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« Opinion
End legal wrangling quickly, then execute killer Biros
End legal wrangling quickly, then execute killer Biros
Attorneys for convicted killer Kenneth Biros of Brookfield are arguing in U.S. District Court that a drug Ohio uses in its execution process constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
We must argue that the tactics Biros used in robbing, sexually assaulting, murdering and dismembering the body of his victim in 1991 constitute cruel and unusual punishment of a much higher order than death by injected medications.
This appeal is but the latest in a line of legal wranglings that have deferred justice in the Biros case far too long. That’s why it is critical that U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost reject Biros’ cowardly pleas. Then, the state should act swiftly to reschedule Biros’ execution for as soon as legally possible.
The hearing last week was designed to collect evidence in the case and to determine whether Biros’ argument has sufficient merit to warrant a full-blown, time-consuming challenge of the constitutionality of Ohio’s capital punishment procedures. Frost took testimony from Ohio’s execution team and the state prisons department on the intricacies of Ohio’s execution protocol.
Biros argues that evidence from executions around the country indicate he could suffer a painful death from the effect of the lethal chemicals. He adds that veterinarians would not use the drug to euthanize cats and dogs.
Supreme Court has spoken
Legally, however, Biros, 50, should not have much ground to stand on. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year in a challenge to procedures used in Kentucky that lethal injection in this country is constitutional. Biros, not surprisingly, has latched on to a loophole in the ruling that permits challenges to other states’ specific means of execution.
This is not the first death-defying stall tactic Biros has employed to prolong his life. He had earlier tried, for example, to argue that the scope of his crime did not merit capital punishment, a shallow argument considering the unmitigated savagery of his killing.
In February 1991, Biros offered to take Tami Engstrom out for coffee from a Brookfield bar. In the end, the brute beat and stabbed her more than 90 times, sexually mutilated her, strangled her, dismembered her and spread her body parts in various locations in northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.
The horror of the crime has left a lasting nightmarish impact on the family and friends of Engstrom. The ongoing delays in putting Biros to death have circumvented their closure and constitute cruel and unusual punishment for them. No trial is needed for that determination.
What is needed now is a swift ruling from Judge Frost that Biros’ lamentations fail to indict the state’s method of execution by lethal injection. Then, state officials should act with all appropriate speed to escort Biros directly into Ohio’s death chamber.
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Comments
He is nothing buy a whiny a$$ baby, that deserves to be put to death. Why should we keep paying for his upkeep?? He had NO compassion when he robbed, sexually assaulted, murdered and dismembering the body of his victim in 1991. So why should we have ANY compassion for him?? I say put him to death in the worst possible, painful why we can!
When the Constitution was written, ''cruel and unusual'' meant we don't execute by burning alive, drawing and quartering, drowning, etc. Execution by such means as public hanging was constitutional. And if it was constitutional then, it is constitutional today: the document hasn't changed. The notions of idiotic judges and shyster lawyers to the contrary.
This mook should have been taking a dirt nap two weeks or less after the sentence was handed down.
And flog the lawyers who are clearly guilty of barratry. Then disbar them.
Can someone please tell me why we have a SUPREME COURT? So what Vets won't use this
injection to euthanize a dog or cat! Biros is a self confessed killer/liar. You can not tell me Tami did not feel pain from the torture that he put her through. You are so right. He has found so many loopholes in the past years it is ridiculous. His cowardly ways has done nothing but cause pain to the victims of this tragedy. The family has endured way to much for way too long. It is time that our legal system takes action and follow through with this long overdue execution that has cost not only money but,PAIN TO THE VICTIMS FAMILY.
If Biros got the electric chair he would try to say that was cruel and unusal cuz it didnt have a cushion! He is a coward and is afraid he might be trapped in his own head. That would be cruel and unusal. Your last paragragh says it all.
The legal system is only there for the criminals, NOT the victims!! You see it every day in the news. It is sad that we have come to this. He should of been killed years ago. If you are proven guilty, beyond doubt, kill them. Dont keep this dragging on for years. Its the Lawyers fault that her family keeps suffering.
Actually, the system does not benefit criminals so much as it benefits lawyers.
Based upon much observation, I rank professional legalists as being lower on the social scale than truck stop prostitutes, somewhere more on the level of counterfeiters and flim-flam artists.
The criminal justice system has become a joke -- look at some of the clowns and knaves we have locally, and that's just the judges. Can't we at least make them wear funny hats or clown suits or something, and stop treating these louts as if they were respectable persons?
Yep, Biros is guilty. But the pettifogging barratry practiced by his lawyers, and by a whole raft of judges, is just as reprehensible. Send the lot of them off to clean toilets in a tropical leper colony, there to expiate their sins, and get the stench of their presence out of the nostrils of honest men and women.
AMEN!!! tnmartin
Just put him to death and get it over with..He is just a big cry baby!!!
this a$$hole should be put to death the same way he killed Tammy. and then we will speak of cruel and unusual punishment. he says a vet wouldnt use a certian drug to put cats or dogs down. well vets wouldnt do to a animal what he had done to Tammy and her family.