softheart
02-12-2003, 12:30 PM
Feb. 12
OHIO---execution
Ohio executes Richard Fox
In Lucasville, a man who lured a college student to her death with the
promise of a job was executed Wednesday.
Richard E. Fox, 47, was executed by injection after being refused
clemency and a chance to argue for re-sentencing. His attorneys said a
week earlier that no more appeals would be filed.
He was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional
Facility.
Fox kidnapped, stabbed and strangled Leslie Keckler, 18, of Bowling
Green, on Sept. 26, 1989. Her body was found 4 days later in a ditch near
the northwest Ohio city. He was convicted in 1990 of aggravated murder
and kidnapping.
Fox had confessed. Gov. Bob Taft last week refused to grant clemency,
saying there was no doubt that Fox was guilty.
Greg Meyers, chief of the Ohio Public Defender's death penalty section,
said then that there were no more legal issues to appeal.
Fox had lived in the northwest Ohio town of Tontogany.
Authorities said Fox found Keckler, a student at Owens Community College
near Toledo, through an application she filled out at the restaurant
where he worked.
After an initial meeting in hotel lobby, Keckler got into Fox's car so
that they could check out businesses where supplies could be sold.
In a rural area outside of Bowling Green, Fox started making advances.
Keckler fought him and tried to open the car door. But he pulled her
back, pulled her coat over her head and stabbed her 6 times in the back.
He then drove to a secluded road where, he told police, he strangled her
with a rope "just to make sure she was dead."
Prosecutors said Fox repeatedly used deception to lure women in the years
before the murder. However, his attorneys said he used trickery to meet
women, not to kill them.
His attorneys argued that Fox was not the "worst of the worst" criminals
for whom the death penalty is intended.
They also said he should have been re-sentenced because guidelines used
in his case later were declared flawed by the Ohio Supreme Court. The
high court refused to delay the execution to hear the sentencing issue.
Fox becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Ohio
and the 6th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999.
Fox becomes the 11th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the
USA and the 831st overall since America resumed executions on January 17,
1977.
(sources: Associated Press
OHIO---execution
Ohio executes Richard Fox
In Lucasville, a man who lured a college student to her death with the
promise of a job was executed Wednesday.
Richard E. Fox, 47, was executed by injection after being refused
clemency and a chance to argue for re-sentencing. His attorneys said a
week earlier that no more appeals would be filed.
He was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional
Facility.
Fox kidnapped, stabbed and strangled Leslie Keckler, 18, of Bowling
Green, on Sept. 26, 1989. Her body was found 4 days later in a ditch near
the northwest Ohio city. He was convicted in 1990 of aggravated murder
and kidnapping.
Fox had confessed. Gov. Bob Taft last week refused to grant clemency,
saying there was no doubt that Fox was guilty.
Greg Meyers, chief of the Ohio Public Defender's death penalty section,
said then that there were no more legal issues to appeal.
Fox had lived in the northwest Ohio town of Tontogany.
Authorities said Fox found Keckler, a student at Owens Community College
near Toledo, through an application she filled out at the restaurant
where he worked.
After an initial meeting in hotel lobby, Keckler got into Fox's car so
that they could check out businesses where supplies could be sold.
In a rural area outside of Bowling Green, Fox started making advances.
Keckler fought him and tried to open the car door. But he pulled her
back, pulled her coat over her head and stabbed her 6 times in the back.
He then drove to a secluded road where, he told police, he strangled her
with a rope "just to make sure she was dead."
Prosecutors said Fox repeatedly used deception to lure women in the years
before the murder. However, his attorneys said he used trickery to meet
women, not to kill them.
His attorneys argued that Fox was not the "worst of the worst" criminals
for whom the death penalty is intended.
They also said he should have been re-sentenced because guidelines used
in his case later were declared flawed by the Ohio Supreme Court. The
high court refused to delay the execution to hear the sentencing issue.
Fox becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Ohio
and the 6th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999.
Fox becomes the 11th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the
USA and the 831st overall since America resumed executions on January 17,
1977.
(sources: Associated Press