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Thread: Warren Keith Henness - Ohio Execution - December 17, 2024

  1. #21
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Clemency hearing set for January 10, 2019.

    https://www.drc.ohio.gov/execution-schedule
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

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  2. #22
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Ohio killer on death row proclaims innocence: Asks his life be spared from next month's execution

    Warren Keith Henness is facing the death penalty for the 1992 murder of 51-year-old Richard Meyers

    By Andrew Welsh-Huggins
    Associated Press

    COLUMBUS, Ohio — An Ohio man sentenced to death in the fatal shooting of a volunteer addiction counselor is proclaiming his innocence and asking that his life be spared, according to arguments by his attorneys a month before his scheduled execution.

    Warren Keith Henness, who goes by his middle name, was convicted of killing 51-year-old Richard Meyers in Columbus in 1992. Myers, who was a lab technician at a veterans hospital in Chillicothe in southern Ohio, frequently volunteered with Alcoholics Anonymous to assist people with addictions and had been helping Henness find drug treatment for his wife, according to authorities.

    The Ohio Parole Board scheduled arguments for and against mercy Thursday. Henness is set to die by lethal injection on Feb. 13 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

    Prosecutors said Henness kidnapped Myers, bound and then shot him at an abandoned water treatment plant, and then stole his credit cards, checks and car.

    Henness, his wife Tabatha Henness, and friend Ronald Fair drove around in Myers' car for several days afterward, forging the checks and using the credit cards, according to prosecutors.

    Henness, 55, has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence and did so again in an interview with the Ohio Parole Board last month.

    The board will announce its decision next week. Republican Gov.-elect Mike DeWine, scheduled to be sworn in this weekend, will have the final say on clemency.

    Henness' wife and their friend were also implicated in the killing and provided the only evidence of Henness' guilt, according to court records. The two pleaded guilty to minor charges of forgery and then testified against Henness at trial.

    Henness' attorneys have argued he deserves mercy because of lingering questions about the others' involvement in the killing.

    In addition, they say Henness' defense lawyers at the time failed to fully investigate the case ahead of trial. Henness distrusted one of his attorneys so much that he rejected a plea deal that would have spared his life, according to Henness' clemency petition.

    "Even though Keith has consistently maintained his innocence of the murder of Richard Myers, he would have been eligible for parole already had he agreed to the plea terms the prosecution indicated it was willing to accept," David Stebbins, a federal public defender, said in a filing with the board earlier this month.

    Henness has a consistent record of good behavior in jail and on death row, also making him a good candidate for mercy, Stebbins said.

    Prosecutors argue Henness has a history of lying and refusing to take responsibility for the killing. The death row inmate is now pointing the finger at his wife "on the eve of his execution" after protecting her as the mother of their children for years, Ron O'Brien, the Franklin County prosecutor, told the board in a filing this month.

    Henness' "elaborate and ever-changing stories simply do not fit the evidence in this case," O'Brien said. "Rather than show he is innocent of ... Richard's murder, his lies demonstrate a patent refusal to accept responsibility for his crimes."

    https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/cr...a-25ead24f84d4
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
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  3. #23
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Don't expect mercy for this druggie thug now that that spineless RINO Kasich is gone. DeWine won't fall for "innocence" claims, nor will he care if a former juror turns into a crybaby like the case of that crackhead Tibbets.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  4. #24
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Ohio board rejects condemned killer’s request for mercy

    By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
    The Associated Press

    The Ohio Parole Board on Friday rejected a clemency request by a condemned killer who says he's innocent of the fatal shooting of a volunteer addiction counselor and is asking that his life be spared.

    Warren Keith Henness, who goes by his middle name, was convicted of killing 51-year-old Richard Meyers in Columbus in 1992.

    Myers was a lab technician at a veterans hospital in Chillicothe in southern Ohio and frequently volunteered with Alcoholics Anonymous to assist people with addictions. He had been helping Henness find drug treatment for his wife, according to authorities.

    Henness' claim of innocence is not persuasive and his account of the killing not reliable, the board said in its unanimous ruling.

    "Henness admitted he had told his attorneys so many stories that they did not know what was true," the board said.

    The inmate is set to die by lethal injection on Feb. 13 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. Gov. Mike DeWine has the final say, his first death penalty decision as governor. A message was left with his office seeking comment.

    Prosecutors said Henness kidnapped Myers, bound and then shot him at an abandoned water treatment plant, and then stole his credit cards, checks and car.

    Henness, 55, his wife Tabatha Henness, and friend Ronald Fair drove around in Myers' car for several days afterward, forging the checks and using the credit cards, according to prosecutors.

    Henness' wife and their friend were also implicated in the killing and provided the only evidence of Henness' guilt, according to court records. The two pleaded guilty to minor charges of forgery and then testified against Henness at trial.

