EXECUTION Man who stabbed jail guard spends last day alone

He remained calm during the injection process.
LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) -- A man convicted of stabbing a jail guard to death with a homemade knife was executed one day short of the 20th anniversary of the crime.
William G. Zuern, 45, spent his final hours alone Tuesday, refusing to see his two sisters and sticking toilet paper in his ears to block out prison staff.
Zuern was pronounced dead by injection at 10:04 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. His attorney, Kate McGarry, had decided against taking the typical step of asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution, but would not say why she made that decision.
At one point, Zuern removed the paper from his ears and asked a guard, "What time does all of this start?" said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
No last words
When asked if he had any last words before execution, Zuern said, "Nope."
Zuern, who remained calm and kept his eyes pressed tightly closed throughout most of the injection process, was convicted of aggravated murder in the June 9, 1984, stabbing of jail officer Phillip Pence.
Pence's half sister and two co-workers who witnessed the stabbing watched as Zuern's breathing became jerky and his face and fingertips turned blue when the muscle relaxant and heart-stopping drugs traveled through his body.
They said they thought the execution was too easy on Zuern.
"I believe he should have died the way Phil died," former Hamilton County Deputy Sheriff Gary Roush said. "This case was nothing more than putting a mad dog to sleep."
Rejected appeals
On Monday, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati rejected two appeals by Zuern. A three-judge panel lifted a stay of execution issued earlier in the day, then a majority of judges on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted not to allow the full court to consider Zuern's appeal.
Earlier Monday, U.S. District Judge Walter Rice in Dayton ordered the stay to allow the appeals court more time to consider whether Zuern's death sentence was fair.
McGarry had argued that Zuern's lawyers didn't present evidence that that could have helped him when he was sentenced.
Gov. Bob Taft denied clemency, saying Zuern never showed remorse for the stabbing and committed other crimes during his incarceration. Zuern was the 12th inmate to die by injection since Ohio resumed executions in 1999.
Zuern, formerly of Cincinnati, also was serving a life prison term for his guilty plea to fatally shooting a Cincinnati man.
He had been awaiting trial on that slaying when Hamilton County jail officials received a tip that Zuern had a homemade knife in his cell at the Community Correctional Institution, a Civil War-era prison in Cincinnati known as "the Workhouse."
Zuern was notified that officers were coming to search the cell for the weapon and when they arrived he stabbed Pence in the chest with a dagger he had fashioned out of a metal bucket handle, officers said.
At a hearing before sentencing, Zuern's lawyers read a statement from him that said he refused to "beg and crawl" for the jury to spare his life. He said he realized that if he offered no defense he could only be sentenced to death.
No witnesses
Zuern had no witnesses at the execution, and no relatives had come to visit him until his sisters came to the prison Tuesday, Dean said.
He was the first inmate to refuse a spiritual adviser since executions resumed and had a Bible removed from his holding cell, Dean said.
Zuern responded to instructions Tuesday but otherwise barely acknowledged the prison staff, Dean said.
The state will bury Zuern on Thursday in a corrections department cemetery in Chillicothe, an option available when an inmate's family doesn't have money to pay for burial.
Zuern asked that his personal items, including a radio, typewriter, and five books, be destroyed instead of letting his family have them.