OHIO - Byrd executed

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a last-minute request to stop the execution

Convicted killer John W. Byrd Jr., was executed at 10 a.m. today.

A federal appeals court refused to stop the execution Tuesday of Byrd , who was sentenced to die for the 1983 stabbing of a store clerk during a robbery.

 The full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a last-minute request from Byrd's lawyers to stop the scheduled 10 a.m. lethal injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

Byrd, who says he's innocent and that a robbery accomplice committed the crime, had selected the electric chair as his method of execution, to protest the brutality of capital punishment.

However, Gov. Gov. Bob Taft signed a bill in November that banned the use of the electric chair, leaving injection as the only method of execution.

8 6th Circuit judges declared that Monday night's denial by 3 judges of a stay of execution was the court's final judgment. The court did not disclose how the 8 judges voted individually. P> Byrd's lawyers had argued he was entitled to a new trial on his claim that he did not kill store clerk Monte Tewksbury and that another man, John Brewer, was the killer.

Brewer was convicted with Byrd in the 1983 store robbery at which Tewksbury, 40 was fatally stabbed. Prosecutors have rejected Brewer's statement as a last-ditch effort to save Byrd's life.

Meanwhile, Columbus attorney Cliff Arnebeck, hired Sunday by Byrd and his family, unsuccessfully asked the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday morning to delay Byrd's execution. The court told him he was not eligible to file documents in the case because he is not a member of the U.S. Supreme Court bar.

Arnebeck said he would ask a colleague with the proper standing to file the documents.

 Byrd, 38, spent the morning visiting with family and his lawyers, a spokeswoman for the state's prison system said Tuesday.

 He awoke about 5:13 a.m., shaved and showered but did not eat his pancake breakfast, said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Correction and Rehabilitation. his daughter's education.

Byrd has insisted he can't remember the events of the night Tewksbury was killed because he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol. He said the evidence in the case does not prove he's guilty.

 Byrd becomes the 1st Ohio condemned inmate to be put to death this year and the 3rd overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999. 

Byrd becomes the 11th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 760th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.