Thursday, March 25, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Colwell's execution scheduled Friday

35-year-old can opt to continue appeals, halt lethal injection

Abe Bonowitz, director of Citizens United For Alternatives to the Death Penalty, expresses his feelings on a red shirt while attending a news conference Wednesday at Christ Episcopal Church, 2100 S. Maryland Parkway. Gatherers criticized the death penalty and the scheduled execution of Nevada death row inmate Lawrence Colwell Jr. on Friday. Photo by John Gurzinski. Juan Melendez, who spent more than 17 years on death row in Florida before evidence freed him, places flowers in a vase as part of a remembrance ceremony for Nevada's executed inmates. Melendez and others, part of the "Journey of Hope Abolition Day '04 Tour," were in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Photo by John Gurzinski. Lawrence Colwell Jr. After giving up on the appeals process, murderer's execution scheduled for Friday

CARSON CITY -- Unless he changes his mind at the last minute, convicted killer Lawrence Colwell Jr. will walk across a short hallway Friday that separates the "last night" cell from the former gas chamber at the Nevada State Prison.

There, the 35-year-old inmate will be strapped to a gurney and a needle will be inserted into his arm. At 9 p.m., officials with the Department of Corrections, hidden from view behind a wall, will pump three injections into his bloodstream.

The first drug is a sedative to put Colwell to sleep. It will be followed by two other drugs, one to stop his breathing and the other, his heart.

A doctor will then pronounce Colwell dead, and he'll become the 10th man executed in Nevada since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Assistant Federal Public Defender Michael Pescetta said Wednesday that Colwell's resolve has not wavered.

"There's been no change," he said. "We're just sort of sitting here waiting by the phone."

U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben said at a hearing earlier this month to determine Colwell's competency that he would sign a stay right up to the last minute if necessary.

At the hearing, Colwell said he was unlikely to change his mind. "I really don't believe it will go to the 11th hour," he told the judge.

Colwell pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death in 1995 for strangling and robbing Florida tourist Frank Rosenstock, 76, in 1994 in a Las Vegas hotel room.

Rosenstock's son, Terry Rosenstock, said Wednesday that he and his sister, Mindy Dinburg, are planning to fly to Nevada today to witness Friday's execution.

"I feel this is the place we have to be," Terry Rosenstock said from New York. "It will be a totally new experience. The whole scenario is like something you watch on TV."

Rosenstock said he attended Colwell's trial and has followed all the legal proceedings closely over the years.

"This won't bring closure," he said of the execution. "It's a close of a chapter."

About 20 death penalty abolitionists gathered Wednesday at a Las Vegas church to denounce the scheduled execution.

One of them was former death row inmate Juan Melendez, convicted of a Florida murder in 1984. Seventeen years later he was freed when it was revealed that prosecutors had hidden evidence to protect the real killer, who was a police informant.

"When they (death row inmates) drop the appeals, they ask the government to help them commit suicide," said Melendez, 52. "But I had my dreams; my wonderful dreams saved me."

Melendez, who is traveling as part of the Journey of Hope Abolition Day '04 tour, said he was "a prime example that the death penalty system is not accurate. It's not fair; it's all about revenge."

Melendez had been convicted of the 1983 slaying of a beauty school owner, though no physical evidence had ever tied him to the crime.

"I was always trying to keep hope that one day I would be free," Melendez said.

Under the cover of trees at Christ Episcopal Church, he and others in the group prayed and sang a hymn called "Give Peace to Every Heart."

They attacked the death penalty for reasons ranging from religious to humanitarian. They know that Colwell is allowing his own death, but believe the state is wrong to oblige him.

"That's not the way it should be," said Abe Bonowitz, director of Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "Real punishment would be to not allow the cowardly way out. Don't let the citizens of this state lower themselves to the level of this killer."

Colwell has declined requests for interviews. He is considered a "volunteer," a death-row inmate who has decided to waive his legal appeals and allow himself to be executed.

At his sentencing hearing nearly a decade ago, Colwell told the judges deciding his fate: "I took his life for no reason. No reason at all. It wasn't for the money. It was for the kicks of it, I guess.

"It was like taking a walk in the park, taking a drive down the street," he said. "The act itself was committed that easily, and it was uncalled for."

Voluntary executions are the norm in Nevada. Nine of the 10 men since the first in October 1979 have chosen death rather than pursue legal appeals.

At his competency hearing, Colwell hinted that his bleak life on death row at Ely State Prison in eastern Nevada played a part in his decision to be executed.

Death row inmates spend 23 hours a day in their cells. Contact with visitors is limited because of the remote location.

Fritz Schlottman, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said Colwell has had family visit his this week.

Colwell has asked for a haircut and his teeth to be cleaned, Schlottman said.

"He wanted his TV," Schlottman said. "We packed it up when he was moved from Ely (State Prison). We dug it up and got him his TV."

The last execution was in April 2001. Sebastian Bridges waived his appeals and was put to death for murdering Hunter Blatchford, 27, in the Las Vegas desert in 1997.

Prior to his execution, Colwell will have his choice of meals from the prison kitchen. A telephone is available for him to make calls to family and friends from the last night cell, where he will be moved on Friday.

Across the hall is the gas chamber where executions are carried out. Nevada in 1983 switched from cyanide gas to lethal injection, but the old gas chamber is still used for executions.

At his sentencing hearing, former Clark County District Attorney Stewart Bell said Colwell, "has been headed for the death penalty since he was a youth, 12 years old or younger."

Bell said Colwell received his first conviction at the age of 12 for burglarizing a school in Oregon and continued to have trouble with the law throughout his youth. At the age of 18, the high school dropout used a rifle to kidnap his former girlfriend in Oregon. He went to prison in August 1988 for that crime and was released on parole in June 1993.

Bell said Colwell continued to commit crimes after his release and later headed for Michigan with his girlfriend, Merilee Paul, to set up an underground marijuana farm. The pair soon ran out of money, he said, and headed to Las Vegas in March 1994.

Paul also pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for her role in the death of Rosenstock and is serving a life prison term with the possibility of parole. She is scheduled for a parole hearing in May.

Review-Journal Capital Bureau writer Sean Whaley reported from Carson City.