Steven Howard Oken, Executed In Maryland
Bill Schenley
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50607-2004Jun17.html
Steven Howard Oken, the Maryland inmate whom a prosecutor
once called a "poster boy" for capital punishment, was put
to death by injection last night for the murder of a young
Baltimore County college student and newlywed nearly a
generation ago.
A trio of chemicals -- color-coded red, green and blue by a
team of hidden executioners -- was pumped into Oken's veins
starting at 9:09 p.m. Within minutes, they rendered him
unconscious, paralyzed his lungs and, finally, stopped his
heart. Witnesses said there were no complications. It was
the first capital sentence carried out by the state since
1998 and came only after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a
stay of execution late Wednesday.
Witnessing the moment inside the old Maryland penitentiary
in downtown Baltimore were not just Dawn Marie Garvin's
husband and mother but relatives of the two other women he
sexually assaulted and fatally shot during a two-week
rampage from Maryland to Maine in November 1987.
Among the witnesses was Oken's former wife, Phyllis Hirt
Ryan, whose sister was killed by Oken. "After 17 years of
torture, her nemesis is gone," said her husband, Mark Ryan.
"She wanted to see justice done for her fallen sister."
Outside the prison, in the shadows of its medieval-looking
walls and turrets, demonstrators and counter-demonstrators
gathered for hours, some hoisting posters, some holding
candles in a scene alternately raucous and somber. At the
center of the crowd of death penalty supporters stood
Garvin's father and brother.
"I feel good right now. I feel very good right now," said
her father, Fred Romano Sr., who had waited through years of
legal appeals for Oken to die. "I thought for a while he
would outlive me."
After the execution, Romano said he was "thinking about
going on with my life." For one thing, he said, he would
visit his daughter's grave. "I'm going to buy my daughter a
beautiful bouquet. I'm going to tell her I love her, I miss
her."
David and Davida Oken did not attend their son's execution.
They had maintained as tireless a campaign to save him as
the Romanos had to see him put to death.
With the window rapidly closing on his life, the 42-year-old
Oken had spent the day meeting with a rabbi, his parents and
sister and his attorneys, whose final efforts to find other
legal issues to save their client were rebuffed by three
federal courts. The Supreme Court refused another petition
in which the prisoner contended he had suffered from
ineffective representation at his 1991 trial. His lawyers
learned just 19 minutes before the execution was scheduled
to begin that their final appeal would not be heard.
At 5:08 p.m., Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s office faxed the
defense a three-paragraph statement announcing that the
governor had denied a request to partially commute Oken's
capital sentence to life without parole.
Ehrlich (R), a strong supporter of the death penalty,
repeatedly had pledged since taking office that he would
carefully review any case that came before him. This was his
first opportunity to do so, and Ehrlich wrote that he had
employed "a deliberative process," examining all the facts
and judicial opinions, and "as thoughtful decision making as
I am able to summon in this so tragic matter."
In an interview earlier in the day, Ehrlich said he was not
troubled by the weight of the decision. "That's why I get
paid," he said. "Executives make decisions. If you have
difficulty making tough decisions, maybe you shouldn't be an
executive. It's part of the job."
Oken faced the death penalty for Garvin's slaying. He
received two terms of life without parole for his other
crimes -- the killing in Maryland of his sister-in-law,
Patricia Hirt, and the slaying of Lori Ward, a young motel
clerk in Maine whom he chanced upon while fleeing up the
coast. By prior agreement between the states, had Ehrlich
granted clemency to any degree, Oken would have been
transferred to Maine and served the rest of his life behind
bars there.
The governor's conclusion, though, was no surprise: "It is
my decision not to override the judicial determinations of
the sentence of death imposed upon Steven Oken." In a
separate statement, he said, "My sympathies tonight lie with
the families of all those involved in these heinous crimes."
The various groups that have rallied around Oken, despite
the details of the murders and his undisputed guilt,
lamented Ehrlich's refusal to intervene. "That would have
been the humane thing to do and would have avoided the media
circus" of the past week, said Cathy Knepper, Amnesty
International's coordinator for abolition of the death
penalty in Maryland. "I'm thinking of the Romano and Oken
families. This was all unnecessary, and I can't imagine what
it's put these two families through. Because he clearly was
never going to get out."
But after more than a decade of court appeals, lead defense
attorney Fred Bennett said his client was "ready to die."
Before being transported across the street from the Supermax
prison, where officials recently moved him from death row to
solitary confinement, Oken composed a two-page letter to
Ehrlich expressing his contrition.
Seventeen years ago, Oken was a college dropout working at
his parents' pharmacy near Johns Hopkins Hospital in
Baltimore and watching as his marriage fell apart. He'd been
drinking heavily, stealing antidepressants and other drugs
from the pharmacy shelves and generally spiraling downward.
In court, he initially claimed he could not remember what
had happened the night Garvin was killed -- an amnesia he
blamed on the booze, pills and a "sexual sadism" that he
could not control. Psychiatrists who testified for him after
he recovered his memory late in the trial provided horrific
details of what he said he did to Garvin after he approached
her as she walked her dog and persuaded her to let him use
her phone.
Garvin's father discovered her body in her White Marsh
apartment, a nightmarish scene that haunted him for years.
"You are a very evil and dangerous man," declared Baltimore
County Circuit Judge James T. Smith Jr. at the conclusion of
Oken's trial in 1991. His death penalty launched appeals in
state and federal court on a multiplicity of issues. Twice,
Maryland's highest court came within one vote of ruling that
Supreme Court decisions had rendered his sentence illegal.
One death warrant lapsed because of an execution moratorium
imposed by then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D), responding to
growing concern about racial and geographic disparities in
the way the system is administered in Maryland.
MWB
Maine does not have a death penalty. He brutally murdered a beautiful young
lady in Kittery. Every now and then his name would pop up in the news after
he won reprive after reprive.....for several years this went on.
He was a low life scum sucking bottom feeding piece of shit murderer. He
deserved far worse than to be put to sleep.
I didn't see or hear of any protests in Maine today.
It was a good day today.
Mark
False Faced
>
>Good....out with the trash.
>
>He was a low life scum sucking bottom feeding piece of shit murderer. He
>deserved far worse than to be put to sleep.
Looks like you are a rather disturbed individual yourself.
MWB
"False Faced" <false...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040618024134...@mb-m05.aol.com...
How so?
Mark