cincinnati home to save money for the college education of his children.
Barring an 11th-hour court intervention, a triple-drug mix will be administered to first sedate him, stop his breathing, and then stop his heart.
Byrd has spent half his life on death row for the April 17, 1983, murder of Mr. Tewksbury, but he was no stranger to juvenile institutions and adult prisons prior to his conviction.
“I very strongly believe that he is the man who murdered my husband,” said Mrs. Tewksbury. “I feel that was reinforced by the hearings, the testimony from people whom John Byrd told he murdered Monte.”
Anti-death penalty groups held a vigil last night at the governor's mansion in Columbus and protests are expected today at the prison and at the Statehouse.
“If anybody took the time to figure out what happened in John Byrd's case, they'd come to the conclusion that it's so messy,” said Jim Tobin of Ohioans to Stop Executions. “It makes it difficult to have legal certitude. There are lots of questions.”
Several affidavits dating to the late 1980s by buddy and conspirator John Brewer claim that he, not Byrd, stabbed Mr. Tewksbury while a drunken and drugged Byrd stood by. Lawyers sat on those affidavits more than a decade, producing them only after Byrd had exhausted every appeal available to him and execution was imminent.
A federal magistrate ultimately found Brewer to be unbelievable. A third conspirator, William “Danny” Woodall, died in prison in April while serving a life sentence.
He will have an opportunity to meet with family and friends again early today, but the only physical contact they will have is through a small opening in his cell. Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, described Byrd as “calm and compliant.”
He's had his official “last meal,” but will be offered the same breakfast as all of the other inmates this morning - pancakes with syrup, grits, apple juice, and milk.
Dick Vickers, a public defender, is expected to be Byrd's sole representative among the witnesses.
Mrs. Tewksbury has no intention of witnessing Byrd's death, but her youngest son, Matthew, 30, does. “He is compelled to do it,” she said. “He was so young when he lost his dad. I believe this is the final stage for him. He lost his childhood, innocence, everything at the age of 12.”
First Published February 19, 2002, 4:49 p.m.
