Scott's late-hour delay not unique

by John McCarthy
The Associated Press

COLUMBUS - Five times in the past 10 years, Ohio's execution team has geared up to do its duty - put to death an inmate whose execution warrant has been delivered. Four times, the team has had to stand down because a court stepped in to stop it.

Jay D. Scott learned Tuesday night that his life would be spared, for now, less than an hour before the team was to prepare him for lethal injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. The Ohio Supreme Court had told prison officials they were stopping the execution so a Cleveland appeals court could consider Scott's competence to face execution.

Scott was returned to death row at the Mansfield Correctional Institution on yesterday afternoon, said Joe Andrews, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

It was the fourth time since the Legislature restored Ohio's death penalty in 1981 that an inmate has had reason to believe that he would not survive another day, only to learn that the execution had been postponed.

The 12-member execution team at the Lucasville prison takes over the procedure when the condemned inmate arrives from Mansfield Correctional Institution, home of death row. The team supervises the inmate's visits and the preparations for the execution.

Their training for the special assignments includes a caution to be ready for a last-minute postponement, Andrews said yesterday.

"They were aware when that there was court action pending (in the Scott case) at the time. They're prepared for that," Andrews said.

Still, the professionals do feel the effects of the occasional legal tugs-of-war, he said.

"It takes a buildup of emotion and so on just to prepare yourself for the execution in the first place. When something like this happens, there is a drain, frustration maybe," Andrews said.

Frustration also overcame the inmate in the case of Wilford Berry, a condemned killer who had given up his right to appeals and had asked to be executed. Berry, who eventually was put to death in February 1999, had a close call about one year earlier.

On the date he was to be executed, Berry was in a prison van on his way to Lucasville when the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution. He already had consumed his "final" meal and was about 35 miles north of the death house when the court ruled.

In 1996, Robert Buell, convicted of murdering an 11-year-old girl, had gone through his state appeals but not his federal appeals. The Ohio Supreme Court had set an execution date.

Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court's ruling to postpone the execution, but the high court denied Montgomery's request 17 minutes after Buell's scheduled execution.

Two years earlier, John Byrd of Cincinnati found himself in a similar circumstance with his case between the state and federal appeals systems. He was 45 minutes away from execution when the U.S. Supreme Court blocked it.

Both Buell and Byrd remain on death row.