Post by MXB on Oct 21, 2006 8:57:37 GMT -5
A Murder Victim's Brother Weighs In
For Rodney Bowser the question of whether lethal injection could
amount to torture wasn't the point. The soft-spoken man said he hadn'tthought much about that question at all. "It's supposed to be likegoing to sleep. But how much of that's really true we don't really know." What mattered more was the question of why the man who raped and killed his 21-year-old sister, Trina, had to be killed at all.
The convicted killer, Glenn Benner, was executed by lethal injection on Feb. 7. Bowser thinks that Benner's life would not have ended strapped to a gurney had there been more support for the idea of bringing the prisoner together with the victim's family.
Trina's brother hadn't always thought in this way. He spent two
decades cursing the former childhood friend who killed his sister in 1986. But as the execution date approached, he decided he wanted to talk with Benner and repeatedly tried to set up a meeting with him at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown.
This endeavor was more complicated than he'd expected. He described how the state's prosecutor, the victim's advocate and family members all advised him strongly against meeting the man who had murdered his relative. "I was told that, normally, the person that committed the crime would go off on you. They would yell nasty things at you that you didn't want to hear. That's why I was really scared to death to meet with him."
When they finally met, on the day of the execution, and after two
longer conversations on the phone, Bowser said he was ready to forgive his former childhood friend. "He was upfront and honest with me," Bowser recalled. "He didn't do what everyone said he would do. He didn't go off and yell and scream and all that kind of stuff. He answered all the questions that we wanted to know for more than 20 years. He told me the truth."
In retrospect Bowser said he wished this meeting had happened earlier.
He recalls trying to meet Benner four months before the execution
date. "But it kept getting overlooked, it kept getting put on the
backburner."
After his meeting with Benner, minutes before his death, Bowser said he felt terrible. "When they took me back into the holding area with the rest of the family and the other victim's family, I was shocked by the party atmosphere. I couldn't be there."
Bowser, who at this point would have liked to call his parents to see if anything should be done differently, was brought into an area of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville where he had no access to a telephone.
The Tallmadge resident said he wished there would have been a way to stop the execution, and that Benner would have considered his legal options more wisely.
"He knew he could have stopped the execution at any time. All he had to do is file an amendment to the lethal injection lawsuit. That would have bought him enough time to make it through the 2006 election. And then, when you get a Democratic Governor you're just not going to be executed. He knew he could have stopped this."
Also, had there been an alternative sentence, his family would have supported the idea of life without parole. "Glenn Benner did not need to die. But, just like he said, a fair punishment would have been to spend the rest of his life in prison."
For Rodney Bowser the question of whether lethal injection could
amount to torture wasn't the point. The soft-spoken man said he hadn'tthought much about that question at all. "It's supposed to be likegoing to sleep. But how much of that's really true we don't really know." What mattered more was the question of why the man who raped and killed his 21-year-old sister, Trina, had to be killed at all.
The convicted killer, Glenn Benner, was executed by lethal injection on Feb. 7. Bowser thinks that Benner's life would not have ended strapped to a gurney had there been more support for the idea of bringing the prisoner together with the victim's family.
Trina's brother hadn't always thought in this way. He spent two
decades cursing the former childhood friend who killed his sister in 1986. But as the execution date approached, he decided he wanted to talk with Benner and repeatedly tried to set up a meeting with him at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown.
This endeavor was more complicated than he'd expected. He described how the state's prosecutor, the victim's advocate and family members all advised him strongly against meeting the man who had murdered his relative. "I was told that, normally, the person that committed the crime would go off on you. They would yell nasty things at you that you didn't want to hear. That's why I was really scared to death to meet with him."
When they finally met, on the day of the execution, and after two
longer conversations on the phone, Bowser said he was ready to forgive his former childhood friend. "He was upfront and honest with me," Bowser recalled. "He didn't do what everyone said he would do. He didn't go off and yell and scream and all that kind of stuff. He answered all the questions that we wanted to know for more than 20 years. He told me the truth."
In retrospect Bowser said he wished this meeting had happened earlier.
He recalls trying to meet Benner four months before the execution
date. "But it kept getting overlooked, it kept getting put on the
backburner."
After his meeting with Benner, minutes before his death, Bowser said he felt terrible. "When they took me back into the holding area with the rest of the family and the other victim's family, I was shocked by the party atmosphere. I couldn't be there."
Bowser, who at this point would have liked to call his parents to see if anything should be done differently, was brought into an area of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville where he had no access to a telephone.
The Tallmadge resident said he wished there would have been a way to stop the execution, and that Benner would have considered his legal options more wisely.
"He knew he could have stopped the execution at any time. All he had to do is file an amendment to the lethal injection lawsuit. That would have bought him enough time to make it through the 2006 election. And then, when you get a Democratic Governor you're just not going to be executed. He knew he could have stopped this."
Also, had there been an alternative sentence, his family would have supported the idea of life without parole. "Glenn Benner did not need to die. But, just like he said, a fair punishment would have been to spend the rest of his life in prison."