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Home News Injustice in Ohio Ohio preps for execution despite stay Ohio preps for execution despite stay
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Words fail me!! And this is supposed to be a humane way to kill people?
LUCASVILLE, Ohio - A man convicted of killing a woman and scattering her remains across two states was at Ohio's death house Tuesday, and his execution team was prepared to carry out the lethal injection even though an appeals court had blocked it.
Prisons spokeswoman Andrea Dean said Tuesday the execution team would stay in a holding pattern while the state appeals the ruling.
The execution was scheduled to start at 10 a.m., but the state has until midnight before Kenneth Biros' death warrant expires, she said. By early afternoon Tuesday, there was no word from the U.S. Supreme Court. The state also has asked that all 14 judges in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals consider allowing a hearing on its request to go ahead with the execution.
Biros, 48, acknowledged that he killed Tami Engstrom, 22, in 1991, but he said he did it during a drunken rage.
A panel of judges on the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati on Monday upheld a lower court's order blocking the execution, saying Biros should be able to continue appealing a lawsuit with other inmates arguing that Ohio's method of lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.
Biros' attorney, Timothy Sweeney, said if the Supreme Court allows the execution, Biros still has an appeal before the 6th Circuit that claims he was not convicted of an offense that merits the death penalty.
Sweeney said the execution should be called off since the scheduled time had passed, rather than making his client wait for hours, thinking he could be executed at any time up to midnight. "That's just appalling," he said.
Biros and Engstrom met after work in 1991 at a tavern in Masury in northeast Ohio. Police believed she fled his advances and fell or was struck or was strangled when Biros tried to quiet her.
A search based on Biros' information led to body parts near Masury and in adjacent areas in northwest Pennsylvania. Her head, right breast and right leg had been severed, intestines were found in a swampy area in Ohio, a leg was broken over a railroad track, the torso was found in a rural area of Pennsylvania and part of a liver was found in Biros' car.