The Ohio Parole Board today recommended against clemency for convicted
killer John W. Byrd Jr., who says he is innocent of the murder for which
he is scheduled to die next month.

The board voted 10-1 to deny the request by Mr. Byrd, who says the fatal
stabbing of a Cincinnati convenience store clerk was committed by an
accomplice.

Mr. Byrd's lawyers had asked the board to recommend that Gov. Bob Taft
commute the sentence to life in prison.

Taft now must decide whether to accept the recommendation. He has denied
clemency to the last 2 men executed in Ohio, Wilford Berry in 1999 and
Jay D. Scott in June.

Board member Sandra Mack cast the lone vote in favor of commuting Byrd's
sentence to life in prison with no chance of parole. "The death penalty
is inappropriate in this case where so much doubt exists as to the actual
killer," she said.

Mr. Byrd, 37, is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 12, in what could be
Ohio's 1st electrocution and 3rd execution since 1963.

He has said he will choose the electric chair to illustrate the brutality
of capital punishment.

Mr. Byrd's attorneys acknowledge their client took part in the 1983
robbery, but they maintain an accomplice killed the clerk, Monte
Tewksbury.

They say that under state law, Byrd cannot be executed because he wasn't
the principal offender. The maximum sentence for an accomplice in such a
crime would have been life in prison.

Prosecutors called Byrd a coward and a liar and said there is no evidence
to back up his innocence claim.

On the Net:

Ohio Parole Board: http://www.drc.state.oh.us/public/byrd.html

(source: Cincinnati Enquirer)

                   COLUMBUS - The lawyer for John Byrd Jr. has little hope that Gov. Bob Taft will
                   spare the convicted murderer from the electric chair.

                   Nevertheless, Ohio Public Defender David Bodiker today is asking the
                   12-member Ohio Parole Board in Columbus to recommend that the governor
                   grant clemency to the 37-year-old Northside man scheduled to die Sept. 12 in the
                   electric chair.

                   Citing the confession of a Byrd accomplice, John Brewer, to stabbing
                   convenience store cle rk Monte Tewksbury, Bodiker claims the wrong man is
                   being ushered to the death chamber at Lucasville; that Byrd inst ead deserves
                   life imprisonment.

                   The parole board is expected to forward its clemency recommendation to the
                   pro-death-penalty Republican governor late this week. Taft is free to follow or
                   ignore the board's recommendation.

                   Bodiker admits his bid to convince Taft to spare Byrd is a longshot.

                   ''I would be delighted if he did, but not surprised if he doesn't,'' Bodiker said.

                   ''I think Gov. Taft is a good man with a sense of justice. But, I worry about the
                   politicos a round him that say, 'This would be good politics, that would be bad
                   politics.' '' Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen argues justice - and the family
                   of Monte Tewksbury - will be satisfied with no less than the death of Byrd.

                   Allen dismisses Brewer's 12-year-old affidavit, which only surfaced this year, as
                   an 11t h-hour lie to save Byrd from death for stabbing Tewksbury during a 1983
                   robbery at a King Kwik near Mount Healthy.

                   Six courts - from Hamilton County Common Pleas Court in 1983 to the U.S.
                   Supreme Court earlie r this year - have held Byrd's conviction and sentence is
                   proper, Allen notes.

                   ''Is John Byrd willing to do whatever it takes to avoid his legally mandated
                   sentence? Absolu tely, and no one should be fooled into thinking the contrary,''
                   Allen wrote about the ''brutish thug.''

                   ''He now bases his clemency request on a claim of 'actual innocence' which is so
                   pathetic ally false that it is ludicrous. He just can't stop lying. John Byrd does
                   not deserve clemency,'' Allen wrote.

                   Sharon Tewksbury, Monte's widow, also is expected to address the parole board
                   and ask that Byrd be executed. ''Nothing short of his death will be good enough
                   for me,'' wrote their daughter, Kim.

                   Allen will carry a binder with more than 150 e-mail messages his office solicited
                   in support of Byrd's execution. The office also received e-mails from four
                   persons in opposition to the death penalty. State officia ls reported receiving 275
                   messages favoring Byrd's execution and one in opposition.

                   The parole board did not recommend clemency for Wilford Berry Jr. and Jay D.
                   Scott, murderers from Cleveland executed in 1999 and last June, respectively, as
                   Ohio resumed capital punishment.

                   Ohio's third scheduled execution since 1963 has ignited debate in Cincinnati
                   between death penalty foes such as former Gov. John Gilligan and former U.S.
                   Rep. Tom Luken and death penalty advocates.

                  Bodiker worries Taft may be influenced by public and political pressure in his
                   hometown to re ject Byrd's plea for mercy as the state nears the first execution of
                   a Cincinnatian since 1958.

                   He accuses Allen and Ohio Treasurer Joe Deters, a former Hamilton County
                   prosecutor, of fanni ng the flames: ''The principal part of it is to cover up the
                   weaknesses of their case. It's a huge, huge smoke scre en.''

                   Byrd, Brewer and a third co-defendant, who died of cancer last February, never
                   should have be en convicted of aggravated murder, Bodiker said.

                   ''You could argue it was involuntary manslaughter,'' Bodiker said, noting the
                   robbers wore ma sks and ripped out the store phone - acts that would have been
                   unnecessary had they planned to leave no witness.

                   ''It's not aggravated murder with death penalty specs.''

                   He also contends Byrd largely was convicted on the testimony of a dubious
                   jailhouse snitch wh o claimed Byrd admitted stabbing Tewksbury.