    Henness' attorneys have argued he deserves mercy because of lingering questions about the others' involvement in the killing.

    In addition, they say Henness' lawyers at the time failed to fully investigate the case ahead of trial. Henness distrusted one of his attorneys so much that he rejected a plea deal that would have spared his life, according to Henness' clemency petition.

    Henness has a consistent record of good behavior in jail and on death row, also making him a good candidate for mercy, David Stebbins, a federal public defender, said in a filing with the board this month.

    The parole board disagreed, noting Henness has a history of alcohol infractions in prison and contributed to problems with his attorneys through his unwillingness to provide consistent details.

    Stebbins called the ruling disappointing and urged DeWine to judge the request for mercy independently. "Henness is facing execution next month because of the failures of the legal system, not because he is one of the exceptional few worthy of the ultimate punishment of death," Stebbins said.

    Prosecutors argue Henness has a history of lying and refusing to take responsibility for the killing.

    Ohioans To Stop Executions, the state's largest anti-death penalty group, urged DeWine to postpone executions until problems with Ohio's capital punishment system identified by a state Supreme Court commission are addressed.

    https://www.newsobserver.com/news/na...224732795.html

  5. #25
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Ohio's execution method likened to waterboarding, fire in veins - but won't change

    Warren Keith Henness' Feb. 13 execution is still on, even though a federal judge ruled last week that one of the phases of Ohio's three-drug execution protocol is akin to fatal "waterboarding." The judge added that recent expert testimony in his court shows that the other two drugs probably also produce agony for the condemned.

    But Magistrate Judge Michael R. Merz is allowing the Columbus man's execution to proceed even though he has concerns that Ohio's method is unconstitutional.

    "Reading the plain language of the Eighth Amendment, that should be enough to constitute cruel and unusual punishment," he said of his conclusion that Ohio is, in essence, torturing the condemned to death.

    However, the execution is proceeding because of a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision. The majority in the 5-4 decision ruled that if Death Row inmates claim that the government's methods of killing them are cruel, they must propose an alternative for their execution that is "available, feasible and can be readily implemented."

    Henness, 55, proposed to die by drinking 10 grams of secobarbital mixed in a sweet liquid. But Merz ruled Monday that the inmate's attorneys hadn't shown how the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction could legally obtain the barbiturate.

    Henness was convicted of the March 20, 1992, slaying of Richard Myers, a lab technician from Circleville whom Henness lured to his Columbus home under the pretext that he needed substance-abuse counseling from Myers. Henness kidnapped Myers, shot him in the head five times, cut his throat and stole his car, checkbook and credit cards, according to Ohio Parole Board records. Henness and his wife and another man spent the subsequent days using Myers' money to smoke crack and abuse other drugs.

    Five days after Myers disappeared, police found his body at an abandoned water-purification plant off Nelson Road. He had been gagged and his hands bound behind his back with a coat hanger. His ring finger had been severed, and his wedding ring was missing.

    Grisly as Myers' murder was, Merz has spent the past several months in his Dayton courtroom hearing grim descriptions of what Henness is likely to experience in Ohio's death chamber. Witnesses to the most recent execution described how Robert Van Hook lay on the table in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville in July, wheezing and gasping as his life ebbed away.

    A string of doctors from prestigious institutions testified in front of Merz that the first drug in the cocktail, midazolam, is a benzodiazepine that can render a person unconscious but lacks the painkilling effects of opioids and other analgesics.

    Matthew Exline, a doctor at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center, testified that midazolam takes away a person's ability to express pain. They "look comatose," but the drug hasn't "actually taken away their pain," Exline said.

    He added that "if you ask patients when they leave the ICU, 'How was your ICU stay? What do you remember from it?,' a lot of patients have memories of painful procedures."

    When midazolam is administered in the massive doses used in executions, it attacks lung tissues and causes pulmonary edema, an accumulation of fluid that "will cause a person to experience anything from shortness of breath to sensations of drowning, asphyxiation, terror and panic," testified Mark Edgar, an associate professor of pathology at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

    An autopsy of Van Hook found that when he died, he suffered from pulmonary edema, a condition that Merz likened to the torture technique of waterboarding.

    The next drug in the cocktail, a paralytic, would cause "'a very bad, horrifying experience,' as the paralysis would be 'essentially the same as suffocation. In order to get oxygen into their lungs, they would try to breathe, but the muscles wouldn't work,'" testified David J. Greenblatt, an anesthesiology professor and pharmacologist at the Tufts University School of Medicine.

    Paraphrasing Greenblatt, Merz wrote that the third drug, heart-stopping potassium chloride, "would feel as though fire was being poured" into a prisoner's veins.

