05-17-2011, 05:46 PM
off-topic, but may be of interest to our Ohio members:
Ohio is serious about the death penalty!
Associated Press
LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) - An Ohio inmate who said he didn't recall fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend 27 years ago was put to death Tuesday after an appeals court overturned a stay of execution and the nation's highest court declined to intervene.
Daniel Lee Bedford, 63, was pronounced dead at 11:18 a.m., making him the third inmate in Ohio _ and the nation _ to be put to death using the surgical sedative pentobarbital as a stand-alone execution drug.
Bedford's attorneys had fought to the wire to block the lethal injection, arguing that he was improperly denied legal proceedings and that he had dementia and a mild mental disability, leaving him not competent enough to understand why he was being executed. A judge granted a stay of execution Monday, but a federal appeals court lifted it.
Bedford, in glasses and a short gray beard, declined to give a formal final statement after he laid down on the gurney but later yelled "I love you" to two witnesses. His adult daughter, Michelle Connor, shouted back, "I love you, Daddy!" He also called out to Kristi Schulenberg, a friend and pen pal with whom he had kept in touch since the mid-1990s. She said she loved him, too.
"God bless you," he said as the injection began. His mouth moved slightly and his chest appeared to rise and fall several times before he became still.
Bedford was sentenced to death after confessing to authorities that he shot Gwen Toepfert, 25, and John Smith, 27, at Toepfert's Cincinnati apartment, apparently because he was jealous after finding the couple there several days before the slayings. He learned from Toepfert's roommate that the couple was home and waited at the apartment where, armed with a revolver and a shotgun, he killed Smith and shot Toepfert multiple times before returning to her body and firing a shotgun blast into her groin to be sure she was dead, prosecutors said.
Ohio is serious about the death penalty!
Associated Press
LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) - An Ohio inmate who said he didn't recall fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend 27 years ago was put to death Tuesday after an appeals court overturned a stay of execution and the nation's highest court declined to intervene.
Daniel Lee Bedford, 63, was pronounced dead at 11:18 a.m., making him the third inmate in Ohio _ and the nation _ to be put to death using the surgical sedative pentobarbital as a stand-alone execution drug.
Bedford's attorneys had fought to the wire to block the lethal injection, arguing that he was improperly denied legal proceedings and that he had dementia and a mild mental disability, leaving him not competent enough to understand why he was being executed. A judge granted a stay of execution Monday, but a federal appeals court lifted it.
Bedford, in glasses and a short gray beard, declined to give a formal final statement after he laid down on the gurney but later yelled "I love you" to two witnesses. His adult daughter, Michelle Connor, shouted back, "I love you, Daddy!" He also called out to Kristi Schulenberg, a friend and pen pal with whom he had kept in touch since the mid-1990s. She said she loved him, too.
"God bless you," he said as the injection began. His mouth moved slightly and his chest appeared to rise and fall several times before he became still.
Bedford was sentenced to death after confessing to authorities that he shot Gwen Toepfert, 25, and John Smith, 27, at Toepfert's Cincinnati apartment, apparently because he was jealous after finding the couple there several days before the slayings. He learned from Toepfert's roommate that the couple was home and waited at the apartment where, armed with a revolver and a shotgun, he killed Smith and shot Toepfert multiple times before returning to her body and firing a shotgun blast into her groin to be sure she was dead, prosecutors said.