William Wickline

Wickline, 52, was executed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. He is the 11th person to be executed since Ohio resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1999 He was convicted of convicted of murdering and dismembering a Columbus couple in 1982. The bodies of Christopher and Peggy Lerch were never found after their August 1982 disappearance.

In Wickline's motion to stop the execution, lawyer David Stebbins argued that Wickline's lawyers did not present evidence of Wickline's history during the penalty phase of his trial in an attempt to avoid a death sentence.
Wickline was moved from death row at the Mansfield Correctional Institution on Monday morning. He spent most of the day talking on the phone to his brother, David Wickline of Columbus, or chatting with members of the execution team, prisons spokeswoman Andrea Dean said. Dean said that about 4 p.m., Wickline was served his "special meal" of an eight-ounce filet mignon, medium rare; potato salad; six rolls with butter; fresh strawberries with shortcake; and butter pecan ice cream. The steak came from the prison kitchen. The other ingredients were bought at a local store for $11.66. He also received four packs of Pall Mall cigarettes and six cans of pop,
including three of Mountain Dew.

Wickline met with a spiritual adviser, Rev. Gary Sims, a Baptist minister who is the prisons department's religious services administrator.
In his final statement, William Wickline stated: “May tomorrow see the courts shaped by more wisdom and less politics.”

He was pronounced dead at 10:11 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility.

William Wickline became the 21st person to be executed in the USA in 2004, and the 906th since judicial killing resumed there in 1977. Mr. Wickline’s execution was the 3rd to take place in Ohio in 2004 and the 11th overall since the state resumed the use of the death penalty in 1999.

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