Trueblood is executed

In Michigan City, prison officials executed Lafayette taxi driver Joseph Trueblood early today for the shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend and her 2 children.

Trueblood, 46, was moved into a holding cell at the Indiana State Prison Thursday night. Shortly after midnight, he was placed on a gurney and rolled to the white-painted execution chamber, where prison officials administered a lethal dose of drugs via intravenous feeds in each arm.

Prison officials pronounced Trueblood dead at 12:24 a.m.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of execution for Trueblood about 8 p.m. Thursday. The court had refused without comment to reconsider the case earlier this week, and Gov. Frank O'Bannon on Wednesday rejected his clemency request.

Earlier this week, Trueblood told reporters he did not intend to cooperate with authorities in his death. He rejected the traditional last meal and said he did not want his body to be autopsied.

A LaPorte Superior Court judge on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order preventing an autopsy by the state Department of Correction following Trueblood's execution.

Don Pagos, a Michigan City attorney representing Trueblood, argued there was no point in an autopsy since the cause of death would be known. A final ruling was expected Friday.

Trueblood said he did not want any of his family members to witness his execution. His witnesses were to be his 3 appeals lawyers and the Rev. Thomas McNally, a Roman Catholic priest.

McNally and family members were among Trueblood's visitors during his last full day on death row.

Another visitor was Katie Pawski of Chicago, a 25-year-old University of Notre Dame graduate who addressed about 20 anti-death penalty protesters outside the prison gates Thursday night.

"He's a human being with humanity and compassion," said Pawski, who met Trueblood while doing prison outreach while attending Notre Dame.

"Nobody deserves to die. Killing creates more victims," she said.

Trueblood, 46, was condemned for the 1988 murders of Susan Bowsher of Lafayette and her children, 2-year-old Ashelyn Hughes and 1-year-old William E. Bowsher. Prosecutors said he shot the woman and children to death after learning that she intended to return to her ex-husband. Trueblood said the deaths resulted from a suicide attempt by Susan Bowsher.

Trueblood told the parole board last month that he, Bowsher and her children were driving on a rural road outside Lafayette when she pulled out a handgun and shot Ashelyn. He described Bowsher as suicidal.

He said he tried to wrestle the gun from Bowsher with one hand as he drove with the other. The gun went off twice more, with the 2nd shot hitting William in the head. He said Bowsher then shot herself twice and that she was wounded so badly he fatally shot her in an act of mercy.

The parole board chairman, however, called Trueblood's account "wholly improbable." Relatives and friends of Bowsher have called his story a lie and have asked for the execution to be carried out.

Trueblood becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death in Indiana this year and the 11th person overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1981 after 20 years without any. Kevin Hough was executed May 2 for the 1985 murders of 2 men in Fort Wayne.

Trueblood becomes the 38th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 858th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Indiana executes triple murderer

MICHIGAN CITY, Ind., June 13 (Reuters) - The state of Indiana executed a man on Friday who killed his girlfriend, her two-year-old daughter and one-year-old son.

Joseph Trueblood, 46, was pronounced dead at 1:24 a.m. EDT following a lethal injection, said officials at the Indiana State Prison.

His was the 858th execution since the United States resumed capital punishment in 1976, the 38th so far this year and the second in Indiana in six weeks.

Trueblood pleaded guilty to the 1988 shooting deaths of Susan Bowsher, 22, and her two children. Police said he had been dating Bowsher but became enraged and shot all three when she told him she planned to reconcile with her ex-husband.

He made a number of appeals over the years, saying Bowsher actually shot the children and herself in an act of suicide.

In a final statement, Trueblood reiterated his innocence, asserting that Bowsher had killed herself and her children and that his attorneys had told him that pleading guilty was the best way to avoid the death penalty.

"That's the only reason I pleaded guilty," he said, in a statement given through attorney John Sommers. "If I had been given a lie detector test, it would have proven I was telling the truth."     Trueblood had not requested a special final meal but was given the same dinner as other inmates: a bologna sandwich, a cheese sandwich, cookies and fruit.

Indiana Gov. Frank O'Bannon rejected his final plea for clemency, saying Trueblood had presented no new evidence of innocence.

There has been a renewed debate over capital punishment in the United States, which is alone among western democracies in still carrying it out.

It was prompted by the former governor of Illinois, George Ryan, who put a hold on all executions in that state and them emptied the state's death row pending a reform of laws designed to protect the innocent.