Ohio Death Row Inmate Tries Suicide: State To Pay Healthcare And Hospitalization Until March 16 Execution

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- At last count, there were about 2.8 million Ohioans under age 65 without health insurance coverage. Convicted murderer Lawrence Reynolds Jr. is not among them. He is in a Youngstown hospital being nursed back to health -- and state taxpayers will be paying all the medical bills. Gov. Ted Strickland delayed Reynolds' Tuesday execution for a week while the Death Row inmate mends after apparently attempting to take his own life Sunday. He swallowed pills that have not been identified, nor is it known how he got them. Prison officials are investigating. The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting: "Reynolds' condition has been upgraded from serious to stable and he is regaining consciousness, a prison official said this afternoon. He is being treated at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Youngstown."

Reynolds was convicted of killing Loretta Foster in 1994. The 67-year-old victim was his neighbor in an Akron suburb. The execution was postponed because of the medical emergency. This situation is so bizarre: Somebody who wanted to die is in the hospital being cared for until he can be put to death. Meanwhile, thousands of law abiding Ohioans who want to live are condemned to disease or death because they can't afford health insurance. Statistics show that the largest chunk of uninsured Ohioans, about 76%, are working, or are members of working families. Their wages can't pay the health insurance premiums, or their employers don't offer affordable plans, often because small business can't pay the expenses. The other 24% of uninsured Ohioans are unemployed, many because of the Great Recession. Or they have chronic conditions or disabilities and can't find coverage. But if you are on Death Row, you can obtain the best care in the world even though its only meant to keep you alive until your date with the executioner. If you want to learn more about healthcare, check out this report called Ohioans without Health Insurance.

Ohio's Execution Chamber: Bloggers Should Be Allowed To Witness Death Sentences

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Ohio has executed 26 men since the death penalty resumed in February 1999. State prison system rules enacted in the 1990s limit coverage from inside the death chamber to members of the mainstream media. Witnesses can be wire service reporters, journalists from newspapers and broadcast outlets in the condemned prisoner's home county, and a Statehouse news reporter from the Ohio Legislative Correspondents Association in Columbus.

The press and broadcast representatives automatically have seats. Now it is time to include the bloggers. Their brand of citizen journalism did not exist 15 years ago when the state decided who had the right of access to each execution. At the time, the media representatives were viewed as the only eyes and ears of the public. Executions are not conducted openly on courthouse squares -- they are highly regimented and highly restricted events. The public is totally shut out from the procedure that takes place behind walls at the Southern Ohio Correctional Institution.

Adding a blogger to the official list of witnesses should not be a huge deal -- bloggers now cover criminal trials, they are in Iraq, they cover legislative hearings, they cover political campaigns and elections, they cover City Halls and the Statehouse. Politicians and political parties have bloggers on their staffs. There is no good reason to keep a blogger out of the execution chamber as witness to the moment when a life is taken by the state.

It is no secret that MSM reporters and journalists are losing interest in covering executions in Ohio. Last month, Dan Williamson of The Cleveland Free Times explored the topic and interviewed Lee Leonard, who retired after covering state government for the Columbus Dispatch. Leonard told him:

"I would say probably after 10 or 12 [executions] the interest began to wane. Then I think reporters looked around and said, 'Hey, this is not news anymore.'"

But it is news. Important news. And it is far too important to be left to the MSM, which now buries the stories when a prisoner is put to death. Bloggers would not be so blase. Those on the right might see an execution as serving a societal purpose; those on the left might see an execution as serving no societal purpose. Either way, the public won't be shortchanged. But it is being cheated by the existing witness system because the new media is kept away from a major event that is an old media monopoly -- a monopoly over which it has grown jaded.

Just so everyone knows, I have made the trek to the death chamber in Lucasville. I was a witness to the execution of Wilford Berry in February 1999. He was the first person put to death in Ohio since 1963, and I wrote the front page story for The Plain Dealer after watching him die of a lethal injection. Later that night, several Heinekens in the Portsmouth Holiday Inn helped me sleep soundly. I covered other executions at the prison in Scioto County, but did not go back to the death chamber to watch an inmate expire. Once was enough.

