COLUMBUS — Death row inmate John W. Byrd Jr. sent Gov. Bob Taft a letter this week, saying he is neither a killer nor a monster and “there will be no justice in my execution.”

        The governor's office forwarded a copy of a typewritten, three-page letter to the Enquirer Wednesday, a day after it was apparently faxed from the Ohio Public Defender's Office. Mr. Byrd's attorneys would not confirm they sent the letter.

        “I did not take the life of Mr. Tewksbury!” Mr. Byrd wrote. In the letter, he asked Mr. Taft to meet with him on death row.

Byrd

        “... I invite you to take the opportunity to come and speak with me and see for yourself that I am not what others are trying so hard to make me out to be,” Mr. Byrd wrote.

        Mr. Byrd was sentenced to death in 1983 as the man who fatally stabbed Monte Tewksbury during a robbery at a convenience store. John Eastle Brewer, an accomplice in the crime, has come forward claiming he did it.

        The letter comes at a time when Mr. Taft is pondering clemency for Mr. Byrd. Mr. Byrd wants the governor to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment.

        Barring clemency or a court order, Mr. Byrd is scheduled to die Sept. 12.

        On Wednesday morning, Mr. Byrd followed through on a vow to die in the electric chair, choosing electrocution over lethal injection.

        In his letter, Mr. Byrd writes he is “not the monster that I am being made out to be,” referring indirectly to incidents in the 1980s in which he helped abduct two prison guards and mailed out threats from death row.

        “Things that went on in them days I would not be a part of today,” he wrote.

        Joe Andrews, a spokesman for Mr. Taft, said the governor won't visit Mr. Byrd but will look at the letter to help make his clemency decision.

        Mr. Taft may also look at an affidavit from Robert Pottinger that Mr. Byrd's sister, Kim Hamer, hand-delivered to the governor's staff Tuesday.

        Mr. Pottinger says he was in the van with Mr. Byrd, Mr. Brewer and getaway driver William Danny Woodall during a robbery at the U-Tote-M convenience store, which took place an hour after Mr. Tewksbury was stabbed at the King Kwik.

        “(Mr.) Byrd, who was heavily intoxicated that night, had passed out and did not participate in the U-Tote-M robbery,” Mr. Pottinger said.

        Prosecutors used eyewitness testimony from a U-Tote-M clerk and customer to argue that Mr. Byrd held a knife during that robbery.

        Mr. Pottinger was not in the van when police pulled it over. The public defender has never used Mr. Pottinger's statements in court, and did not return calls seeking comment about them.

        Joe Case, a spokesman for Attorney General Betty Montgomery, called the affidavit unbelievable.

        “It's just another ingredient to throw into the pot to try to confuse the facts of the case,” Mr. Case said.

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