Parole board rejects clemency for killer-scheduled to be executed Jan. 7 (Ohio)

[The Straight Story]

Parole board rejects clemency for killer
Death Row inmate's fate up to governor

Vernon Smith is scheduled to be executed Jan. 7 for shooting to death a Toledo store owner in 1993.

A Toledo man who fatally shot a store owner during a 1993 robbery deserves to be put to death for his crimes, the Ohio Parole Board ruled in a split decision yesterday.

The board ruled 5-2 that Vernon Smith, who changed his name in prison to Abdullah Sharif Kaazim Mahdi, does not deserve clemency.

Unless Gov. Ted Strickland rejects the board's recommendation, Smith will be the second Ohioan put to death under the state's new single-drug capital punishment regimen. The 37-year-old is scheduled to be executed Jan. 7.

Smith, then 21, robbed a Toledo convenience store with two accomplices in May 1993. Although store owner Sohail Darwish, a 28-year-old immigrant and father, complied with Smith's orders to empty the cash register and his own wallet, Smith shot him in the chest.

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[Cirque du So-What]

1. Ohio is on a roll

Still, I stand foursquare against capital punishment. Today I cite studies finding that the financial costs of a death penalty case, carried to completion, exceed the total costs of a lifetime of incarceration.

[discocrisco01]

2. Texas

Well, I guess Ohio wants to become like Texas.