Today, on the eve of Alton Coleman's execution, his attorneys will head to the 10th District Court of Appeals to fight a lower court's order approving the closed-circuit telecast of his lethal injection.

Coleman

        Broadcasting the execution to relatives of Mr. Coleman's victims, they say, will turn their client's death into a “spectator sport.”

        Mr. Coleman, 45, of Waukegan, Ill., was sentenced to death for the 1984 beating death of Marlene Walters, 44, of Norwood. He also has been convicted of three other murders in a multistate crime spree in 1984 and has been sentenced to death in Indiana and Illinois.

        He is scheduled to die at 10 a.m. Friday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

        The 10th District appeals court is expected to issue a decision today, said Dale Baich, Mr. Coleman's lead attorney.

        On Wednesday, Gov. Bob Taft rejected Mr. Coleman's plea for clemency and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected two petitions from Mr. Coleman.

        “I can find no reason to disagree with a jury's verdict of guilt,”Mr. Taft said.

        “None have found any doubt with respect to Mr. Coleman's responsibility for the violent death of Marlene Walters,” the governor said.

        Mr. Baich called the governor's decision disappointing.

        At the Supreme Court, a request filed Monday asked the justices to hear Mr. Coleman's claim that prosecutors chose a racially biased jury in his 1985 trial for Mrs. Walters' death. Mr. Coleman also asked Justice John Paul Stevens, who oversees death-penalty appeals in Ohio, to delay the execution while the court considers the appeal.

        Another appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court involved Mr. Coleman's murder conviction for the strangulation of 15-year-old Tonnie Storey of Over-the-Rhine, two days before Mrs. Walters' slaying.

        The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals sent that case back to the trial court for resentencing.

        Mr. Coleman is still awaiting the outcome of an appeal before the 6th Circuit that argues Mr. Coleman was ineffectively represented during an appeal of his capital-murder conviction in the Walters case.

        The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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