Posted on 02/12/2003 10:35:59 AM PST by E Rocc
LUCASVILLE, Ohio -- The state has executed a man convicted of stabbing and strangling an 18-year-old college student after he lured her to a bogus job interview.
Richard E. Fox, 47, died by injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. He had confessed to the slaying, and his attorneys last week said there were no legal issues left to review.
It was Ohio's sixth execution since the state resumed the death penalty in 1999.
"He's been very upbeat, spending the last few hours with his family members," said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, hours before the execution.
Students from Roman Catholic high schools in Cleveland and Cincinnati joined anti-death penalty protesters outside the prison. School officials said 125 students made the trip.
"I think it should be God who decides when someone dies," said Tiera Carson-Nicholson, 16 and a sophomore at Trinity High School in suburban Cleveland.
On Tuesday night, Fox read his Bible while the television was on and talked with about five members of the 14-member execution team about his life before the crime, but not about his crime, Dean said.
"He was just reflecting on his life prior to incarceration, talking about his family," Dean said, noting that part of the execution team's responsibilities are to make the inmate as comfortable as possible.
Fox was convicted of killing Leslie Keckler, 18, of Bowling Green, on Sept. 26, 1989, after luring her to a fake interview for a job selling restaurant supplies. Her body was found four days later in a ditch near the northwest Ohio city.
Fox went to sleep about 1 a.m. and woke around 4:20 a.m., Dean said.
He did not take a shower or eat his breakfast of coffee, apple juice, toast, dry cereal and peanut butter and jelly, Dean said.
Dean said Fox had been compliant and spent time with spiritual advisers after being moved to Ohio's death house Tuesday from the Mansfield Correctional Institution.
The injection Fox was to receive consists of sodium pentothal, which induces unconsciousness; pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant that stops breathing; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.
Typically, the final days before an execution are marked by a flurry of appeals and rulings in state and federal courts, but there was no claim of innocence or mental illness in Fox's case. Nor was there any available legal avenue of appeal, said Greg Myers, head of the death penalty section for the Ohio Public Defender.
At a clemency hearing last month, prosecutors said Fox repeatedly used deception to lure women in the years before the murder.
Fox, a native of Tontogany in northwest Ohio, confessed to killing Keckler after police confronted him about their report by another woman who said she had escaped a similar ruse by Fox months earlier. He was convicted in 1990 of aggravated murder and kidnapping.
His attorneys said their client used trickery with the intent to meet women, not to kill them. His attorneys argued that Fox is not the "worst of the worst" criminals for whom the death penalty is intended.
They also said he should have been re-sentenced because guidelines used in his case later were declared flawed by the Ohio Supreme Court.
However, Gov. Bob Taft denied clemency, and the high court refused to delay the execution to hear the sentencing issue.
On Tuesday, Fox ate his requested meal of a cheeseburger with lettuce, pickle, onion, tomato, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise along with french fries and a Pepsi, Dean said.
The victim's father, Lester Keckler, her brother, Chad Keckler, and an aunt, Angela Balderson, were scheduled to watch the execution. Fox's witnesses are a brother-in-law, the Rev. Jerry Wiles, and his spiritual adviser, the Rev. Robert Henning. His daughter, Jessica Fox, had been scheduled to witness her father's execution but changed her mind Tuesday night without giving a reason, Dean said.
In Cleveland, more than 80 people gathered at a prayer service at Annunciation Roman Catholic Church Tuesday night to protest Fox's scheduled execution.
Parishioner Mike Coughlin, whose son was killed in 1991, said he was first angry with God but became convinced that he had to forgive the killer and become a peacemaker.
"The first benefactor of forgiveness is the person who forgives," Coughlin said.
-Eric
How does she know he didn't do so in this case?
Somehow I don't think it was God who decided for this guy's 18 year old victim.
If this isn't an excellent example of "invincible ignorance," I don't know what is.
. ...and it sounds like this dead guy has done this type or crime, or at least tried to before....
attorney says he did all this deception in order to meet women...duh....doesn't he mean he did all that to rape women?.....
37 year old male vs a 18 year old nieve female....some match...
. while I am ambiguous on the death penalty, I find myself less so the more people protest the executions....almost like , if THEY are against it, then I am for it....
it is evil to have more reguard for the killer, the kidnapper, the rapist than the victim....it makes no sense...
..NOTE TO Protestors: IF you want to be against the DP..fine....but you had better also be a victims advocate, you better be manning the rape crisis lines, and you better be working loudly and vehemntly for no-nonsense prison sentences..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.