Man quiet during his final hours

He would be the 21st man executed since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- A man sentenced to death for killing a gas station clerk during a spree of robberies 22 years ago smoked cigarettes and talked with members of the team preparing to execute him on Tuesday, a prisons spokeswoman said.
Joseph Lewis Clark, 57, is to be executed for killing David Manning, 23, in January 1984, a day after Clark killed a convenience store worker during another robbery.
Clark arrived Monday around 10 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, where the execution is to take place, from death row at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the state prisons department. He would be the 21st man executed since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999.
Appeal rejected
Gov. Bob Taft rejected Clark's appeal for clemency last week, saying he found "no justifiable basis for mercy." Clark confessed to police that he killed Manning, working the night shift at a Toledo gas station, saying that he was trying to get money for drugs. According to court records, Manning was shot by Clark in the chest after telling him there was no money.
Clark also was given a life sentence for killing convenience store clerk Donald Harris the day before as part of a spree of robberies that lasted over a week in January 1984. Clark was arrested three days after Manning's death after he shot and wounded a man withdrawing money from an automated teller machine.
He was sentenced to die in November 1984.
Clark has been facing execution longer than all but 11 of the 193 men on death row and has no remaining legal appeals.
In a March interview at the Youngstown prison, Clark said he didn't intend to kill Manning.
"He started coming toward me with something like a metal rod or something in his hand," Clark said. "I sort of somehow squeezed the trigger off and shot him."
For his final dinner, Clark requested jumbo shrimp; a T-bone steak cooked medium well with A-1 steak sauce; fried chicken wings; french fries with ketchup; hot dinner rolls with butter; cherry pie; and Pepsi.
A message was left seeking comment with George Pappas, an Akron lawyer who has represented Clark and spoke to the state parole board on his behalf in April.