The state will move executions to earlier in the day to lower costs and
improve convenience, the prison system announced Tuesday.

Executions will be at 10 a.m., during normal workday hours, instead of at
9 p.m., when the state must pay overtime.

The change will go into effect with the next scheduled execution.

John W. Byrd Jr. is to be put to death on Sept. 12 at the Southern Ohio
Correctional Facility in Lucasville, where all of the state's executions
are carried out.

Byrd, 37, was convicted of stabbing a Cincinnati convenience store clerk
to death during a robbery in 1983. He says an accomplice killed the
clerk, and he has asked Gov. Bob Taft for clemency.

The last person executed in Ohio was Jay D. Scott, on June 13. The state
spent a total of $14,330 paying prison workers overtime over 3 days --
two days in which the execution was delayed at the last minute and 1 day
in which it was carried out.

By changing the time of executions, "we won't have to keep people over
late because most of the key folks involved in the execution work during
the normal business hours," said Andrea Dean, a spokeswoman for the Ohio
Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. She did not know how much
money the change likely will save.

Dean said the state also wanted to meet the needs of execution witnesses,
local law enforcement, media members and relatives of the offenders and
victims.

Prison workers typically start preparing for an execution a day early,
and that will not change, she said.

The department didn't want to add to the thousands of dollars the state
has already spent on death penalty cases, said prisons director Reginald
Wilkinson.

"There's nothing mystical about the time we should schedule an
execution," he said. "I think it's a matter of cost and convenience to
everybody involved."

The time of day executions are carried out varies from state to state,
according to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Some
states, such as Delaware, execute prisoners at 12:01 a.m., while others,
such as Pennsylvania, wait until 10 p.m. In some states, such as Nevada,
the time is set by the prison warden.

*************************

Fewer killers going to Ohio death row

For the 1st time since Ohio restored capital punishment in the early
1980s, there is evidence that jurors may be turning away from the death
penalty.

Only 3 convicts were sentenced to death row last year, an all-time low.
And so far this year, there have been 5.

Criminal justice statistics show a steep decline in the overall
percentage of aggravated-murder convictions carrying the death sentence
starting in 1999. Juries began turning to a punishment relatively new in
Ohio: Life without parole.

The data about changing sentencing patterns emerged as Ohio prepares to
execute John W. Byrd Jr., a 37-year-old Cincinnati man on death row for
almost half his life.

Unless his scheduled Sept. 12 execution is overturned or delayed by a
court - or Gov. Bob Taft grants clemency after a hearing held yesterday -
Byrd will become the 3rd person to be put to death by the state of Ohio
since the death penalty was reinstated.

Life without parole was not an option when Byrd was convicted in 1983.
Ohio's version of "lock-'em-up and throw away the key," was created in
1996.

Before then, a life sentence really did not mean life. It meant murderers
who were not sent to death row upon conviction could be eligible for
release after 20 or 30 years.

Last year, 27 % of Ohio's aggravated murder convictions carried life
without parole, the highest number ever.

4 % were for death, the lowest percentage since records have been kept.
All the rest got life, meaning they could be out someday. It's a dramatic
shift from 1998, when sentences for death and life without parole were
nearly even. "Usually we've been up in the double digits with 15,
sometimes 17 a year," Reginald A. Wilkinson, director of the state prison
system, said of the inmates entering death row.

"Now the numbers are way down. If it stays that way, it's a definite
trend."

Last week, a Cuyahoga County judge sentenced Timothy Moulder to life
without parole after 1 juror held out against the death sentence. Robert
Cutler, the victim's father, was disappointed.

"With life without parole," Cutler said, "I suppose jurors, in their own
minds, can walk out of a courtroom and say, I did the right thing, I
didn't kill anybody.'"

Douglas A. Berman, an Ohio State University law professor, studies issues
surrounding capital punishment. He said: "A serious possibility of life
without parole gives juries a sense of comfort that the defendant will
never be walking the streets again. There really has been a dramatic
shift in Ohio."

Berman said the decline coincides with a "broader societal concern about
the fairness of the death penalty," including reports that DNA evidence
has been used to clear some inmates in other states.

Montgomery County Prosecutor Matt Heck Jr., the president of the state's
prosecuting attorney's association, said defense attorneys can influence
jurors by arguing that the death penalty itself is a murder.

"I think life without parole is the alternative that some jurors are
relying on to avoid facing the ultimate question: Should this criminal
get death?" Heck said.

Former State Sen. Tim Greenwood, a Toledo Republican, was the architect
of the sentencing option, creating life without parole in 1996. He says
that sentence would eliminate some of the last-minute appeals and
protests that accompany executions in Ohio.

"When these marquee death penalty cases come up, you start to hear from
people who are philosophically opposed to the death penalty, period,"
Greenwood said.

"It's the idea of capital punishment that drives people to pursue lengthy
appeals and claims that they are innocent. But if you take away the death
penalty, you cut down the appeals and you cut down the debate. There's
nobody out in the streets protesting that some guy got life without
parole 4 years ago."

The protests have begun again. Byrd's case has become a cause for Ohio
death-penalty opponents ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union
to the Roman Catholic archbishop of Cincinnati.

The case has been dragged through the court system for years. Byrd says
that another inmate, John Brewer, fatally stabbed a convenience store
clerk when the 2 pulled a 1983 robbery. Brewer, serving a life sentence,
has given several conflicting stories about the crime. Initially, he said
Byrd stabbed the clerk. Later, Brewer said he stabbed the clerk while
Byrd helped him rob the store.

