Ohio Death Row Inmate Who Killed 2 Won't Be Spared By Gov. Kasich

COLUMBUS, OH — Death row inmate Alva Campbell will not be spared by Republican Gov. John Kasich, who on Thursday rejected Campbell's request for mercy. Campbell, set to die on Nov. 15 for killing a teen during a 1997 carjacking, cited his troubled childhood and poor health as reasons he should be allowed to live.

Campbell was paroled on a different murder charge just five years earlier.

The parole board on Oct. 20 recommended that Campbell be put to death despite acknowledging his upbringing and childhood experiences "were certainly dysfunctional and no doubt traumatic." The board also cited the fact that Campbell was responsible for two killings and other offenses. Kasich, who did not explain his decision, followed the recommendation.

Campbell, 69, was paroled in 1992 after serving 20 years for killing a man in a Cleveland bar. On April 2, 1997, Campbell was in a wheelchair feigning paralysis when he overpowered a Franklin County sheriff's deputy on the way to a court hearing on several armed robbery charges, records show.

Campbell took the deputy's gun, carjacked 18-year-old Charles Dials and drove around with him for several hours before shooting him twice in the head as Dials crouched in the footwell of his own truck, according to court records.

Campbell's attorneys have argued that Campbell is terminally ill with a variety of chronic diseases. He is unable to walk, or breathe without assistance and is dependent on a colostomy bag, according to federal public defender David Stebbins.

Kasich's failure to consider Campbell's physical condition or the potential for problems accessing his veins is disappointing, Stebbins said Thursday. He warned of a potential spectacle as Campbell is delivered to the execution gurney in a wheelchair.

"All of this in an attempt to execute an old and frail man who is no longer a threat to anyone," Stebbins said. "Killing Alva Campbell is not simply not necessary."

Campbell has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to delay his execution. Last week, he lost a bid to be executed by firing squad after a federal judge questioned whether lawmakers would enact the bill needed to allow the method.

Other inmates across the country have cited ill health as a way to avoid execution. Some have been successful, including Vernon Madison, a 66-year-old Alabama inmate with stroke-induced dementia, who was spared because he didn't understand his death sentence or remember the killing.

But many others have not had the same success, including double killer Richard Cooey, from Ohio, who was executed in 2008 despite arguing that his obesity would prevent humane lethal injection because viable veins in his arms were difficult to find.

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS, Associated Press

Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus.

Photo credit: Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction via AP