The state of Ohio, ignoring protests internationally and at home this morning executed a man depicted by his lawyers as a schizophrenic too mentally ill to understand what was happening to him.
Mr Jay Scott, (48), convicted of killing an elderly Cleveland delicatessen owner in 1983, was pronounced dead at 1.38 a.m. (GMT) after an injection of lethal chemicals at a state prison at Lucasville.
|
|
Mr Jay Scott executed
in Ohio last night. Photo: Reuters |
He had exhausted all appeals after the US Supreme Court and Ohio Governor Bob Taft refused on Wednesday to prevent his execution. Mr Scott received a final meal of fried fish, hot sauce and a soft drink several hours before being put to death.
Described by witnesses as very calm in his final moments, Mr Scott asked authorities in his last words before the execution to tell his family: "Don't worry. Tell them I'm all right. It was the third time in less than two months Mr Scott had faced execution. On April 17th and again on May 15th, courts ordered a halt just minutes before he was to die.
In the latter instance, prison officials had already placed tubes in his arms to prepare him for the injection of deadly chemicals when the process was halted.
Amnesty International and the European Union had both appealed to Ohio to spare Scott's life. Sweden, the current EU president, signed the letter to the Ohio governor on behalf of the group, saying it opposes the death penalty in all cases and promotes universal abolition.
Death penalty opponents in Ohio had also campaigned to save Mr Scott. Mr Jim Tobin, associate director of the Catholic Conference of Ohio, said the execution would be unnecessary and cruel.
Mr Scott was the first person executed against his will in the state since the death penalty was reinstated.
Mr Scott's lawyers said he had a long history of untreated mental illness, including schizophrenia, that made him incompetent and unable to realize why he was to be executed.
But courts at several levels had rejected that argument, ruling Mr Scott was mentally competent to face his sentence.
He was convicted of killing shop owner Mr Vinnie Prince, (74), during a planned robbery with three other men. He was subsequently given a second death sentence for killing security guard Mr Alexander Jones at a restaurant just 13 hours after the first slaying.
That conviction was thrown out by an appeals court because a juror had read news accounts of Mr Scott's earlier death sentence.
Scott's attorneys argued that his original lawyers in the delicatessen murder provided inadequate counsel by failing to raise the issue of his mental fitness during the sentencing phase that might have spared his life.