Thurs. 2-26-98--
OHIO:
On March 3, Ohio plans to carry out its 1st state-assisted suicide.
If no one intervenes, then Ohio will kill Wilford Lee Berry Jr. for 1
reason alone: because he wants to die.
Berry has wanted to die on and off since he was 9. Court records show
that Berry cooperated with police after his arrest once he was assured
he would qualify for the death penalty.
Cruel and unusual punishment describes the 35 years Wilford Berry has
trudged this Earth. The life he's endured reads like the table of
contents for a social work textbook: Rape. Sexual abuse. Poverty.
Child abuse. Physical handicaps. Mental illness. Add to that epileptic
seizures, chronic headaches, crossed eyes, hallucinations and voices in
his head.
All his life, experts labeled him severely unstable -- socially,
emotionally and behaviorally impaired.
Berry tried suicide on his own. He failed at his attempted hangings,
overdoses, poisonings, and wrist slashings. Now he is turning to us.
So why not put him out of his misery?
An Akron woman called to answer that. Her younger sister has
schizophrenia. "People are unsophisticated when it comes to mental
illness," the woman said.
Her sister began hearing voices when she turned 15. She took to
stripping and running out of the house naked.
She spent the rest of her life in and out of mental hospitals until
psychiatrists found the right drugs to help her.
Still, one minute you're having a normal, intelligent conversation with
her, the next minute she'll accuse you of "stealing" her body.
She'll answer the door naked. If you tell her that behavior is wrong,
she'll agree with you. Then she'll show up at the door naked again.
Her mind is distorted and twisted in ways no one has sorted out.
"She's a self-contained mystery," the woman said.
So is Wilford Berry, whom the Ohio Supreme Court found competent to fire
the attorneys who are trying to save him.
"He may say he knows the difference, but I don't think we know whether
he knows," the woman added.
Berry has been billed as the schizophrenic killer of a Cleveland baker.
The killer part is what got him on death row. So is the schizophrenic
part.
Only he knows what the demons have whispered over the past 20 years.
If Berry was standing on the High-Level Bridge threatening to jump, we'd
rush to save him. We wouldn't push him off.
Instead, he's sitting on death row, where the inmates aren't allowed to
have shoelaces and there are no strong hooks in their cells. The state
wants no life taken unless it is in charge of doing the job.
Of course Berry says he wants to die. But does the state listen to a
person with a mental disability as grave as his and take his life?
The family of the victim, Charles Mitroff Jr. of Pepper Pike,
understandably wants him to die. Mitroff's brother-in-law, Richard
Bowler, told a reporter that the only reason Berry got the death
sentence is he told the jury it might as well have him killed.
If no one intervenes, Ohio will do 1 of 2 things: assist in a
suicide or commit murder for the first time in 35 years. The court
can grant a stay of execution and suspend the March 3 date or the
governor can intervene.
Wilford Berry won't plead for his life, so we have to do so on his
behalf.
Ohio -- the Heart of it All -- shouldn't lose its heart by injecting a
mentally ill man with poison. You can write the governor at 77 S.
High St., 30th Floor, Columbus, OH 43215.
(source: Akron Beacon Journal)
In Columbus, a U.S. District Court judge yesterday questioned whether
the Ohio Supreme Court followed the spirit of federal law when it ruled
in December that Wilford Lee Berry Jr. was competent to waive further
appeals and proceed to his execution.
Judge Algenon L. Marbley tipped his hand in favor of the Ohio Public
Defender's Office by allowing it to introduce medical records, 12 letters
written by Berry and other new evidence in its appeal of the death
sentence.
Marbley said he will decide by 2 p.m. tomorrow whether to halt Tuesday's
execution of Berry, who was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1989
slaying of Cleveland baker Charles Mitroff Jr.
Berry, 35, has suffered a lifetime of mental illness and beatings and
rapes in prison. If his wish to die is granted, he would be the 1st
person executed in Ohio since 1963.
The judge said his greatest concern is whether the Ohio Supreme Court,
in its unanimous ruling in favor of Berry's execution, followed a U.S.
Supreme Court standard from 1966 that concluded a person is incompetent
to "forego further proceedings if he suffers from a mental disease,
disorder or defect which may substantially affect his capacity in the
premises."
Marbley said he didn't question the qualifications of 2 court-appointed
psychiatrists who found Berry capable of waiving legal counsel and
further appeals. "The only question left in this court is whether they
applied the proper standard," Marbley said.
Deputy Chief Counsel Simon B. Karas, arguing on behalf of Attorney
General Betty Montgomery's office, said that if Marbley delays the
execution, he would appeal immediately to the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati.
Tensions were apparent yesterday between public defender's lawyers, who
have appealed on Berry's behalf but against his wishes, and lawyers with
the state attorney general, who are upholding Ohio's death penalty law,
reinstated in 1981.
After the hearing, lawyers accused each other of unfair tactics,
explaining why certain trial transcripts and a dozen letters from
Berry were not part of the original court record.
"The public defender's office is not pleased with the fact we are
arguing the law," Deputy Attorney General Mark Weaver said. "If
there's any tension at all, it's professional tension."
Assistant State Public Defender Laurence E. Komp said Berry's desire to
die predates his conviction, referring to a history of suicide attempts
since the age of 9. Komp said severe head injuries suffered by Berry
during a Sept. 5 riot on death row at the Mansfield Correctional
Institution may cast doubt on his competency.
Medical records introduced yesterday show Berry needed pins in his hand
and reconstructive surgery on his face. Berry also complained of being
without his glasses in September and October at the Corrections Medical
Center, where he was transferred after the melee.
The glasses were presumably lost or broken in the riot. In an Oct. 28
medical record, Berry complained he was going `"tir crazy" and couldn't
read books without glasses. Prison officials then gave Berry a
television to use 2 hours daily, records show.
Greg Meyers, chief counsel of the Public Defender's Death Penalty
Division, said the injuries Berry suffered in the uprising may
have further hindered his ability to make decisions: "There's a
substantial possibility his brain got scrambled," Meyers said.
Also restored to the federal court record was a psychological assessment
of Berry done in July 1990 by Dr. Robert W. Goldberg, 3 weeks after
Berry was found guilty of burglary, robbery and murder and 8 days
before he was sentenced to death.
Goldberg concluded that while Berry was competent to stand trial, his
delusions involving "a lady in black" -- the devil's daughter residing
through a doorway "in a parallel world" -- posed another concern.
"Beliefs such as this would call into question his competency to be
executed were the death penalty to be imposed," Goldberg wrote.
Meanwhile, Gov. George Voinovich's office has received hundreds of
letters supporting leniency for Berry, while a handful of other
people, including the mother of a slain prison guard, wrote in support
of the death penalty.
The group Ohioans to Stop Executions yesterday delivered petitions to
Voinovich with 680 signatures against capital punishment.
Earlier this month, Berry signed a form saying he favors death by lethal
injection. Berry signed another form saying he did not want to be
interviewed by the Ohio Parole Board, which unanimously recommended
against clemency in a Feb. 13 report to Voinovich.
(source: Akron Beacon Journal)