Ohio executes Mark Wiles

Mark Wiles

More than 26 years after he brutally murdered a Rootstown, Ohio, teenager, Mark Wayne Wiles paid the ultimate price today.

Wiles 49, was executed at 10 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. It was Ohio’s 1st execution in 5 months because of a legal battle about the state’s lethal-injection procedures.

Gary C. Mohr, director of the state Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said this morning that because the Wiles case is being so closely watched by the courts, it is "the most documented execution in the United States."

Wiles was convicted and sentenced to be death for the fatal stabbing of Mark Klima, 15, on Aug. 7, 1985. Records show that Wiles, who was out of prison on an aggravated-robbery conviction, killed the 5-foot-tall, 100-pound Klima at the family’s Shakespeare Acres horse farm in Portage County where Wiles had once worked. The kitchen knife that Wiles used to stab Klima 24 times had been used the previous day to cut the cake at a family birthday party.

Wiles fled to Savannah, Ga., but quickly turned himself in to police and confessed to the crime. During his original trial, Wiles did not want to be defended. His attorneys, in seeking clemency for him, said Wiles was very remorseful and could never forgive himself for killing Klima.

Courts at all levels rejected appeals filed for Wiles. Gov. John Kasich denied clemency for him last week, siding with the Ohio Parole Board’s 8-0 recommendation. At that point, Wiles ordered his attorneys to stop all legal appeals so his execution could proceed.

The execution was the 47th in Ohio since capital punishment resumed in 1999.

Wiles becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Ohio, and the 14th overall this year in the USA; Wiles is the 1291st condemned inmate to be put to death since the nation re-legalized the death penalty on July 2, 1976, and since it resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Sources: Columbus Dispatch, Rick Halperin, April 18, 2012

Ohio's Death Penalty Moratorium Didn't Last Very Long

The state of Ohio plans to execute convicted killer Mark Wiles on Wednesday, ending an unofficial ban on the practice that lasted all of 6 months. Wiles will be executed by lethal injection for murdering a 15-year-old boy during a robbery of a farmhouse in 1985. He will be the 47th person executed in Ohio since the state resumed the death penalty in 1999.

For the last several years, the state has been involved in legal battles, not over the idea of capital punishment, but the way it has been carried out. Several inmates sued over the procedures used after a botched 2009 execution when an inmate was stuck with a needle 18 times. The state has revised its method several times under accusations that it was unnecessarily painful, though a federal judge has accused the state of not following its own procedures properly. U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost halted all executions for 6 months last summer, but after allowing an execution in November, Frost once again criticized the officials for deviating from the procedures and ordered a halt to them until the process could be reviewed some more. However, he ruled 2 weeks ago that the Wiles execution could go forward.

The delay did hold up 2 other scheduled executions — 1 in January and 1 in February — but the gap of 6 months would hardly have been an unusual one. In most years during the last decade, the state has only seen 3 or 4 execution per year. However, there are now 12 prisoners with scheduled execution dates by the end of 2013 (more than any other state) showing no signs that Ohio plans to slow down the process. 2 state Senators proposed a ban on the practice last month, shortly before Connecticut's became the 5th state in 5 years to abolish capital punishment, but the bill has not been brought to a vote.

Source: The Atlantic Wire, April 17, 2012

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