Now it is time to scrap the MSM's monopoly on capital punishment coverage. Bloggers could bring a whole new sensitivity and sensibility to the moment. I have written Gov. Ted Strickland suggesting that he open this topic for review: Should traditional journalists and the Statehouse press corps alone have all the seats as witnesses? Or should there be a spot for those whose whose work appears in the blogosphere?

Ohio-Based U.S. Appeals Court: Tells D.C. Supremes We're Not Changing Death Case Ruling

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The death row conviction of Kenneth Richey, a Scot who has been locked up awaiting execution in Ohio for 20 years, has long stirred a row in Europe and Britain. Officials on the other side of the Atlantic view capital punishment as barbaric, and it has been outlawed within the European Union.

Today, the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati refused to back off a Jan. 25, 2005 ruling that ordered a new trial for Richey on grounds his original defense lawyer was ineffective. In December 2005, the Supreme Court reversed the 6th Circuit's holding that Richey had been deprived of constitutionally effective representation. Now a 2-1 majority of the 6th Circuit has responded by saying "the record supports our original conclusion granting Richey habeas relief because his trial attorney did not function as counsel guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments."

The full text of the 19-page decision is available here. It includes a dissent by U.S. Circuit Judge Eugene E. Siler Jr., of London, Ky., who voted to uphold the conviction.

Amnesty International says Richey has "one of the most compelling cases of innocence it has seen" and the British government of Tony Blair intervened legally on behalf of the former Edinburgh, Scotland resident. The British government has also consulted with Richey's legal team.

He was convicted of setting an arson fire that killed Cynthia Collins, a 2-year-old, after a night of partying, drinking and smoking marijuana in Columbus Grove, a small town in northwest Ohio. According to prosecutors, the fire was intended as revenge at Richey's girfriend, who had recently broken up with him and wanted to begin a romantic relationship with another man. Richey was described as acting in a jealous rage.

The appeals court said Richey's trial lawyer declined to present expert testimony that could have disputed arson as the cause of the fire. There is some evidence that the apartment blaze was not set, but came from cigarette left smoldering in the cushions of a couch. The appeals court said:

"There can be little doubt that Richey was prejudiced by his counsel's deficient performance. There is a reasonable probability that had counsel mounted the available defense that the fire was caused by an accident, and was not the result of arson at all, the outcome of the guilt or the penalty phase would have been different. Although the circumstantial evidence alone might have led to a conviction, the question before us is not the sufficiency of the evidence, but of undermining our confidence in the reliability of the result. Confronted with evidence debunking the state's scientific conclusions, the trial court might have had a reasonable doubt about Richey's guilt, especially where the prosecution's case depended on a cast of witnesses whose lives revolved around drinking and partying and some of whom might have had their own motives for implicating Richey."

U.S. Circuit Judge R. Guy Cole Jr. of Columbus wrote the decision.

Ohio Death Sentence Thrown Out: Convict's 'Mental Defect' Was Bullet To Head

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- A federal appeals court overturned the death sentence of an Ohio convict because his defense lawyers failed to present evidence of a potential mental defect as mitigation -- that he had once shot himself in the head with a .38-caliber pistol. The court said the injury caused serious head trauma.

The 2-1 ruling by the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals says Abdul Haliym, also known as Wayne Frazier, must have a new sentencing hearing within six months or be set free. The court's majority said it was possible the showing of a functional brain impairment could have spared Haliym from a death sentence when his case went to trial in 1987 before a three-judge panel in Cuyahoga County. The appeals court questioned how thoroughly Frazier's defense team dug into his background.

"Perhaps most importantly, a more thorough investigation would have led to some evidence that petitioner (Haliym) had a mental defect. Petitioner's attorneys were on notice that petitioner had shot himself in the left temple, which should have strongly suggested the need to investigate whether petitioner had a mental defect. Instead of conducting this investigation, petitioner's attorneys put before the trial court Dr. (.XXX) 's testimony that none of the mental disorders with which petitioner was diagnosed could be considered a mental disease or defect, at least for psychiatric purposes."

The appeals court majority said there was "serious head trauma sustained" by the gunshot during the suicide attempt.

Abdul Saliym has been on Death Row for a March 27, 1987 stabbing at the apartment of Marcellus Williams and Joann Richard, who both died from their wounds. The apartment was located at 49th and Central in Cleveland. The appeals court said there was no question that Haliym committed murder and was guilty. The full-text of the decision is 35 pages long (pdf), including the dissent.