Jim Tobin, associate director of the Catholic Conference of Ohio, which
represents the state's nine bishops, said that the numbers showing death
sentences are down might "suggest that it's unnecessary to execute John
Byrd and all the rest. Maybe that's where we ought to be going in Ohio."

Tobin said a sentence of life without parole would mean that Byrd's case
would not have flared to prominence.

"We would not have the ugly scenes, these last-minute courtroom
confrontations and all the last-minute expenses," Tobin said.

Meanwhile, criminologists, corrections officials, academics and
prosecutors say there could be other reasons for the decline.

Some speculate that it may be related to falling crime rates.

FBI data show the number of murders in Ohio has dropped by more than 40 %
since 1991.

Other experts suggest the number dropped because juries and judges might
be reluctant to sentence people to death because they now know executions
actually take place in Ohio.

In February 1999, Wilford Berry became the 1st person executed in Ohio
since 1963. Berry, 38, chose not to appeal his conviction for killing
Cleveland baker Charles Mitroff.

Others say it could be that there are concerns there might be innocent
people on death row.

"I think that the option of life without parole probably means fewer
death cases," said Fritz Rauschenberg, a researcher with the Ohio
Criminal Sentencing Commission.

"Someone is locked up until they die and society isn't at risk."

Greenwood said nobody foresaw in 1996 that death penalty convictions
might decline.

"There was never a big debate about it," said Greenwood, the former
senator who is now a lawyer in private practice in Toledo. "It was never
a major issue. There wasn't any controversy. At the time, it didn't seem
like a big deal at all."

(source for both: Cleveland Plain Dealer)

By Bill Cohen, Special to Stateline.org
Stateline.org
Monday, July 30, 2001

COLUMBUS-- Few states are abolishing capital punishment, but there is a move toward making
               the death penalty at least seem less gruesome. Ohio is the latest example.

               Ironically, a convicted murderer who doesn’t want to be executed is sparking
               the change, by demanding that he be killed in Ohio’s electric chair.

               Since 1993, Ohio law has given condemned inmates the choice of electrocution
               or lethal injection. John W. Byrd, Jr. wants to strike a blow against capitol
               punishment in general by forcing executioners to use the chair to execute him.

               "It’s not like taking your old family dog to the vet and putting him down quietly,"
               says Jane Perry, Byrd’s public defender attorney. " He’s willing to take that
               suffering in order to hopefully make the point that executions should not be sanitized.
               (Either way) it is the killing of another human being."

Byrd's choosing of electrocution has prompted Ohio Corrections Director Reggie Wilkinson to ask
state legislators to quickly pass a new law, pulling the plug on the electric chair. He doesn’t want to
have to oversee an electrocution that might have problems like ones in Florida, where flames shot
out of one condemned inmate’s hooded head as he was being executed and leaking blood stained
another inmate's shirt as he was being put to death.

"Some pretty nasty stuff has happened around the country, and that’s not something I want to put
our staff through," says Wilkinson. "It’s stressful on me (too)."

While Ohio considers scrapping its electric chair after 315 electrocutions, seven other states have
already done it: Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey, South Dakota, Louisiana, and Indiana.
Those states, and several others, now use lethal injections exclusively.

Debates over abolishing capitol punishment in general are often clearly defined. Not so with debates
over changing the method of capitol punishment. The Ohio debate includes some "strange political
bedfellows."

State Senator Lou Blessing, a death penalty supporter, doesn’t want to give death row inmates a
chance to use the electric chair as a way to argue against all capitol punishment, so he backs the
plan to unplug the chair. He wants to make sure executions continue to be palatable to the public.

"Perhaps we should get rid of the electric chair. At least then, we could retain the death penalty," he
reasons.

But a fellow Republican Senator and death penalty backer, Scott Oelslager, wants to keep the chair
to show Ohio has a law and order attitude. "That chair stands as a symbol that Ohio will not tolerate
certain types of crimes," he says.

Non-legislator Michael Manley also wants to keep the electric chair, but for a totally opposite
reason. Manley is an activist against the death penalty in general, and, like inmate Byrd, he believes
moving toward only lethal injections is a scheme to sugarcoat executions. "I’m afraid it is an effort to
sanitize it, making it seem as if it’s painless. It is still killing," Manley says.

If Ohio legislators eventually vote on the proposed moratorium on electrocutions, it will be put
opponents of capitol punishment in a bind. "It would probably be a very difficult vote for me," says
Senator Mark Mallory. "The lethal injection method is less cruel and inhumane, but putting someone
to death (in any way) is cruel and unusual punishment."

The plan to unplug Ohio’s electric chair now has backing from key players, including death penalty
backers such as Governor Bob Taft and Attorney General Betty Montgomery.

But state legislators will have to act quickly if they want to block John Byrd from choosing death by
electric chair.

Byrd is scheduled to be executed on September 12. Ohio legislators are now on summer vacation,
and they are not scheduled to return to work until September 11. 

John W. Byrd Jr. is fighting for his life. Sent to Ohio's Death Row for a 1983 murder he says he
didn't commit, Byrd is next in line to sit in the state's electric chair. Now, Byrd's last, best hope for
escaping the ultimate irrevocable punishment is an affidavit from another man who says he is the real
killer.

Last August, 6 federal judges on the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dissented from the majority
and supported a petition for rehearing Byrd's case.

