arrrg

the last post contained a link to an article on ohio.com and i forgot you have to login, so i'll just post the damned thing:

Posted on Tue, Sep. 27, 2005

Condemned man can't reach parents in Louisiana

JAY COHEN
Associated Press

LUCASVILLE, Ohio - A man who says he deserves to die for robbing and killing another man nine years ago stayed up Monday night in an unsuccessful attempt to reach his adoptive parents in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana, a prisons spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Herman Dale Ashworth's adoptive parents, James Ashworth and Anna Mae Dalton, were unable to visit their son before his scheduled execution at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility because they missed their flight to Ohio due to Hurricane Rita, said his attorney, Carol Wright. The execution was scheduled for 10 a.m.

He last spoke with them Sunday night and tried to reach them at least six times Monday night and into Tuesday morning, according to Andrea Dean, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. He remained awake all night.

"The phone lines are still down in that portion of the country so he has not been able to reach them," she said.

Ashworth gave his personal items to Wright, who visited him for about an hour Tuesday morning. He refused to eat breakfast - pancakes, Rice Krispies and juice or coffee - and took a shower, Dean said.

Ashworth also visited Tuesday with his spiritual adviser, Mansfield Correctional Institution Chaplain Matt Blakely, and Rev. Gary Sims with the prisons department.

About 100 protesters set up sandwich boards outside the prison fence Tuesday morning with lists of those executed in Ohio and their pictures. Meanwhile, inmates at the prison remained locked in their cells early Tuesday after an inmate was attacked and killed Monday.

Ashworth, 32, was scheduled to die by injection Tuesday for beating to death and robbing Daniel Baker, 40, in an alley in Newark in 1996.

Dalton and James Ashworth, who are divorced and live near DeQuincy in southwest Louisiana, were scheduled to fly out of Houston on Saturday, said Wright, a lawyer who has remained as Ashworth's standby attorney after he had her and another attorney removed as his legal counsel.

Authorities in Houston shut down its two major airports Friday as Rita approached and Dalton and James Ashworth changed their flight to Baton Rouge, La., about 150 miles from their home. But a combination of a lack of electricity at their homes and concerns about gasoline shortages and flooding prevented them from making their flight Sunday, Wright said Monday.

Dalton and James Ashworth live about 50 miles northeast of where Rita came ashore Saturday with 120 mph winds, causing massive flooding, wiping away some sparsely populated towns and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people.

Wright said the parents, who adopted Ashworth when he was an infant, had not planned to witness the execution.

"He did not want to attempt to delay this so his parents could get here," she said.

Ashworth is the fourth condemned prisoner in Ohio to drop his appeals since the state resumed executions in 1999.

A high school dropout who has worked several jobs since he was a teenager, Ashworth has said he believes in the death penalty and doesn't want to spend his life in prison.

Ashworth and Baker, who had never met before, had a few drinks and were walking to a bar when Ashworth called Baker over to an alley and beat him with his fists and a 6-foot board and kicked him, according to court documents and Ashworth's interview with police.

He went back to the alley a second time to finish off Baker to prevent Baker from identifying him, authorities said.

Gov. Bob Taft on Friday declined to stop the scheduled execution. The Ohio Parole Board earlier voted against recommending clemency.

Ashworth was served his special meal about 4 p.m. Monday. He ate two cheeseburgers with lettuce and mayonnaise and french fries with ketchup, and drank one Dr Pepper and one Mountain Dew, Dean said.

Samuel Overly, the husband of Baker's niece, Licking County Prosecutor Robert Becker and Heather Gosselin, a state deputy attorney general, were expected to witness the execution for the state.

Ashworth selected no witnesses. He told authorities that he would like a reporter from The (Newark) Advocate to be a witness for him but that person was already at the execution as a media witness, Dean said.

posted by Courtney at 4:36 p.m.

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