Governor faced with life, death decisions

As Strickland spoke, it became clear the life-or-death decision entrusted to him through executive clemency had been on his mind, even though he supports the death penalty.
"As I was deciding whether or not to seek the governor's office, the matter of the death penalty was something I thought about deeply and talked about with my closest friends," Strickland said. "It was the final hurdle that I had to get over in my decision to seek the governor's office."
Added Strickland: "It was and continues to be a heavy burden."
Push aside the legal and moral arguments over capital punishment in Ohio for a minute. Consider instead the decision that a governor faces alone each time he allows an execution to move forward. What must it be like to hold a man's life in your hands?
While a lawsuit over the method of execution used in Ohio ended up sparing the life of killer Kenneth Biros this week, it's only a matter of time before an Ohio inmate becomes the first executed under Strickland's watch, and the 25th put to death since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999 following a 36-year hiatus.
It could happen April 24 when Lorain County killer James Filiaggi is scheduled to die.
Strickland will double the membership in the exclusive club of living Ohio governors who have let an execution proceed, joining Bob Taft, who left office in January. It's a choice that other recent Ohio governors like John Gilligan, George Voinovich and Dick Celeste never had to make as Ohio's death chamber sat empty from 1963 to 1999.
Allowing executions to go forward is "one of the hardest and most gut-wrenching decisions" any governor can make, Taft said. And it never got any easier as Taft presided over 24 executions, choosing to spare a condemned man's life only once.
"To feel the full weight of that responsibility makes a strong impression," Taft said in an interview Thursday. "It makes an emotional impression probably as strong as any I felt as governor."
To help him cope with the decision, the Republican said he kept in mind the safeguards and checks of numerous court reviews built into Ohio's capital punishment system. Still, Taft had to face the reality that he was letting another man die.
"It is a time for a lot of reflection and prayer as you go through this process," Taft said. "If you believe in God, it's something you have to take extremely seriously."
Perhaps more than any governor in Ohio's long history, Strickland has the best grasp of the impact on prison staffers and the condemned man during his final hours. As a prison psychologist at Lucasville from 1985 to 1992, Strickland, a Methodist minister, occasionally interviewed some of the inmates on Ohio's death row. His experiences make him a reluctant participant, he said.
"One of the reasons I feel as strongly as I do about making sure that no one is subjected to the death penalty - as long as there is any credible doubt as to their guilt or innocence or ability to have received adequate representation - is based in part on my experiences in Lucasville and my awareness of death row while I was there," Strickland said.
Each Ohio governor who has faced clemency decisions has handled them differently, including Celeste, who opposed capital punishment and before he left office commuted the sentences of eight inmates on Ohio's death row in 1991 amid controversy.
Former Gov. Michael V. DiSalle even wrote a book on the subject called "The Power of Life or Death," which described his decisions to spare the lives of a half-dozen inmates while letting another half-dozen die in Ohio's electric chair, beginning with Walter Byomin in 1959.
"No one who has never watched the hands of a clock marking the last minutes of a condemned man's existence, knowing that he has the temporary Godlike power to stop the clock, can realize the agony of deciding an appeal for executive clemency," DiSalle wrote in the book's opening passage.
DiSalle, a Democrat, describes how he sought out "the impersonal darkness of a small park, the solemn silence of some church or the starlit solitude of a little used road outside the city" when the execution of an inmate was imminent.
On Feb. 19, 1999, as the final hours of Wilford Berry's life ticked away, Gov. Taft was involved in budget talks with top staffers. As the execution time drew closer for the man who voluntarily waived his appeals to become the first inmate executed since 1963, a pall fell over Taft.
"You can feel a kind of aura and how it changes them and how seriously it is weighing on them," said Scott Borgemenke, who was then serving as a top Taft staffer. "Just sitting in that room, you could feel the mood change."
It's a "hollow feeling" that comes back to Borgemenke when he hears about other executions.
"It's even creepy to the people sitting next to the guy who holds that power," he said.
On that day - as well as the other times inmates were scheduled for execution on his watch - the matter never left his thoughts, Taft said.
"I think it's always there on those days," he said. "You're very aware, and it's in the front of your mind."

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