    Merz ruled that the doctors' testimony showed that a few peers' earlier statements justifying the three-drug protocol were outside the scientific mainstream and thus should be disregarded.

    "The case against midazolam is now much stronger. We now know on the best expert testimony available that it does not have any analgesic effect. Moreover, we have good evidence that midazolam will cause the 'waterboarding' effects of pulmonary edema," he wrote, adding that the Ohio protocol would "almost certainly subject (Henness) to severe pain and needless suffering."

    However, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito noted in his 2015 majority opinion that activists opposing the death penalty had successfully pressured manufacturers to stop supplying other drugs, forcing the switch to midazolam. Alito wrote that a plaintiff objecting to that drug has an obligation to fund a better alternative.

    Alito also noted that death is seldom painless.

    "After all, while most humans wish to die a painless death, many do not have that good fortune. Holding that the Eighth Amendment demands the elimination of essentially all risk of pain would effectively outlaw the death penalty altogether," he wrote.

    But Merz said the guidance, which compelled him to allow Henness' execution to proceed, "is not a result with which the Court is comfortable."

    He quoted from Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent in the 2015 case, Glossip v. Gross. It said people facing executions using midazolam are losing protections against cruel and unusual punishment because the conservative majority imposed "a wholly unprecedented obligation on the condemned inmate to identify an available means for his or her own execution."

    https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&sour...48352154682801
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  6. #26
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Kasich 2.0 sigh

    DeWine delays execution of Columbus killer due to judge's concerns

    After a federal court ruling likening Ohio's execution method to waterboard and injecting fire in the veins of the prisoner, Gov. Mike DeWine issued a reprieve Friday afternoon for a Columbus killer slated to die next month.

    DeWine has directed the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to assess Ohio's current options for execution drugs and examine possible alternative drugs.

    Warren Henness was scheduled to be executed Feb. 13. DeWine set a new date for Sept. 12.

    Magistrate Judge Michael R. Merz last week deemed Ohio's three-drug execution protocol akin to fatal "waterboarding." The federal judge said expert testimony in his court shows that the other two drugs probably also produce agony for the condemned.

    "Reading the plain language of the Eighth Amendment, that should be enough to constitute cruel and unusual punishment," he said of his conclusion that Ohio is, in essence, torturing the condemned to death.

    But the judge said he was forced to allow the Columbus man's execution to proceed because of a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision. The majority in the 5-4 ruling declared if Death Row inmates claim that the government's methods of killing them are cruel, they must propose an alternative for their own execution that is "available, feasible and can be readily implemented."

    Henness was convicted of the March 20, 1992, slaying of Richard Myers, a lab technician from Circleville whom Henness lured to his Columbus home under the pretext that he needed substance-abuse counseling from Myers. Henness kidnapped Myers, shot him in the head five times, cut his throat and stole his car, checkbook and credit cards, according to Ohio Parole Board records. Henness and his wife and another man spent the subsequent days using Myers' money to smoke crack and abuse other drugs.

    Five days after Myers disappeared, police found his body at an abandoned water-purification plant off Nelson Road. He had been gagged and his hands bound behind his back with a coat hanger. His ring finger had been severed, and his wedding ring was missing.

    Grisly as Myers' murder was, Merz has spent the past several months in his Dayton courtroom hearing grim descriptions of what Henness is likely to experience in Ohio's death chamber. Witnesses to the most recent execution described how Robert Van Hook lay on the table in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville in July, wheezing and gasping as his life ebbed away.

    A string of doctors from prestigious institutions testified in front of Merz that the first drug in the cocktail, midazolam, is a benzodiazepine that can render a person unconscious but lacks the painkilling effects of opioids and other analgesics.

    Matthew Exline, a doctor at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center, testified that midazolam takes away a person's ability to express pain. They "look comatose," but the drug hasn't "actually taken away their pain," Exline said.

    https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&sour...48533924085745
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  7. #27
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Calling it now. No executions in Ohio this year. This state will forever be a laughing stock. A "Republican" falling for flawed testimony from a flawed judge who is anti death penalty and has been vacated in the past.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  8. #28
    Senior Member CnCP Legend FFM's Avatar
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    This is why you make a negative recommendation from the board of clemency BINDING. That way, some liberal governor in charge doesn't interfere for 4 damn years by staying and commuting all death sentences.

  9. #29
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
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    So Gov DeWine spends his time as Ohio Attorney General from 2010-2018 litigating endless appeals for the state to uphold their lethal injection protocol and now he is concerned about its constitutionality? What a joke.

  10. #30
    Senior Member Frequent Poster schmutz's Avatar
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    His job description has changed. As AG it was up to him to set aside his own perspective and defend the laws and procedures of the state. As governor, he is in a position to exercise discretion to a greater degree.

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