Saturday, February 20, 1999

BERRY DIES QUIETLY

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Witness: 'Peaceful death'

BY MICHAEL HAWTHORNE
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Wilford Berry

        LUCASVILLE, Ohio — Wilford Lee Berry Jr., who opted for death over life in prison, on Friday became the first person executed in Ohio since 1963.

        He was pronounced dead at 9:31 p.m., shortly after an unseen executioner began pumping a trio of lethal drugs into his arms.

        Defiant to the very end, Mr. Berry, 36, refused to make a final statement or otherwise express remorse for killing his boss, Cleveland baker Charles Mitroff, nearly 10 years ago during a robbery that netted him and an accomplice $32.50.

Representatives of Charles Mitroff's family talk about witnessing Berry's death; from left, William Florio; Stan Voorhees, retired Kenton County patrolman who caught Berry; and Duane Rolfsen, a Kenton County detective who secured his confession. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

        Mr. Berry was dressed in blue trousers with a red stripe and a short-sleeved white pullover. Six guards escorted him to a gurney bolted into the floor, 3 feet from a window separating the death chamber from witnesses seated on the other side.

        On one side of the witness room were Mr. Berry's mother, Jennie Franklin; his sister, Elaine Quigley, and Cynthia Yost, an assistant public defender who had befriended him on death row.

        Separated from them by a glass partition were three men representing Mr. Mitroff's family: Stan Voorhees, a retired Kenton County, Ky., patrolman who caught Mr. Berry; Duane Rolfsen, a Kenton County detective who secured his confession, and William Florio, a suburban Cleveland private investigator who established Mr. Berry as a suspect.

        Just after 9 p.m., guards strapped Mr. Berry to the gurney. Two prison medical technicians inserted intravenous needles into his arms.

Berry died on the gurney in the Ohio death chamber. Witnesses watched behind the one-way mirrors. (AP photo) ZOOM | DEATH HOUSE LAYOUT

        Mr. Berry entered the death chamber just before 9 p.m., accompanied by six guards and by Stephen Huffman, warden at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility.

        Minutes earlier, Mr. Huffman had stood outside Mr. Berry's holding cell and read the death warrant.

        When the witnesses arrived at 9:22 p.m., Mr. Berry was on his back, his left arm extended.

        He stared at the ceiling and never glanced at the warden who stood nearby, or at his family, 4 feet away behind a plate-glass window.

        He appeared to be mumbling or chanting, but said nothing audible. His mustache had been shaved and he had a visible paunch after gaining 50 pounds in prison.

        The only sign of struggle were three labored breaths he took shortly before the remaining color drained from his face.

        About 9:30 p.m., the warden drew a white nylon curtain and opened it up again a minute later after an unseen, unidentified physician made sure Mr. Berry was dead.

J.C. Burton of Oxford, Ohio, expressed his support for the death penalty and Gov. Taft's decision to not halt the execution. (Michael Snyder photo) | ZOOM |

        The warden then reached behind a curtain hiding the electric chair from view.

        “Wilford Berry was pronounced dead by a physician at 9:31 p.m., February 19th, 1999,” the warden said.

        Mr. Berry's mother moaned and put her hand to her face.

        Mr. Florio later said her sobs bothered him.

        “It gave me a sense of sadness for the family. I really didn't have that before.”

        But he said Mr. Berry had died a “peaceful death.”

        “I just wish Mr. Mitroff had (been able) to die the same way as Mr. Berry,” he said.

        Said Mr. Voorhees: “This is the end of a 10-year funeral. And now it's over for them (the Mitroff family). I believe justice was served.”

Protesters react at 9 p.m., the time the execution began. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

        Outside the prison, bathed in the eerie light of halogen lamps overhead, dozens of death penalty opponents sang protest songs and prayed, cupping candles in gloved hands.

        Across from them were about 40 supporters of the death penalty.

