Killer from Brookfield to get new execution date

In total, seven death row inmates lost their appeals.

Staff/wire report

The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for Ohio to execute Kenneth Biros, who murdered and dismembered a Hubbard woman in February 1991.

The Supreme Court also cleared the way Monday for Alabama, Mississippi and Texas to set new execution dates for three inmates who were granted last-minute reprieves by the justices last year.

Seven death row inmates also lost their appeals Monday, including Biros and two others from Ohio.

Dennis Watkins, Trumbull County prosecutor, said he plans to ask the Ohio Supreme Court likely late this week to reset Biros’ execution date.

Watkins, who convicted Biros, said he spoke to Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann on Monday and the offices are coordinating in securing a date.

Biros, 49, formerly of Brookfield, was convicted of brutalizing and murdering Tami Engstrom, 22, of Hubbard, on Feb. 8, 1991, near Biros’ King Graves Road home, and then dismembering her.

“Of all of the cases that I’ve seen in my career, the two that stand out in brutality and inhumanity are Kenneth Biros and Danny Lee Hill,” said Watkins.

Hill is on death row for the 1985 torture and murder of 12-year-old Raymond Fife.

Engstrom suffered 91 injuries before her death, the longtime prosecutor said.

“This is the worst of the worst,” he said.

The cause of death was strangulation. Biros then dismembered the body. “This case cries out for the death penalty,” Watkins said.

“This has caused tremendous trauma to good people,” the prosecutor said.

The court on Monday turned down appeals from Thomas Arthur of Alabama, Earl Wesley Berry of Mississippi and Carlton Turner of Texas. The court blocked their executions last fall while it considered a challenge to Kentucky’s lethal-injection procedures.

The justices said those procedures are not unconstitutionally cruel, a decision that almost certainly will lead to a resumption of executions after a 7-month hiatus.

The high court’s last-minute orders temporarily sparing the three inmates automatically expired when the justices denied their appeals Monday.

The six other inmates are Richard Cooey and James Frazier in Ohio; Juan Velazquez in Arizona, Samuel Crowe and Joseph Williams in Georgia and Michael Taylor in Missouri.

Roughly three dozen states use three drugs in succession to put to sleep, paralyze and kill inmates. Critics of the procedures have said that if the first drug is administered incorrectly or in an insufficient dosage, the inmate could suffer excruciating pain from the other two drugs. But because the second drug is a paralytic, he would be unable to express his discomfort.