Twenty-four hours may be all the time convicted murderer John W. Byrd, Jr. has left.
Gov. Bob Taft denied Byrd’s clemency request Friday, one day after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a final appeal from Byrd to stop the execution. Byrd is scheduled to die by lethal injection tomorrow at 10 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville, barring any last-minute challenges or a reprieve.
Byrd, 38, was convicted of the 1983 murder of Monte Tewksbury during the robbery of the convenience store where Tewksbury worked in Cincinnati.
Throughout the 19 years since the murder, Byrd has maintained his innocence. He claims his accomplice in the robbery, John E. Brewer, actually stabbed Tewksbury to death. Brewer has backed-up Byrd’s innocence by testifying he was the one that actually killed the clerk, but the courts have repeatedly deemed Brewer’s testimony to be nothing but a mere fabrication.
In sworn affidavits from 1989 and last month, Brewer said he stabbed Tewksbury after their robbery attempt had gone awry.
David Bodiker, Byrd’s public defender, said the sole evidence that convicted Byrd of the crime was the testimony of an unreliable source.
“They’re going to execute an innocent man merely on the basis of the discredited testimony of a jailhouse snitch,” Bodiker said. “The prosecution arranged for the man to be released after his testimony. This is clearly a miscarriage of justice.”
Bodiker also said there was a lack of physical evidence to support Byrd’s conviction, and the physical evidence that was presented actually pointed to Brewer, not Byrd.
In a statement about his decision to reject Byrd’s clemency request, Taft said he has spent a great deal of time reviewing his case, but he was not confident in the credibility of the evidence that supported Brewer’s guilt.
“Mr. Byrd’s attorney argues that a significant witness at trial, a jailhouse informant, fabricated his testimony against John Byrd in exchange for a promise of parole. A great many state and federal judges reviewed this argument and found no credible evidence that the testimony was fabricated and found no evidence that there was a promise of parole,” Taft said in his statement.
Taft also said he took Byrd’s conduct in prison into account when making his decision.
“Between 1983 and 1992, John Byrd had 20 major rule violations,” Taft said.
Bodiker said the violations were unfortunate, and Byrd now regrets them.
“He was 19-years-old when he was put on death row, and he was angry because he was a young innocent man in prison,” Bodiker said. “The governor should’ve also considered that John has not had any violations in the past 10 years.”
In an interesting twist to the saga, Byrd originally chose to die in the electric chair on his scheduled execution date of Sept. 12. However, that execution was stopped after the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted him a temporary execution stay.
Since then, Ohio lawmakers passed a law banning the use of the electric chair in executions, forcing Byrd to die by lethal injection.
According to Jim Tobin, spokesman for Ohioans to Stop Executions, a number of demonstrations are planned for tomorrow to protest Byrd’s death sentence.
“This case demonstrates that not only can the government kill the mentally ill, they can also kill the innocent,” Tobin said. “It’s an embarrassment and insult to all Ohioans.”
If Byrd is executed tomorrow, it will be Ohio’s third execution since the death penalty was reinstated in Ohio. Wilford Berry was executed in 1999 for a murder he committed in 1989, and Jay D. Scott was executed in June for a 1983 murder.