        There never was any doubt of Mr. Berry's guilt. He confessed soon after the murder, physical evidence linked him to the crime and he refused to defend himself at trial.

        Death, he told jurors at his 1990 sentencing, would be better than the wretched life he led on the streets and in prison.

        “You might as well sentence me to death row for the simple fact by the time I get done doing that 20-to-life, I would be so institutionalized that I would have so much anger built up inside of me, frustration, that I wouldn't even hesitate to kill you for looking at me.”

        Public defenders said those words were spoken by a man too mentally ill to be executed. They tried in vain to find a court that would declare Mr. Berry mentally incompetent.

        Mr. Berry thwarted them at every turn and repeatedly demanded he be allowed to die, pleading with jurors at his trial, firing expletive-riddled letters to judges and spitting in the face of defense attorneys. He once threatened to slit his mother's throat if she were successful in blocking the execution.

        The public defenders representing his mother and sister finally ended their effort to prevent the execution when the U.S. Supreme Court refused an emergency review of his case about 2 p.m. Friday.

        “This case is so unique ...,” said Jon Woodman, an assistant public defender. “I hope we'll never face that again.”

Highway Patrol guard a prison gate. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

        Throughout years of appeals, he said, the only issues were Mr. Berry's competence, the standards for judging it, and whether he was so ill his family could appeal in his place.

        State and federal courts repeatedly ruled Mr. Berry competent. So did Gov. Bob Taft, in rejecting pleas for clemency.

        Ms. Montgomery said after the execution, “There are no winners tonight. Rather, the system of justice has implemented its solemn responsibility.”

        Mr. Berry's long march to the death chamber — which almost ended on March 3 a year ago until a last-minute appeal — began less than a week after he was hired to wash dishes and floors at Mr. Mitroff's Cleveland bakery.

        Just before midnight on Nov. 30, 1989, Mr. Berry and an accomplice, Anthony Lozar, ambushed Mr. Mitroff as he returned from a delivery run. Mr. Lozar shot him once in the torso with a Chinese-made semiautomatic assault rifle. As the baker struggled to reach a telephone to call for help, Mr. Berry laughed and shot him again in the back of the head with a sawed-off .22-caliber rifle.

        Mr. Lozar was sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors say Mr. Berry planned the crime, obtained the weapons and fired the fatal shot.

        Abandoned by his schizophrenic father, who later died in an asylum for the criminally insane, Mr. Berry survived a childhood as a frail, cross-eyed boy who was beaten by his mother and neighborhood bullies. He first attempted suicide in 1969.

        Raped repeatedly by a teen-age boy when he was 7 or 8, he was committed for severe emotional problems at age 14. He was raped again at age 19 while serving time in a Texas prison for car theft.

        Life may have seemed better on death row, at least until Sept. 5, 1997, when fellow inmates overpowered a guard at the Mansfield Correctional Institution and started a riot.

        They went directly to the cell of “The Volunteer,” the man they feared would speed up their own deaths, beating him so ferociously they thought he was dead.

        Mr. Berry, who suffered a skull fracture and other serious injuries, recovered at the Corrections Medical Center in Columbus, where he was held until he was moved to the death house Thursday night.

        In his final hours, he said little to prison guards and declined the offer of a telephone. A Bible sat unopened on a night stand next to the bed.

        In addition to meeting for about an hour with his mother and sister, he met on and off during the day with Ms. Yost, the public defender.

        Prison officials refused to characterize the content of the conversations but said he was “calm and stoic.”

        A doctor once described a young Mr. Berry as “a corpse looking for some place to lie down and die.”

        It took nearly 36 years, but Mr. Berry found that place Friday night.

        Ben L. Kaufman, Mark Curnutte and Richelle Thompson contributed.

BERRY DIES SILENTLY
Watching Berry die: Nothing like a movie
Evanston marks Berry's final hour
Outside prison walls, moods clash
Berry's last day
Key dates in Wilford Berry case

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