The facts laid out starkly and precisely by Judge Nathaniel R. Jones in the dissent underscore the
grave injustice of the pending execution of John Byrd: "No eyewitness or other physical evidence
identifies the particular robbers responsible for the murder, and the only evidence distinguishing the
assailants are the representations of a jailhouse `snitch.'

After a trial featuring the snitch's testimony in which the jury inaccurately believed the snitch did not
have any jail time or other criminal punishment pending, the person identified by the snitch is found
guilty and sentenced to death. The other 2 perpetrators receive life sentences."

Ronald Armstead, the "snitch," was freed from prison soon after his ludicrous testimony helped send
Byrd to death row. Last week's release of a nearly 13-year-old affidavit, in which one of the men
serving a life term actually confessed to the killing, should come as no surprise to Columbus Alive
readers.

Public Defender David A. Bodiker told Alive that Armstead, who now floats between San Diego
and Las Vegas working as a cook among other things, had previously told authorities another
inmate, Billy Joe Sowell, allegedly confessed to him about a killing as well.

The fortuitous Armstead was facing up to 15 years in prison for a parole violation after assaulting a
nurse and prison guard with a hospital bed crank, when murderers seemed to select him at random
to confess for death row crimes. Armstead's testimony, the only direct evidence against Byrd,
allowed Armstead to conveniently escape re-incarceration.

During Byrd's trial, Armstead, the former junkie, sex offender and robber, was portrayed as a model
citizen whose only motive was to tell the truth in the slaying of Monte Tewksbury, a Cincinnati
convenience store clerk. Unbelievably, Armstead, who is black, somehow miraculously managed to
win the confidence of Byrd, a white 19-year-old, in the highly racially polarized atmosphere of the
Hamilton County Jail. Judge Jones saw it a little differently: "The government led the jury to believe
that jailhouse snitch Ronald Armstead faced an eminent release from prison, and therefore had no
reason to fabricate testimony against Byrd. Indeed, pursuant to government questioning, Armstead
repeatedly told the jury that he had `no time pending.'" Armstead lied; and the prosecutor vouched
for him.

"Nevertheless, after his [Armstead's] testimony, the prosecutor's office informed the state parole
board that it did not object to an early release and shortly thereafter, Armstead went home. The
government knew the truth, and so did Armstead. The jury did not," Jones succinctly explained. The
appeals court's dissent also points out, "Without any evidentiary predicate, the prosecutor theorized
on topics as diverse as the location of the murder weapon, the whereabouts of other unrecovered
key evidence.

"The prosecutor did this, in part, because the circumstantial evidence pointed to John Brewer, who
has now sworn twice that he killed Tewksbury. Minus the snitch, Byrd would have been sentenced
to life in prison for being present at the murder scene, rather than death for committing the murder.
Byrd has steadfastly claimed that he was drunk and on downers in the robbery van at the time of the
crime and never killed anybody. Bodiker maintains that the nature of death penalty cases and the
post-conviction process left no appropriate legal place for Brewer's confession to be admitted. If a
majority of the Sixth Circuit bench had supported a rehearing, new evidence may well have come
forward.

Bodiker describes Byrd's original trial attorney's behavior as "atrocious." The public defender rightly
notes that there was a "tremendous amount of prosecutory misconduct" at the original trial, a fact not
lost on the six dissenting judges.

"This case also raises whether a capital defendant has received constitutionally effective
representation when his counsel fails to challenge prejudicial prosecutory misconduct," the dissent
reads. "In the face of...wrongful vouching for Armstead's credibility, and speculation as to facts not in
evidence, there cannot be a reasonable norm of capital defense practice that suggests it is
strategically appropriate to remain mute in the face of such an assault on the defendant's right to a fair
trial," the dissenters correctly conclude.

Perhaps one of the reasons the Brewer affidavit appeared so late in the Byrd proceeding is the
outrageous, but often overlooked, incompetence and internal mismanagement in the public
defender's office in the mid-1990s. (See the January 1995 Columbus Free Press story "Death row
be not proud.")

The bizarre nature of the scandal can be found in the report by Highway Patrol Trooper Mark
Rogols. Former Ohio Public Defender Death Row Investigative Supervisor Chester "Briss" Craig
listed the names of 15 Death Row inmates who had been denied due process as a result of botched
and forged investigations by investigators for the public defender's office. Byrd's name was
prominent on that list.

The Rogol's report substantially documents this dirty little secret of Ohio's Death Row. Attorney
General Betty Montgomery attacked the re-organized and more effective public defender's office for
releasing the Brewer affidavit. If she is truly concerned with justice, she would have welcomed the
evidence and demanded a new trial for Byrd. Siding with snitches, encouraging cover-ups and
railroading people into the death chamber cannot be tolerated.

(source: Columbus Alive)

