William Garner

No clemency for Ohio man who killed kids in fire

The Ohio Parole Board has turned down a request for mercy from a death row inmate who set fires in Cincinnati that killed five children in 1992.

The panel ruled unanimously Tuesday against clemency for convicted murderer William Garner, whose execution is scheduled for next month.

The parole board said it's clear that the 37-year-old Garner was raised in an ''exceptionally and horribly'' abusive home and suffered developmentally. But it said those factors did not outweigh the deaths of the children, which the board called ''an offense of unusual magnitude.''

Garner told police he set fire to an apartment to destroy evidence of a burglary and said he thought the children who were inside would escape.

Victims' relatives had urged that clemency be denied.
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A state court in Cincinnati has turned down an appeal by a 37-year-old man scheduled to die next Tuesday for setting a fire that killed five children.

Three 1st District Court of Appeals judges on Friday unanimously rejected contentions by William Garner that his five death sentences should be thrown out for various reasons, including his claim that he had a mental age below 18 at the time of the 1992 murders.

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Another Ohio execution likely

It's looking more and more like a death row inmate convicted of setting a fire that killed five children will be executed Tuesday. Governor Ted Strickland has rejected a plea for clemency. Ohio Public Radio's Jo Ingles has more.

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Child-killer's execution set for 10 a.m.
Man who set fire in 1992 runs out of legal appeals
Tuesday, July 13, 2010 02:50 AM
Updated: Tuesday, July 13, 2010 09:16 AM

Rod Mack was 13 years old when he escaped a Cincinnati apartment fire amid the screams of his sisters and the sound of his best friend collapsing to the floor.

He alone survived the fire, which killed five other children. It was started by a man to cover up the theft of a television, a VCR, a telephone and a radio. More than 18 years later, Mack planned to watch the arsonist's execution by lethal injection this morning.

William Garner, 37, was to be executed at the southern Ohio prison that houses the state's death chamber.

So many people wanted to witness the execution on behalf of the young victim that prison officials planned to open a second viewing room, prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn said today. Six people could be accommodated in the witness room facing the execution chamber, and another three would have to watch on closed circuit TV in the spillover room, she said.

Yesterday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati denied Garner's request for postponement to allow him a chance to argue that his death sentences should be thrown out because he had the mental age of a child when he set the fire.

Earlier yesterday, the Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear a similar mental-age argument, and Gov. Ted Strickland denied clemency.

Garner's attorney, Kelly Schneider, said no additional appeals would be filed. She had argued in a court motion that Garner's "developmental disabilities, limited IQ, and the horrors of his life" caused him to function on the level of a 14-year-old.

It wasn't long after his 19th birthday when Garner, in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 26, 1992, gained access to Addie Mack's apartment by stealing keys from her purse while she received care in the emergency room of a nearby hospital. Her son Rod Mack was the oldest of the six children who were home alone at the time, including his sisters, his friend and a cousin. The youngest was 8.

Garner told police that he had noticed the bedroom "full of girls" and that one of them had asked him for water, which he provided, according to a report by the Ohio Parole Board. He also said he had been in another bedroom where the two boys slept.

Garner admitted throwing a lighted match on a couch in an attempt to destroy evidence of the burglary and said he thought the children would escape.

Only Rod Mack made it out alive. He climbed out a window, barefoot and crying in the bitter cold.

Besides Rod Mack, his mother and seven other relatives of the children planned to witness Garner's death.

Garner was moved yesterday morning from death row at a central Ohio prison to the prison where the execution chamber is. He was to receive a special meal to include a porterhouse steak, onion rings, fried shrimp, barbecue ribs and wings, potato wedges, sweet potato pie, chocolate ice cream and red Hawaiian Punch.

He spent the day watching television and talking on the telephone and visited with relatives and his legal team. His niece and lawyer and an investigator planned to watch the execution on his behalf.

Garner has said a secondary motivation for setting the fire was to draw attention to the children's squalid living conditions. His attorneys also have argued he should be spared the death penalty because he has a brain impairment from lead poisoning and was a victim of violence and sexual assault as a child.

Garner would be the sixth person executed in Ohio this year and the 39th put to death by the state since it resumed the practice in 1999.

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Ohio man executed for fire deaths of 5 children

An Ohio man said he was "heartily sorry" before he was executed Tuesday for the murders of five children in a 1992 Cincinnati apartment fire he set in an attempt to destroy evidence of a burglary.

William Garner, 37, died by lethal injection at 10:38 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility.

As he lay on the execution table, Garner held a dreadlock of hair from a female friend and read a lengthy final statement from notebook paper held by the execution team leader, thanking several people as well as the state of Ohio.

"God bless everyone who has been robbed in this procedure," he said. "I thought I'd never be free, but I'm free now."

In the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 26, 1992, Garner gained access to Addie Mack's apartment after stealing keys from her purse while she received care in a hospital emergency room. Six children, ages 8 to 13, were at the apartment alone, and Garner knew they were there when he threw a lit match onto a couch.

Garner has admitted setting the fire but said he thought the children would escape. Only one, 13-year-old Rod Mack, made it out alive. Mack watched the execution quietly with several others.

So many people wanted to witness the execution on behalf of the young victims that the prison opened a second viewing room, prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn said. Mack and five others were accommodated in the witness room facing the execution chamber, and another three watched on closed-circuit TV in the spillover room, she said.

Garner spent his final hours watching television and talking on the telephone with a friend and his twin brother. He visited with his mother and other relatives, as well as with spiritual advisers and his legal team, and took Holy Communion about an hour and a half before the start of his execution.

