Convicted killer Robert Van Hook executed at Lucasville prison
Convicted of the horrific murder of a Cincinnati man, Robert Van Hook died by lethal injection on Wednesday in Ohio's 1st execution in more than 10 months.
The 58-year-old Van Hook was pronounced dead at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at 10:44 a.m. after being strapped to the gurney in the death chamber and administered the lethal dose of drugs.
He served a violence-plagued 32 years in prison after a death-penalty conviction for what now could be considered a hate crime - of the utmost violence.
On Feb. 18, 1985, Van Hook met David Self in a gay bar in downtown Cincinnati and went home with him. Van Hook's clemency report says he lured Self into a vulnerable position and strangled him into unconsciousness.
"He then took a paring knife from the kitchen and stabbed the victim behind the right ear, aiming the thrust upward toward the brain, accompanied by a blade-twisting movement," the report said.
It added that Van Hook then appeared to try to decapitate Self. After that, he cut open Self's abdominal cavity, stabbed his liver and heart and then "placed a small bottle which contained amyl nitrate, its cap, a cigarette butt and the paring knife into the victim's abdominal cavity," the report said.
Van Hook stole a few trinkets, checked the refrigerator and finding nothing he liked, left. He was arrested in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, on April 1, 1985.
Van Hook raised the defense that he was in a "homosexual panic" when he committed the crime, but prosecutors rejected the notion. Illinois and California have outlawed the defense.
In their unsuccessful bid for clemency, Van Hook's attorneys cited his difficult childhood. "From the time of his birth until his arrest, Robert Van Hook lived in an environment that can only be described as chaos," their report said.
His mother, who had a history of mental illness, abused alcohol and drugs and became enmeshed in repeated, mutually abusive relationships. His father also drank heavily, beat Van Hook and was a virulent homophobe, the lawyers wrote.
Van Hook's father, a musician, introduced his son to alcohol and drugs when Van hook was 11 or 12, his lawyers said. At 14, Van Hook moved with his father to Florida and eventually ran away. He lived on the streets, sometimes supporting himself by having sex for money with men.
In decades in prison, Van Hook amassed a lengthy disciplinary record. It includes more than 2 dozen incidents, including stabbing another inmate in the face and chest, threatening to kill corrections officers and damaging property.
In his clemency report, he said that early in his sentence, he fought to protect himself from sexual attackers. But, upon surviving the Lucasville prison riot in 1997, Van Hook said he found Jesus and called it "the one incident that influenced me to change my life." He wasn't involved in any serious incidents for almost a decade, but was later party to 5 more, the last in 2017, his clemency report says. Gov. John Kasich denied his clemency request at the advice of the parole board.
Self sought a retrial, saying his lawyers didn't have enough time to prepare. Separate federal courts ruled in favor of granting Van Hook a new trial, but the U.S. Supreme Court in 2009 upheld his conviction.
Self's family wanted Van Hook to be executed. His sister, Janet Self, told the parole board that her brother's murder reduced him in the public mind to nothing more than a gay man in a bar, when in reality he was an intelligent, witty person. She also noted that Self was abused by his own father and had to face prejudice because he was gay.
Van Hook's execution was the 1st in Ohio in 2018. The last attempted execution - of Alva Campbell in November - was called off when corrections workers could not find a vein for intravenous drugs. He died earlier this year of natural causes.
Gary Otte and Ronald Phillips were executed last year. They were the 1st to be killed in Ohio's death chamber after a 3-year moratorium following the 2014 execution of Dennis McGuire, 53, who gasped, choked, clenched his fists and appeared to struggle against his restraints for about 10 minutes before being pronounced dead.
Van Hook was the 56th man to be executed in Ohio since 1999. 2 more executions are scheduled for later this year. A total of 137 people remain under death sentences in Ohio.
Van Hook becomes the 14th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,479th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
Video: Robert Van Hook exits the prison.
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde