Byrd calm, cooperative for execution

by Mark Williams
The Associated Press

LUCASVILLE, Ohio - A convicted killer who barely escaped electrocution eight years ago, and embraced its brutality as a protest statement, died just a few feet away from the decommissioned electric chair.

Angry words were the only device left for John W. Byrd Jr. to denounce his execution yesterday, which he called "state-sanctioned murder."

"The corruption of the state will fall," he said. "Gov. Taft will not be re-elected. The rest of you, you know where you can go."

Byrd was calm, alert and cooperative as he walked into the dimly lit execution chamber at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility and climbed onto a gurney about 10 minutes before his death. He wore a white T-shirt, blue pants with a red stripe down each leg and tan boots with brown laces.

Blocked from view by a curtain was the electric chair, where Byrd would have died if Gov. Bob Taft had not signed a bill in November eliminating electrocution as an option.

Byrd, 38, was sentenced to die for the 1983 murder of Monte Tewksbury, 40, who was stabbed during a robbery at a convenience store outside Cincinnati where he was moonlighting to pay for his daughter's education. Byrd maintained he was innocent, blaming the killing on an accomplice.

Facing death, Byrd closed his eyes and then looked around at the media witnesses standing just a few feet from him, separated by a glass wall.

Corrections officers tied straps across the chest, waist and feet of the 6-foot-2, 250 pound Byrd, and intravenous tubes were inserted into shunts previously put into his heavily tattooed arms.

Two of Tewksbury's relatives and a former neighbor walked into one witness room with one witness, Tewksbury's niece, Kristi Pemberton, sitting close to the window.

Richard Vickers of the state Public Defender's Office entered a neighboring room and clenched a fist toward Byrd as if in support. Byrd responded by clenching his left fist even though his arm was strapped to the gurney.

An officer put a microphone up to Byrd's mouth for his final statement.

"You don't know what you are doing," he said. "I'd like to tell my family that I love them and to stay strong, and to tell my immediate family that I love them. My brother, that I love him and my sister, that we fought hard."

Byrd once came within 45 minutes of dying in the electric chair in March 1994 before the federal courts spared him to pursue other appeals.

He had chosen the electric chair instead of lethal injection when the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals postponed the execution that had been set for Sept. 12. The state last year said the single option of lethal injection would take effect with the next execution.

State prison officials said Byrd did not discuss the electric chair in the hours up to his death.

When he was finished with the statement, Byrd raised his head and winked at Vickers and another attorney, Kathryn Sanford. Vickers again clenched his fist in Byrd's direction.

Byrd took a deep breath, smiled at Vickers and mouthed, "I'm free."

He laid his head back on the gurney and closed his eyes.

A member of the execution team in a hidden room administered the injection consisting of sodium pentothal, which induces unconsciousness; pavulon, a muscle relaxant that stops breathing; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

The three witnesses for Tewksbury held hands. Byrd took another deep breath and his mouth opened, as he appeared to stop breathing.

A white curtain was pulled across the window as his attorneys hugged.

The curtain was pulled back and the time of death was declared at 10:09 a.m.

State prison spokeswoman Andrea Dean said Byrd was calm and compliant from the time he came to Lucasville on Monday from death row in Mansfield.

"He had a very restful evening," she said about three hours before the execution.

He spent his final hours visiting with his mother and sister. He had refused a breakfast of pancakes, syrup, grits, coffee and milk.

Byrd had chosen a T-bone steak with steak sauce, a chef salad with bleu cheese dressing and grape soda for his "special" meal Monday night. It was not called his last meal because Byrd was offered the breakfast.

     EDITOR'S NOTE: Mark Williams was one of six media witnesses to John W. Byrd Jr.'s execution.