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Garner goes quietly for killing 5

William Garner glanced over at his niece, a soft smile breaking his face as the first of the five syringes of a lethal drug were pumped into his arm at 10:21 a.m. Tuesday in the Death House at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility.

Garner, 37, who grew up with the name “Peewee,” was the 382nd person to be executed in Ohio since the state began executions in 1803.

The state has an execution scheduled each month through November.

Garner has spent nearly half his life on death row after killing five children in an English Woods townhouse on Jan. 26, 1992, when he set three fires to cover up a burglary.

Garner was not pronounced dead until 10:38 a.m., 10 minutes after the curtain closed - generally a sign that the inmate has died.

A coroner told the warden he detected what he thought was a faint heartbeat shortly after the curtain closed. The coroner then must wait five minutes and then check again for a heart beat.

None was detected the second time, said Ernie Moore, the director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

Moore, who just took over the post in February, seemed subdued throughout the day and spoke briefly that he was following the law in executing Garner.

Garner, however, appeared at peace with his condemnation.

If he was scared, he showed no sign. He turned his head to the left, staring into the eyes of his niece Martisha Ross for long periods.

While strapped to a wooden gurney, Garner held a dreadlock of hair from a friend in his left hand and read from a hand-written note held up by an official. He apologized to the six family members of victims who were there to witness the execution, separated from the killer by about four feet and a glass window.

“If this will give you closure, I hope it will,” he said.

Garner thanked the state of Ohio, his spiritual advisers and friend Stacy Evans who gave him a clipping of her dreadlock to hold as he died.

Garner’s voice cracked once as he said his goodbyes, but he never lost his composure.

“I thought I’d never be free, but I am free now,” he said.

No one spoke as he was dying until the warden broke the silence. “Time of death, 10:38 a.m.,” Warden Donald Morgan called out when the curtain opened at 10:39 a.m.

The people in the three witness rooms remained silent as they were ushered out.

Garner was sentenced to death for killing the children in the home of Addie Mack after he stole her purse from a phone booth at University Hospital and broke into her apartment.

During the 40 minutes inside the witness rooms, Mack, who lost three daughters in the fire, turned a few times to look at her son, Rod Mack, the only one to survive the fire.

About 10 anti-death penalty advocates stood in the drizzling rain during the execution.

Up to the moment of his death, Garner, who has an IQ of 76 and was considered borderline retarded, maintained he never intended for the children to die, and was only trying to cover up the fact that he stole a television set, a VCR, a boom box and phone from the home.

Rod Mack jumped from the window and was found shivering in the snow when emergency crews arrived. He told the police he heard his sisters screaming.

The girls died huddled together.

Garner took a cab from the apartment to a United Dairy Farmers where he bought Hawaiian Punch, a jelly cake and candy.

For his last meal at the Death House on Monday, Garner also had Hawaiian Punch and an assortment of food that included a Porterhouse steak, barbeque chicken and ribs, sweet potato pie, fried shrimp and chocolate ice cream.

Garner declined the standard prison breakfast Tuesday morning, as well as a sedative, in the hours before his death.

He spent the early morning hours with his mother, Patricia Garner, his sister Lisa Ross, his friend Evans, spiritual leaders, the defense counsel and his niece – the only person to witness his death on his behalf.

“He is finally at peace and that was very important,” his older sister Ross said after his death. She said she hoped the family members of sisters Denitra Satterwhite, 12, Deondra Freeman, 10, Mykia Mack, 8; the girls’ cousin Markeca Mason, 11, and neighbor Richard Gaines, also 11, could one day forgive him.

Marshandra Jackson, who lost her daughter Markeca, quietly wept during the 40-minute process that started with prep-work and the insertion of two shunts while Garner was in his holding cell. The preparations were broadcast into the witness rooms through video monitors.

He then took 17 steps into the death chamber and climbed on the gurney.

Garner arrived in Lucasville on Monday, a place where he first was admitted to death row all those years ago when the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility sent people to death by the electric chair. The prison at the time was the only one in the state to house death row inmates.

Much has changed since then.

The electric chair has since been replaced first with a lethal cocktail of drugs and then more recently to the sole drug Thiopental Sodium.

Garner, who sentenced shortly after he turned 20, had been housed at the Mansfield Correctional Facility since 1995, where he lived alone in a 94-square-foot cell.

When not in trouble, he was permitted out of his cell for up to 2½ hours a day.

Garner found trouble, though. Reports from the correction department say he was cited 13 times for infractions ranging from having sex with inmates to throwing fluids on workers to violent outbursts and fighting.

Garner and his twin Willie, who were born on Sept. 26, 1972, went by the names Peewee and Pappy, respectively.

Garner suffered abuse and got into trouble early, court records show.

At the age of 5, he kicked a teacher and threw temper tantrums.

Garner was beaten by his mother and her boyfriends, as well as by a brother who had sexually assaulted him, according to court records.

That brother was picked up on a warrant Tuesday as he stood outside the prison walls before the execution. The infraction was that he allegedly failed to register as a sex offender in Hamilton County.

Garner started getting in trouble with the law at the age of 10. He failed the second-, fourth- and sixth-grades, court records say.

There were theft charges, criminal trespass and another theft charge all before his 11th birthday. Many followed ranging from breaking and entering, to assault to disorderly conduct.

“He was ready. Peewee had been ready,” Ross said of her brother’s execution Tuesday. “… Through the years, we prepared for this day.”

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