While an Ohio man was being executed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville for locking 24 year old Carol Lutz in the trunk of her car and burning her alive, another Ohio man's execution date was being set.
The Ohio Supreme Court has set a new date for the execution of Kenneth Biros for December 8, 2009. Biros killed 22 year old Tami Engstrom in 1991 after he offered to drive her home from a bar and then scattered her body parts in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Biros already had an execution date set back a few years ago, but got cancelled during a state ban on executions. Since then, he has filed his own lawsuit challenging the state's lethal injection system. Trumbull County prosecutor, Dennis Watkins says, "It is ironic that Kenneth Biros is alleging that it's cruel and unusual to pinch him; to give him a shot when he tortured Tami for an endless period of time, when he inflicted 91 separate injuries before he killed her." But the prosecutor says he is confident this will be the last execution date set. "When you look at the scheme of things, you look at the other people who've been executed in Ohio, I think we are at that point now," says Watkins.
And the family says they've waited long enough.
Tami's sister Debi says, "The only way I can describe it to somebody not in our circle is like battling cancer. It goes away and comes back. It goes away and comes back, and everytime it comes back it gets worse, so we're just going to keep our fingers crossed, keep praying."
Now she hopes this execution will bring a sense of closure to her and her family. They plan to make the trip to watch Biros get put to death. "We will be there with bells and whistles. I need to look him in the eye. I'm gonna talk to him through my eyes, and I think he'll know what I'm saying," says Debi Heiss, Tami's sister. At that time, Biros will be given a chance to speak to them. There's nothing he could say. There's nothing he could do. He stood up and tried to apologize to my family at the end of the trial and I just wanted to spit in his face. How dare you, and how dare him to do what he's been doing these last 20 years. He needs to take it like a man," says Heiss.
Ohio has put 29 men to death since it reinstated the death penalty in 1999.