                  CINCINNATI — Death penalty
                  opponents rallied Tuesday for Ohio
                  death row inmate John W. Byrd Jr.,
                  saying his life should be spared because
                  he is innocent of the 1983 slaying of a
                  convenience store clerk.
                  “He’s innocent. Another man has
                  confessed to the murder,” said Mike
                  Shryock, a board member of Justice
                  Watch, a Cincinnati organization that
                  lobbies for humane treatment of
                  prisoners.
                  State public defenders representing
                  Byrd, 37, say they hope to hear within
                  days whether the Ohio Supreme Court
                  will give them the opportunity to argue
                  that another man killed clerk Monte
                  Tewksbury.
                  The Ohio attorney general, meanwhile,
                  is waiting to hear whether the Supreme
                  Court will set a date this year for
                  executing Byrd, who has been on death
                  row since 1983.
                  Death penalty opponents are rallying to
                  the causes of Byrd and fellow prisoner
                  Jay Scott, who is to be executed April
                  17 for the May 1983 killing of
                  Cleveland delicatessen owner Vinnie
                  Prince, 74.
                  Lawyers for Scott argue that he is
                  mentally unstable and incompetent to
                  be executed.
                  Either execution would be Ohio’s first since 1963 to be carried out against the
                  condemned man’s will. Wilford Berry, executed by injection in February 1999,
                  dropped his appeals and asked to be put to death.
                  Byrd’s lawyers and his mother and sister argue that the courts should accept the
                  1989 admission of John Brewer that he killed Tewksbury, 40. Brewer and Byrd
                  were companions in the store holdup during which the clerk was killed, according
                  to testimony.
                  “They had Johnny Brewer’s footprint on the (store) counter,” Kim Hamer, 33,
                  Byrd’s sister, said at a Cincinnati rally Tuesday in his behalf outside the Hamilton
                  County Courthouse. “Johnny Brewer’s clothing was covered with blood.”
                  Hamer, among about 40 people who stood with anti-death penalty signs in gusting
                  winds at the Cincinnati rally, said she saw her brother the night of the slaying. She
                  said he was too drunk to have killed anyone.
                  There was no physical evidence linking Byrd to the slaying, his defenders and
                  family argue.
                  Prosecutors say a series of state and federal courts have reviewed Byrd’s various
                  ap-peals and upheld his conviction and sentence.
                  The prosecutors question why Byrd’s defenders just now are coming forth with
                  Brewer’s 1989 admission.
                  This is the first time since the courts rejected Byrd’s initial appeals that there has
                  been an appropriate opportunity to raise Brewer’s statement in Byrd’s defense,
                  state public defender David Bodiker said.

                      Death Row drama flared in the Short North
                      last night as John W. Byrd Jr.'s supporters
                      confronted a candlelight march led by the
                      widow of the man Byrd was convicted of
                      killing 18 years ago.

                      Byrd, 37, is scheduled to die Sept. 12 for
                      the stabbing death of Monte Tewksbury, a
                      Cincinnati convenience-store clerk, during a
                      robbery on April 17, 1983.

                      With Byrd's execution approaching, his case
                      is heating up, especially in light of Ohio
                      Public Defender David Bodiker's recent
                      claim that Byrd is innocent and that another
                      man, John Brewer, committed the crime. So
                      far, that argument has been rejected by the
                      courts.

                      Inside Little Brothers, a nightclub at 1100 N.
                      High St., Byrd's backers -- including his
                      mother and sister -- were among about 100
                      people listening to the Bob Taft Death House
                      Blues and to other protest songs and
                      speakers at a benefit concert to help pay for
                      Bryd's defense.

                      "Unless the voters make 'em lose, we've all
                      got the Bob Taft Death House Blues,'' sang
                      co-composer Ed Foreman.

                      Outside the club, Sharon Tewksbury, the
                      victim's widow, and state Treasurer Joseph
                      T. Deters, a former Hamilton County
                      prosecutor and candidate for attorney
                      general, were leading a candlelight march.

                      As the marchers approached the nightclub,
                      about a dozen people streamed out. Byrd's
                      family members were not among them.

                      Several Byrd supporters were shouting. One
                      carried a megaphone shouting, "John Byrd
                      did not kill the store clerk'' and "Execution is
                      not the solution.''

                      As the two groups on opposite sides of the
                      death penalty came together, one of the
                      nightclub patrons blew out a candle. Another
                      threw a drink on one of the marchers.

                      As TV cameras rolled, the marchers
                      retreated to a nearby office.

                      A few minutes later, behind locked doors,
                      Mrs. Tewksbury tearfully read statement she
                      had intended to give on the street.

                      "I have come to deal with Monte's death, but
                      not his murder,'' she said. "It is the battle of
                      good over evil.''

                      Mrs. Tewksbury said she and her children
                      are weary after 18 years of contesting Byrd's
                      legal arguments.

                      "We are tired,'' she said. "We are so tired.
                      We are the only voices left for Monte
                      Tewksbury. The right man is on Death Row.
                      It's time for this to be over.''

                      Deters, an assistant prosecutor assigned to
                      the Byrd case fresh out of law school, and
                      now a zealous death-penalty advocate,
                      lashed out at Byrd's supporters.

                      "That bunch of trash, all liquored up,
                      screaming obscenities at her, that's the other
                      side.''

                      Earlier in the evening, Byrd's sister, Kim
                      Hamer, talked about her belief in her
                      brother's innocence.

                      "My brother is not a killer,'' she said. "Living
                      with this for 18 years, not knowing whether
                      your brother is going to live or die, is pure
                      torture.''

                      Byrd came within a few hours of being
                      executed on March 19, 1994, before the
                      courts intervened.

                      Mary Ray, Byrd's mother, is convinced her
                      son will be freed.

                      "My John's coming home,'' she said.

                      A scheduled telephone call to the concert
                      from Byrd at the Mansfield Correctional
                      Institution was vetoed by prison officials.

                      However, Byrd sent a letter to Bob Fitrakis
                      of the Free Press, a sponsor of the benefit.

                      "These parasites want me dead, brother,''
                      Byrd wrote. "If something doesn't break
                      soon, I will be murdered come Sept. 12. I
                      realize this and am not operating under any
                      false illusion.''

