Post by MXB on Jun 4, 2006 9:10:45 GMT -5
Why so many cared about the killing of John Byrd
By Maria Rogers
Photo By Maria Rogers
Lois Presser holds a sign outside the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility on the day of John Byrd’s execution.
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On a dreary Tuesday in Lucasville, a man drives by the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, honking his car horn and yelling, "Die!"
Inside, John Byrd Jr. is preparing to do just that.
Outside, people have driven hundreds of miles in the early morning to stand outside and wait for his death. They talk about Byrd and they talk about God, with completely opposite ideas of what one wants to do to the other.
Is God confused?
The state of Ohio poisoned Byrd Feb. 19 for the 1983 stabbing death of Monte Tewksbury in a Colerain Township robbery. Tewksbury was moonlighting at a convenience store the night he was killed.
Chuck Kirk worked at Procter and Gamble with Tewksbury. They often played golf together.
"I remember him in my mind, standing across the table from me," Kirk says. "He was a witty person. Kind. Funny. A violent crime against a person you love is just hard to deal with."
Referring to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans, Kirk is sure God wants Byrd killed.
"He's authorized our governments to do what we're doing today," Kirk says.
In fact, God is downright happy about the execution, according to Madge Burton, who has driven from Oxford for the event.
"I think God is very pleased," she says.
Burton, whose two daughters and granddaughter were murdered in 1984, describes capital punishment as a kind of spiritual cleansing.
"When God sent Jesus, if you remember, Lucifer was kicked out of heaven and so the devil is here running around," she says.
Jenny Ingalls, a 17-year-old student at Trinity High School, Cleveland, is at the prison to protest the execution. She rejects Kirk's and Burton's analysis.
"We can't play God," Ingalls says. "We can't take lives. I'm sure he didn't want anyone to die this way. I love when they say church and state should be separate, yet the government plays God."
With tears in her eyes, she looks to the prison behind her.
"There's somebody right behind you dying," Ingalls says. "How would I feel if that was my brother or friend?"
That is exactly who Byrd is, according to Sister Alice Gerdeman, coordinator of the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center in Over-the-Rhine.
"For me, I have no doubt that God was displeased by the fact that we, as God's children, were to put to death one of our brothers," she says.
God is compassionate to both killer and victim, according to Gerdeman.
"I can understand why people, when they are in great pain, need to feel that their pain is somehow understood or accepted by God," she says. "I think God would ask us to reach out in forgiveness for everyone."
God's opinion, of course, is not the only point of disagreement. So is Byrd's guilt.
"I don't think there's a chance that Ohio is going to execute an innocent man," Burton says. "He's not innocent. He did it. He worked hard to get in there where he's at."
Kirk is convinced Byrd killed his friend.
"I don't have any doubt in my mind, same as the juries didn't," he says.
Dan Cahill, who is protesting outside the barbed wire fence, has been in Lucasville before, as an inmate. He is now director of the Prisoners' Advocacy Network of Ohio.
Cahill met Byrd while painting the cells on Death Row and giving its prisoners their food. He quietly holds a sign with Byrd's picture.
"The death penalty is flawed," Cahill says. "What's really important to them is that somebody die."
Conversations with another inmate convinced Cahill that Byrd was passed out in the back seat of a van when Tewksbury was stabbed.
"Think about passing out in the back of a van and waking up in the county jail thinking you're in there for 'drunk and disorderly' -- and finding out you're charged with murder," Cahill says. "What'll happen is John Byrd will be the first martyr for the moratorium on the death penalty."
In the small crowd, a woman cries out that the execution makes her ashamed to live in Ohio. But Burton, however, says she is proud.
"I know it's a good thing for the state," she says. "The state of Ohio has this law and it lets me know the criminal justice system does work. That's what today's about -- is justice. There's nobody who wants to an innocent person put to death -- especially not the victim's family. I want the man who killed my children."
But Ingalls says capital punishment doesn't diminish the grief of the victim's family; it only creates grief for others.
"It just seems to pass it on, not stop it," she says.
Kirk concedes the point.
"I'm not going to be any happier with Byrd's execution," he says. "It's not going to bring the man I knew and loved back. I've missed him for 20 years."
But if nothing else, the execution should end the media coverage that Kirk has found painful.
"The reminders there -- maybe all that will stop now," he says.
Plenty of pain to go around
At 10:09 a.m., Byrd is dead. George Skatzes is on Death Row, awaiting his turn.
In the crowd protesting outside the prison is Skatzes' sister, Jackie Bowers.
"God wouldn't want us to be killing (Byrd)," she says. "That is up to God. I've learned that if there was more love among people, what a better world this would be. There has to be forgiveness."
Skatzes is one of four prisoners sentenced to death for killing a guard during the 1993 Lucasville riot (see Justice Runs Riot issue of Feb. 21-27). Bowers says he is not guilty.
Bowers gets to meet with her brother for three hours every two weeks. Physical contact is forbidden. Bowers tells Skatzes to have faith, but thoughts of Death Row never escape her.
"I live it, I breathe it, I sleep it," she says. "It's really hard, and especially if someone's there for something he didn't do. It makes it doubly hard."
She talks about growing up with Skatzes. Their father was their mother's third husband; Bowers remembers her as impossible to please. She says the parents didn't participate in the children's lives.
"We was poor," she says. "You never had clothes for school, you never had food to eat. Our one brother would take a big black belt to (Skatzes), beating on him."
Explaining what it's like to have a brother on Death Row is tough, according to Bowers.
"Sometimes people listen," she says. "Other times they'll try to outdo you with the Bible or whatever."
Bowers' son died in a car crash as he drove alone one night. She says she thanks God there was no one to blame.
Photo By Maria Rogers
Young people hold a vigiloutside the prison on Feb. 19.
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The Rev. Patrick Hanna counseled Byrd the past year. They discussed Shakespeare, movies, psychology and philosophy.
"As I got to know John, I always found John to be one who would try and make you feel comfortable when he wasn't," Hanna says. "He had a tremendous sense of humor."
When Byrd decided to be baptized, three fellow inmates joined him. The others decided if Byrd could be baptized, they could, too.
"They're very, very careful on Death Row not to give perceptions of weakness," Hanna says.
Hanna met with Byrd two or three times a week.
"His comment to me was, 'Well, I haven't given up my faith. It's God's will be done. I'm not sure what I want and he wants are the same, but I'm going to be at peace,'" Hanna says.
Byrd, who was dyslexic, only had a ninth-grade education but was determined to learn new things, according to Hanna.
"He had learned to read, write and speak German," he says. "He was very proud to be German. John exhibited an extreme knowledge of the Bible and when questioned about that he gave a tremendous amount of credit to his grandmother. He said that he always had a large amount of faith but hadn't acted on some of these things for various reasons. He always considered himself and always declared that he was a child of God. I found John to be a brother in Christ."
Hanna says Byrd changed in prison.
"In your area, they know a different John Byrd than I know," he says. "I think he reflected back with some sadness to his life at that time."
The night before his execution, Byrd told Hanna not to worry about him.
"He said he was at peace and he felt he was in a state of grace," Hanna says.
As Byrd lay lifeless, Hanna anointed his body.
"It was kind of tough to see John laying there, still on the gurney, only about three or four minutes after the execution," he says. "I won't see that penetrating, deep and pleasing smile of John's any longer."
As bells play in front of the prison, indicating Byrd is dead, a man in the crowd screams, "We won again!" ©
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