Biros given stay of execution

Biros given stay of execution

By CHRISTOPHER BOBBY Tribune Chronicle

WARREN — Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said he will continue preparations to convince state officials to deny clemency for death row inmate Kenneth Biros despite a federal court order Thursday that postpones Biros’ execution scheduled for Jan. 23.

Watkins and his chief appellate assistant, LuWayne Annos, were informed Thursday that Judge Gregory Frost with the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Ohio issued the stay since Biros and other death row inmates have joined together to challenge the state’s lethal injunction as cruel and unusual punishment.

‘‘The Ohio Attorney General’s Office advised us to continue plans for the Jan. 4 parole hearing. The federal case could be decided by the execution date,’’ Watkins said. ‘‘The AG’s office is appealing the stay order as well.’’

Biros execution would be the first under newly elected Gov. Ted Strickland.

On Dec. 28, Watkins and others are scheduled to watch a video feed of Biros — taped at the Ohio State Penitentiary — asking for mercy or offering reasons why he shouldn’t be put to death.

Watkins and victims then could rebut Biros at the Jan. 4 clemency hearing in Columbus before the Parole Board, which would recommend death or clemency to the governor.

In September of 2005, a decision by a federal judge that could have removed Biros from Ohio’s death row was overturned in the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

The federal appellate court reversed an earlier decision by U.S. Northern District Court Judge Dan Aaron Polster, who said a technicality of not naming Biros the ‘‘principal offender’’ in a high-profile local murder would set aside his death sentence.

Biros was sentenced Oct. 29, 1991, to die for killing Tami Engstrom of Hubbard and leaving her dismembered remains in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The 11th District Court of Appeals and Ohio Supreme Court initially upheld the conviction.

Biros, meanwhile, remains on death row in Youngstown while the latest arguments continue. He is one of 10 convicted killers from Trumbull County on death row. None have been executed so far.

Within a month of when Trumbull prosecutors asked the Ohio Supreme Court for an execution date, Biros joined the federal lawsuit that tests the constitutionality of the death penalty by lethal injection.

The litigation was filed in November by Richard Cooey, a death row inmate who was convicted in 1986 of throwing slabs of concrete from an Interstate 76 overpass into the windshield of a car carrying two female students from Akron University. After striking the auto, Cooey went raped and murdered both women.



cbobby@tribune-chronicle.com