     "The atmosphere of the death house was smothering, suffocating, as if there was a
     shortage of oxygen. Everybody moved as if in slow motion. Their every move seeming
     to have been thoroughly rehearsed, learned, robot-like professionalism, as now, for the
     first time in over 30 years, they, the elite death squad, had been called upon to commit
     murder in the state of Ohio. In some of these eyes I saw fear, concern, and
     revulsion--in others, sadistic glee."

     These were almost the last thoughts of John Byrd Jr., as he prepared to die in Ohio's
     electric chair on March 14, 1994. But, after narrowly escaping death that night, Byrd
     lived another day--another six years and counting--and was able to recall in the written
     statement above what it was like to come face-to-face with his executioners.

     Byrd came within 30 minutes of being the first man executed in Ohio since 1963. He
     lost that historic distinction last year when a well-documented mentally ill and
     brain-damaged prisoner, Wilford Berry, refused to legally defend himself and entered
     infamy as the "Volunteer."

     Although Byrd was granted a last-minute reprieve by the U.S. Supreme Court, when it
     upheld his "stay of execution" the evening he was to die, Byrd is likely to be put to
     death within the next few months. He's run out of appeals.

     Columbus Alive's extensive review of court documents indicates that Byrd may die
     because of the possibly perjured testimony of a jailhouse snitch, condoned by
     overzealous Hamilton County prosecutors. Arrested with two co-defendants on
     robbery and murder charges, Byrd was the only one of the three accomplices to
     receive the death penalty, despite the state's failure to provide any forensic evidence
     linking Byrd to the murder victim.

     Justice is supposed to be meted out evenly and equitably. But as Byrd's case illustrates,
     justice is too often a game of chance, with steep odds favoring the dealers.

     The losers pay with their lives.

     The confession

     On the evening of April 17, 1983, Cincinnati King Kwik convenience store clerk
     Monte Tewksbury was stabbed once in the side during a robbery. He called his wife
     and described the robbers as two masked men; he later died in a local emergency
     room.

     In the early morning hours of April 18, 19-year-old John Byrd was arrested along with
     John Brewer and William Woodall, two ex-felons, in a construction van that contained
     Tewksbury's possessions.

     The evidence seized from the van placed Brewer at the murder scene. Under Brewer's
     passenger seat was Tewksbury's wife's gasoline credit card. Brewer had in his
     possession a $20 bill, two $10 bills, four $5 bills, 29 $1 bills and a large quantity of
     change matching the suspected contents of the King Kwik cash register. Detectives
     would later find Brewer's shoeprint on the countertop of a store robbed that night.

     Sitting in the van next to Brewer was Byrd, with $1.47 in his pocket and no credit
     cards.

     A short time after the King Kwik robbery, two masked men robbed a nearby
     U-Totem store. A customer, Dennis Nitz, told the police that one of the robbers had a
     knife and was wearing tan pants and a long-sleeved shirt. Since Byrd was wearing blue
     pants and a shirt with cut-off sleeves, prosecutors would later argue that the witness
     was mistaken about the pants' color and that Byrd had cut off his sleeves to hide the
     blood evidence they couldn't find on him.

     The arresting officer noted that while there was no blood on Byrd, there appeared to
     be fresh blood on the driver's seat where Woodall sat. The Bowie knife purportedly
     used to stab Tewksbury never materialized; however, a work knife with no blood
     evidence on it was found in the van.

     Byrd has steadfastly maintained that he didn't kill Tewksbury. He's claimed all along
     that when he woke up in the Cincinnati Correctional Institute the next day, he thought
     he was there for alcohol-related charges after a night of drinking, smoking pot and
     doing Quaaludes, according to Richard J. Vickers, his post-conviction attorney
     supplied by the Ohio Public Defender's office. Even after repeated questioning, neither
     Byrd nor his co-defendants made any statements to the police admitting the slaying of
     the store clerk.

     Police and prosecutors knew it would be difficult to convict Byrd on a capital murder
     indictment without any direct evidence linking him to the killing. Not all murderers are
     equal under the law. Only the most heinous--cold-blooded, pre-meditated--receive
     capital indictments, with the possibility of receiving a death sentence. But amidst
     mounting public pressure and sympathetic media portrayals of the victim, who left a
     widow and three children, it was almost certain that one of the three accomplices
     would have to die.

     Brewer and Woodall, each tried separately, never received a capital murder
     indictment. Both were eventually convicted by a jury of aggravated murder, but
     escaped the death chamber and remain in prison.

     Events that transpired in the jailhouse and at Byrd's grand jury indictment would
     transform Byrd into the prosecution's version of the remorseless killer, despite the lack
     of an eyewitness tying him to the murder, fingerprints or other forensic evidence at the
     scene, or blood on an alleged murder weapon.

     The grand jury that convened to issue indictments in the Tewksbury slaying initially
     heard testimony that Byrd was the killer from a highly suspect source, according to
     Vickers. Brewer's sister claimed that her brother told her that Byrd did it.

     The state later turned to an even more suspect source in order to convict Byrd at trial
     on capital murder charges--well-known jailhouse informant Ronald Armstead.

     Armstead wrote the prosecutors claiming that Brewer, Woodall and Byrd were openly
     bragging about killing Tewksbury. He claimed that approximately three weeks after the
     robbery, Byrd supposedly confessed the cold-blooded nature of the murder to
     Armstead while the two of them watched a PM Magazine segment featuring footage of
     the singing Tewksbury family.

     Conveniently, the confession during the show allowed prosecutors to later show the
     emotionally wrenching footage of the happily singing family at trial.

