End legal wrangling quickly, then execute killer Biros

End legal wrangling quickly, then execute killer Biros

Attorneys for convicted killer Kenneth Biros of Brookfield are arguing in U.S. District Court that a drug Ohio uses in its execution process constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

We must argue that the tactics Biros used in robbing, sexually assaulting, murdering and dismembering the body of his victim in 1991 constitute cruel and unusual punishment of a much higher order than death by injected medications.

This appeal is but the latest in a line of legal wranglings that have deferred justice in the Biros case far too long. That’s why it is critical that U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost reject Biros’ cowardly pleas. Then, the state should act swiftly to reschedule Biros’ execution for as soon as legally possible.

The hearing last week was designed to collect evidence in the case and to determine whether Biros’ argument has sufficient merit to warrant a full-blown, time-consuming challenge of the constitutionality of Ohio’s capital punishment procedures. Frost took testimony from Ohio’s execution team and the state prisons department on the intricacies of Ohio’s execution protocol.

Biros argues that evidence from executions around the country indicate he could suffer a painful death from the effect of the lethal chemicals. He adds that veterinarians would not use the drug to euthanize cats and dogs.

Supreme Court has spoken

Legally, however, Biros, 50, should not have much ground to stand on. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year in a challenge to procedures used in Kentucky that lethal injection in this country is constitutional. Biros, not surprisingly, has latched on to a loophole in the ruling that permits challenges to other states’ specific means of execution.

This is not the first death-defying stall tactic Biros has employed to prolong his life. He had earlier tried, for example, to argue that the scope of his crime did not merit capital punishment, a shallow argument considering the unmitigated savagery of his killing.

In February 1991, Biros offered to take Tami Engstrom out for coffee from a Brookfield bar. In the end, the brute beat and stabbed her more than 90 times, sexually mutilated her, strangled her, dismembered her and spread her body parts in various locations in northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

The horror of the crime has left a lasting nightmarish impact on the family and friends of Engstrom. The ongoing delays in putting Biros to death have circumvented their closure and constitute cruel and unusual punishment for them. No trial is needed for that determination.

What is needed now is a swift ruling from Judge Frost that Biros’ lamentations fail to indict the state’s method of execution by lethal injection. Then, state officials should act with all appropriate speed to escort Biros directly into Ohio’s death chamber.