OHIO---Execution

State executes killer of friend's wife

In Lucasville, a man was executed Tuesday for kidnapping his friend's wife, stuffing her in the trunk of his car, and strangling and stabbing her when she tried to escape.

The execution of David Brewer, 44, was delayed about 10 minutes because the execution team had a problem fitting the needles into his arm that would carry the chemicals to his veins. He was pronounced dead by injection at 10:20 a.m.

Authorities said Brewer sexually assaulted and beat Sherry Byrne, 21, in a motel room on March 21, 1985, after luring her there on the pretense of meeting him and his wife, Cathy. He then abducted her and drove around with her in the trunk of his car for several hours.

Police said passing motorists had reported seeing a piece of paper with "help me please" written in lipstick shoved through the crack in the trunk of a car.

Brewer walked briskly into the death chamber and lay on the table at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. He wore a white V-neck T-shirt, blue pants with orange stripes and tan boots.

Asked by Warden James Haviland if he had a last statement, Brewer said the state should do something about prisoners on death row who don't belong there.

"I'd like to say to the system in Ohio as far as the death row inmates are concerned, there are some that are innocent. I'm not one of them, but there are plenty that are innocent. I hope the state recognizes that. That's all I have to say," Brewer said.

Joe Byrne, the victim's husband, witnessed Brewer's execution. He said softly: "Where's your remorse?"

Byrne, who has remarried and now lives in Bridgewater, N.J., said he was listening for an apology but never heard one.

"David Brewer went to sleep," he said. "I was thinking of Sherry. Her suffering was immeasurable."

Brewer stared at the ceiling while the chemicals were released. After closing his eyes, he yawned, his chest rose sharply once, then his breaths became shorter until he lay motionless.

Thom Miller, a nondenominational pastor from Mansfield who was Brewer's spiritual adviser, afterward read a statement from Brewer's family that he had found peace through his Christian faith.

"It is the prayer of David and his family that the same peace will be found by Sherry's family," Miller read.

Byrne's mother, Myrtle Kaylor, said she will never stop grieving for her daughter.

"I hope that David Brewer today saw my daughter's face and her plea for mercy as he left this world," she said. "The punishment he received today is much more humane than what he did to her."

Brewer's execution was the seventh in Ohio since 1999, the year the state resumed executing inmates after reinstating the death penalty in 1981. The U.S. Supreme Court had declared the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, saying it was applied too arbitrarily.

Brewer, who lived in Centerville, near Dayton, and managed a rental appliance store, was a former fraternity brother of Byrne's husband, Joe Byrne, at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Ky. He later told police he was attracted to his friend's wife.

Brewer confessed to killing Byrne after she tried to escape in suburban Dayton, about 40 miles northeast of the motel. He told police her body was in a rented storage locker in nearby Franklin.

Police said Byrne was choked with a necktie and stabbed 15 times.

Brewer pleaded innocent by reason of insanity and was convicted of aggravated murder and kidnapping.

On Friday, Gov. Bob Taft denied Brewer's request for clemency. Defense attorneys had argued that Brewer deserved mercy because he had no criminal record before the killing and has been a model prisoner.

Joe Byrne never went back to the home he and his wife, a cosmetics saleswoman, had bought in the Cincinnati suburb of Springdale, hoping to have their 1st child there. He moved into his parents' home in Middletown.

Overcome with grief, he was unable to return to his old job. Joe Byrne sold his house, keeping only a few items, including a basketball jersey that his wife had slept in.

He remarried in 1987 and took a job as a financial executive with a paper company in New Jersey the following year, trying to escape the memories.

He said he still suffers on the anniversary of his 1st marriage, Byrne's birthday and the day she was killed.

Brewer becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Ohio and the 7th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999.

Brewer becomes the 29th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 849th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.