     It's Armstead's key testimony--portraying Byrd as a calculated, cold-blooded
     killer--that allowed prosecutors to win a death-penalty conviction. In dramatic
     testimony, a weeping Armstead told the jury that Byrd confided in him that he killed
     Tewksbury. "Fuck him [Tewksbury], he deserved to die," Armstead swore Byrd said.

     The Cincinnati Enquirer reported at the time that Armstead's testimony was the most
     dramatic of Byrd's trial. The paper wrote, "Observers in the packed courtroom
     appeared captivated by Armstead and a stunned silence fell over the courtroom."

     Daniel "Woody" Breyer, a Hamilton County prosecutor who, with Carl Vollman, tried
     the Byrd case, concurred. "I've seen it all and I've never seen a courthouse so intent, so
     rapt, so quiet, so involved," Breyer told Columbus Alive. "Tears were coming down
     [Armstead's] cheeks. He pointed at Byrd, and you could hear a pin drop."

     The snitch

     But to believe Armstead's testimony, one has to accept that three white guys suspected
     of murder and described by defense attorney Richard J. Vickers as "rednecks," refused
     to talk to the police but suddenly confessed to Armstead and his fellow black inmates
     Virgil Jordan and Marvin Randolph in jail. Ronald Armstead, who wept during his
     testimony, claimed John Byrd confessed to him because he "knew a lot about the law"
     and that "the white boys bared their souls" to him.

     Vickers doesn't buy the story that the white guys confided to three black guys in jail,
     two of them known snitches. He sees that as an absurd scenario. "It's 1983 in Hamilton
     County. My client's a redneck in jail. Is he going to seek out three black cons and
     confess a murder to them that he steadfastly denied to everybody else?" Vickers said.
     "As Virgil Jordan, the self-described `King of the Snitches' put it, you shouldn't put
     frogs with snakes. They were schooled. They knew just enough facts to make
     themselves snitches."

     As Vickers explained it to Columbus Alive, the Hamilton County prosecutors did not
     have a capital murder case against Byrd until Armstead stepped forward: "Armstead's
     confession is the only direct evidence they had linking Byrd to the murder. It's the only
     part the jury asked to re-hear in their deliberations. Forty-five minutes later, they found
     Byrd guilty on all charges including specifications for the death penalty."

     According to Vickers, Armstead had also offered virtually the same dramatic testimony
     at supposed accomplice John Brewer's earlier trial. In that case, Brewer was the killer
     instead of Byrd.

     Byrd's final appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit was
     handed down on April 6. Both the two-judge majority and the blistering dissent
     focused on Armstead's testimony.

     The majority opinion reads: "The main evidence introduced at trial to prove that
     Petitioner [Byrd] was the principal offender, i.e., the individual who actually stabbed
     and murdered Monte [Tewksbury], came from Ronald Armstead." The court also
     conceded, "All agree that Armstead's testimony was vitally important to the jury's
     determination."

     After a 10-day trial that ended on August 12, 1983, the jury had one request for the
     court: could they have the Armstead testimony read back to them. Over an objection
     from Byrd's attorney, the court reporter read the entirety of Armstead's dramatic and
     flamboyant testimony to the jury in open court. Part of what the jury heard was, "And
     he said, `Yeah, I killed him, I killed him, you know, because he was in my
     motherfucking way, fuck him.' You know, that's the whole attitude they took the whole
     time they were there, they don't care, you know. He [Byrd] don't care. [Pointing at
     Byrd.]"

     The jury was never informed of the state's star witness' dubious past. While Byrd's trial
     attorneys managed to get into the record that Armstead had been convicted of a felony
     within the last 10 years, the jury was not aware that Armstead was in jail on a parole
     violation and was facing a return to state prison for a three- to 15-year stay.

     Hamilton County prosecutors failed to disclose Armstead's parole violation and
     pending return to prison as well as his extensive criminal past. Nor did prosecutors
     disclose Armstead's prison intake screening from 1981, which showed he "possesses
     below average intelligence and has achieved academically around the third grade."

     In Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors must turn over
     exculpatory evidence or evidence that could have been used to impeach the state's star
     witness. But the prosecution had in its possession a three-page parole report that it
     never turned over in which Armstead admitted to the prison psychologist that "he has
     been addicted to heroin and Talwin for some 10 years."

     By withholding this information from the defendant, the prosecutors prohibited Byrd's
     attorneys from casting doubt on Armstead's vital testimony. Even worse, when asked if
     "any charges" were pending against him, Armstead testified, "I don't have no time
     pending or nothing else pending.... I don't have no more cases pending and I come to
     testify against [Byrd] because he was wrong."

     In the April 2000 Sixth Circuit Court ruling, one judge vigorously dissented against the
     two-judge majority, arguing that Byrd should have a new hearing. Judge Nathaniel R.
     Jones wrote in his dissent, "At best, these [Armstead's] statements were misleading and
     left the jury with a material mis-impression of fact. At worst, these statements were
     patently false, which the prosecution knew, or should have known." Jones pointedly
     noted that "`Any' [charges] means `any.'"

     The evidence

     Since John Byrd's original trial, other records withheld from his attorneys have
     surfaced. These documents demonstrate that the Hamilton County Prosecutor's office
     was adamantly opposed to Ronald Armstead's parole, and sought to have him returned
     to prison prior to his testimony against Byrd.

