LUCASVILLE, Ohio — He believed in capital punishment to the end.

With his last words, Herman Dale Ashworth underscored his feelings just before being executed yesterday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville.

"A life for a life," he said, his breathing ragged and chest heaving as he lay on the execution table. "Let it be done, and justice will be served."

A few minutes later, the chemicals did their job.

Ashworth, 32, was pronounced dead at 10:19 a.m., his life forfeited for one he took nine years ago in a Newark alley when he beat Daniel L. Baker to death.

Ashworth did not sleep at all Monday night, Ohio prisons spokeswoman Andrea Dean said. He tried unsuccessfully about a half-dozen times to phone his adoptive parents, James Ashworth and Anna Mae Dalton. They were stuck in their native Louisiana, their phone service knocked out. They were unable to travel to Ohio because of Hurricane Rita.

Ashworth had no witnesses on his behalf at his execution.

As a "volunteer" — having waived several rounds of legal appeals — he could have stopped his execution up to the last minute.

Tangee Overly, Baker’s niece, said afterward that Ashworth’s death "brought closure to my family," but it also created another set of victims.

"It occurs to me that this tragedy has caused the loss of two young men’s lives," she said. "It was senseless. Mr. Ashworth’s family was a victim just like our family has been a victim of this.

"I can’t lie and say I’m sorry that this conclusion happened because I’m not. Dan was very brutally murdered," Overly said. "No mother can sleep at night knowing that their son was murdered in the way that Dan was murdered, and my grandparents live with this every day and have for the last nine years."

Ashworth met Baker, 40, an engineer who had just returned to Ohio after living in California, at a Newark bar on the evening of Sept. 11, 1996. Luring Baker to an alley, Ashworth beat him and stole $42 and credit cards.

After spending Baker’s money at the bar, Ashworth returned to finish the job, fearing that Baker might identify him as his assailant. Using his fists, feet and a wooden board, Ashworth beat the unconscious man so badly that several organs, including his heart, were ruptured.

Ashworth admitted his guilt after his arrest and eventually decided to give up his legal appeals rather than remain additional years on Death Row.

Ashworth waited silently and passively yesterday as prison medical personnel struggled for nearly 10 minutes to place an intravenous shunt in his right arm for the lethal injection.

Minutes later, with his 6-foot 4-inch frame filling the execution table and his white tennis shoes hanging over the end, Ashworth blinked rapidly several times, his chest heaved up and down. His left arm and shoulder shook noticeably.

By 10:15 a.m., the shaking stopped and he appeared to stop breathing.

Abe Bonowitz, a Bexley native and head of Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, was among about 100 people, many of them high-school students from Cleveland, who protested outside the prison.

He said Ashworth’s belief in capital punishment is no comfort.

"If anything, it angers me because this guy has committed state-assisted suicide."

Bonowitz said every execution "brings us closer to abolition. The more people we execute, the more it becomes obvious we’re not doing anything."

Since resuming capital punishment in 1999, Ohio has had 17 executions, 13 th nationally. There have been 984 executions nationwide since 1976, 40 this year.

ajohnson@dispatch.com