Supreme Court blocks Ohio execution

[deadparrot]

Source: Associated Press

LUCASVILLE, Ohio - The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution of a man who had been scheduled to die Tuesday for killing a woman in 1991 and scattering her remains across two states.

Inmate Kenneth Biros — and the family of the victim, Tami Engstrom — had waited for the decision more than six hours past his 10 a.m. scheduled execution time at Ohio's death house.

The justices' one-sentence decision agreed with two lower courts that delayed the execution so he could continue arguing that Ohio's method of lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused earlier Tuesday to allow a hearing before the full court to consider the state's appeal.

The execution team had been waiting while the high court debated, and was ready to administer the lethal injection if the court granted the state's request to proceed with the execution.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070320/ap_on_re_us/ohio_death_penalty

[liberalnurse]

1. I hope inmate

Kenneth Biros sweat bullets and dirtied his britches today. I hope he is too nervous and stressed out to sleep.

Yes, indeed I do.

[razors edge]

2. Bullshit.

Carry out the sentence or concede that no execution will ever be declared to be humane.

It is cruel and unusual to be toying with his departure date.

We now torture people to death for information they do not have.

Don't it make you proudern shit to be an umerkin.

We are dysfunctional to the point of no return.

[seriousstan]

3. Background....

Biros, 48, acknowledged that he killed Engstrom, 22, but said he did it during a drunken rage.

They met after work in 1991 at a tavern in Masury in northeast Ohio. Police believed she fled his advances and fell or was struck or strangled when Biros tried to quiet her.

A search based on Biros' information led to body parts near Masury and in adjacent areas in northwest Pennsylvania. Her head, right breast and right leg had been severed, intestines were found in a swampy area in Ohio, a leg was broken over a railroad track, the torso was found in a rural area of Pennsylvania and part of a liver was found in Biros' car.