     An April 29, 1981, letter from Simon L. Leis Jr., Hamilton County prosecuting
     attorney to the Ohio Parole Board, stated, "Please be advised that this office strongly
     opposes any type of furlough, parole or release of defendant Ronald Armstead, aka
     Ronald Scott, who was committed to your institution a little less than five months ago
     under a sentence of not less than three years no more 15 years for the crime of
     felonious assault and trafficking in drugs." Leis pointed out that while incarcerated,
     Armstead had attempted to escape and attacked both a guard and a nurse "with a
     metal bed crank."

     Leis continued, "We have in the person of the defendant a person who has gone out
     and committed two prior escapes for which he was convicted and the third time he was
     convicted of felonious assault and the escape charge was dropped." Leis wrote the
     Adult Parole Board again in 1982 reiterating the county's position that Armstead should
     not be paroled.

     Vickers suggests that, instead of attacking prison personnel with metal bed cranks,
     Armstead found an easier way out of prison--as a star witness for the prosecutor's
     office.

     After Armstead's testimony, the Hamilton County prosecutors had a sudden and
     decisive change of heart and no longer opposed his parole. Daniel Breyer, one of the
     prosecutors who tried the Byrd case, wrote a letter to the parole board recommending
     Armstead's release, citing his cooperation in Byrd's conviction.

     Breyer told Alive that his letter was motivated simply out of concern for Armstead's
     safety. Armstead contacted the prosecutor and said he was being roughed up in prison
     because he was a known snitch. "I was worried about Armstead being attacked,"
     Breyer said in an interview this week.

     Breyer emphatically denies that Armstead's testimony in the Byrd case was in exchange
     for early release from prison. "There was no deal," Breyer said. "They'll never prove it.
     It never happened...It's a fabrication to save Byrd."

     "Armstead was returned to prison [after his testimony]," Breyer continued. "If there
     was a deal, Armstead wouldn't have been returned to prison and I wouldn't have had
     to write the letter."

     Appeals court Judge Jones' dissent argues that Byrd should be allowed to investigate
     why Armstead, with his pending return to prison, was chosen to testify instead of two
     other inmates who contacted the prosecutor's office. The other two inmates have
     subsequently recanted their stories and denied that Byrd ever confessed to them. They
     admitted to concocting the story with Armstead in hopes of getting special treatment in
     jail.

     Vickers said that Armstead's friends, Virgil Jordan and Marvin Randolph, both
     independently supplied affidavits stating that the whole story about the confession was
     fabricated. "They felt by snitching it would help them get released from jail. In
     Armstead's case, it worked, since the parole board reversed itself and refused to send
     him back to prison, which they initially had planned. Both Randolph and Jordan
     separately claimed that they knew how to play the snitch game--to write the prosecutor
     and say that they had `personal knowledge' of a crime," Vickers explained.

     Byrd is in a classic Catch-22, according to Vickers, with the prosecution vouching for
     the snitch Armstead while telling the court not to believe the two other inmates who
     originally backed Armstead but now have signed affidavits saying the witness perjured
     himself. The prosecutor's felon is always the honest felon, according to Vickers.

     The majority in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals concurred. The two judges pointed
     out that there are actually statements and affidavits as of April from four inmates
     alleging that Armstead lied, but they are to be disregarded. "Elwood Jones, Marvin
     Randolph, Robert Jones and Thomas Sargent are all convicted felons, whose credibility
     is thereby diminished," the court wrote. The court dismissed their affidavits as "merely
     impeaching in nature"--of use only to call into question the testimony of Armstead, the
     state's star witness and also a felon.

     "There's a body of case law that says if we can't prove the prosecutor knew or should
     have known that Armstead perjured himself, then we have no right to a hearing or to
     depose the prosecutor on the matter," Vickers explained. "This is skewed logic. What
     prosecutor is going to sign an affidavit swearing that they suborned perjury so we can
     depose them and discover their documents? It's never going to happen. We'll never
     have a chance to prove our claims. There's enough in the records to suggest that
     Armstead was a lying prevaricator simply trying to save his own skin."

     Vickers argues that one of Byrd's prosecutors, Daniel Breyer, was in the enviable
     position of having his brother, William Breyer, as the chief appellate counsel in
     Hamilton County. "The court findings that all the subsequent appeals courts have relied
     on were written and signed by Bill Breyer, who had a stake in protecting his office and
     his brother's reputation," Vickers offered. "It's the same finding that's been relied on by
     every appeals court to deny Byrd judicial relief, to deny him a hearing, to deny him the
     prosecutor's files, to deny him the ability to impeach the testimony of a known criminal
     and snitch."

     So dependent were the prosecutors upon Armstead's evidence linking Byrd to the
     murder that they "vouched" for his credibility, Vickers contends.

     According to court records, during closing arguments one of the prosecutors stated,
     "[Armstead] looked Byrd right in the face. He looked me in the face. He looked you in
     the face, Armstead did, he looked the defense attorney in the face and he said, `What
     the man did was wrong. He killed that man for no reason.' I'm not sure there's honor
     among thieves, but I believe Armstead when he took that stand, and I believe you did,
     too."

     The prosecutor's closing argument continued, "Armstead said that he was told by Byrd
     that Byrd stabbed Monte Tewksbury. I haven't heard any evidence to contradict that. I
     have seen a lot of circumstantial evidence to support that. I've heard no evidence,
     direct or circumstantial, to contradict what Armstead said. I believe him, and I submit
     that you should believe him."

     Vickers insisted, "Any time you have the representative of the state telling the jury a
     witness is telling the truth, it makes