Ohio moves inmate to death house for execution

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A man being executed for beating and stomping to death a fellow inmate in a jailhouse assault was moved Monday from death row to the southern Ohio prison...

TheGrio Staff

Apr 11, 2011

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A man being executed for beating and stomping to death a fellow inmate in a jailhouse assault was moved Monday from death row to the southern Ohio prison that houses the state’s lethal injection chamber.

Clarence Carter, 49, arrived at the death house in Lucasville at around 10 a.m., about 24 hours before his scheduled execution, said prisons spokesman Carlo LoParo.

Carter is being executed for killing Johnny Allen, who died about two weeks after the December 1988 beating in the Hamilton County jail in Cincinnati. Investigators said Carter punched, choked, kicked and stomped on Allen for at least 30 minutes, stopping intermittently to wipe blood from his shoes.

Carter was in the jail waiting to be sentenced on a prior conviction of aggravated murder in the shooting death of a police informant who planned to testify against a friend of Carter’s in a drug case, according to a parole board report.

Carter’s lawyers argued against the execution, claiming Allen’s killing was not premeditated, that Allen likely instigated the fight and that the inmates used as witnesses were unreliable. They said Carter is borderline mentally disabled and had an upbringing that taught violence.

Carter has no challenges pending. The Ohio Parole Board ruled unanimously against granting clemency in March, and Gov. John Kasich last week denied him mercy.

Former state prisons director Terry Collins, who retired last year, and Cincinnati civil-rights attorney Alphonse Gerhardstein had asked Kasich to spare Carter, saying there was no evidence he planned to kill Allen and that it’s “much more likely that this was an inmate fight that got tragically out of hand.”

Carter had been scheduled for execution in 2007, but was spared by a lawsuit pending at the time that challenged lethal injection.

That year, the parole board had voted 6-3 against clemency, with those dissenting saying they were troubled by what appeared to be contradictory or inaccurate testimony by inmate witnesses.

Carter’s brother, nephew and one of his attorneys plan to attend the execution. No one plans to witness on behalf of Allen.

LoParo says Carter has opted not to have a special meal and will be served the same dinner as the other Lucasville inmates: tuna salad, wheat bread, oven-browned potatoes, turnip greens, coleslaw, an orange and a beverage.