I Guess This Means I am safe?

So that's the ticket. get really fat by unhealthy means to stave off execution. Seems to be working for this guy. He is a changed man??? Anyone of us would be "changed " with a stay in big house with a death sentence. His crime happened in 1986 and its 2008. Anyone changes in 22 years. Excuse not good enough.

Ed

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/25/death.penalty.fat.ap/index.html?eref=rss_latest

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A death row inmate who says he's too fat to be executed received poor legal help during his trial and later when he appealed the death sentence, his lawyers said Monday during a clemency hearing.

It's the second time that Richard Cooey, convicted of killing two University of Akron students in 1986, has asked the state for mercy.

The Ohio Parole Board denied a similar request five years ago, and Cooey came within a day of being executed in 2003 before a federal judge issued a reprieve.

In a lawsuit filed this month, his lawyers said that executioners would have trouble finding Cooey's veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the lethal injection drugs.

Cooey stands 5 feet 7 and weighs 267 pounds. His execution is scheduled for October 14. It would be the first execution in the state since the end of a moratorium while the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Kentucky's lethal injection procedure.

Cooey didn't attend Monday's clemency hearing, and neither side argued the merits of the obesity lawsuit.

His lawyers said that Cooey's original defense team didn't properly present evidence about the effect of beatings he received as a child, as well as the impact of Cooey's alcohol abuse.

Cooey, 41, isn't the same person who committed the murders and is remorseful to the point of self-loathing, said Dana Cole, a University of Akron law professor who represented Cooey at the parole board hearing.

"If he's killed on October 14, we will kill a changed man," Cole said. "He's not the same man who committed these crimes."

Larry Whitney, one of Cooey's lawyers from the 1986 trial, said he and fellow defense attorney Roger Davidson did everything they could to present Cooey's psychological makeup and background to the three-judge panel trying the case.

The judges "obviously felt that the mitigation we presented did not outweigh the aggravating factors in the case," Whitney said.

Parole Board member Sandra Mack questioned whether Cooey has ever acknowledged his role in the crimes.

"This just does not sound like someone taking responsibility for the major part he played in killing these young women," Mack said.

Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh reviewed graphic details of the rape and murder of the two students. Cooey and his co-defendant met the victims after throwing chunks of concrete off an overpass and striking their car.

Walsh also reviewed Cooey's unsuccessful attempt to escape from death row in 2005, when he used a homemade ladder constructed of rolled-up magazines and sheets to scale an outdoor recreation area wall.

"In the 22 years since the defendant committed these brutal acts, he has never demonstrated one second of genuine remorse for murdering these two young women," Walsh said.

Cooey's accomplice, Clinton Dickens, was not eligible for the death penalty because he was 17 at the time of the murders. He is serving a life sentence.

The parole board will make a recommendation to Gov. Ted Strickland on Tuesday. Strickland can follow the board's ruling or make his own decision.