Man executed for burning victim alive
LUCASVILLE, Ohio - A man who burned a woman alive in the trunk of her car was executed yesterday in Ohio's first death by lethal injection since the state revised its protocol on the procedure.
Daniel Wilson, 39, was sentenced to death for the 1991 slaying of acquaintance Carol Lutz, 24. He locked Lutz in the trunk of her car and set it on fire after they spent several hours drinking together at a bar near Cleveland.
"I'm very sorry for what I did to Carol, and to my family, I'm sorry things turned out this way," Wilson said in a final statement. "I believe in Jesus. He's my lord and savior, and I'm coming home."
He was pronounced dead at 10:33 a.m. at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility.
Carol Lutz's mother, Martha, said the execution ended a long, hard road for her family.
"We have waited 18 years 29 days for this to happen. It finally has come, and we thank God," she said, standing with her husband, son, and daughter-in-law after the execution. "People may think we're cruel, but the cruel part of this is not being able to have Christmas with Carol ever again."
The state's revised protocol allows executioners to give an additional dose of sedative if needed to ensure an inmate is unconscious before lethal drugs are administered. Roughly nine minutes before Wilson was pronounced dead, the warden stood by his right side, shook his shoulder, pinched his arm, and called Wilson's name to make sure the sedative had taken effect before going ahead with the second drug of a three-drug procedure. Wilson was calm during the execution process, and family members of Lutz, as well as a witnesses for Wilson, were silent and motionless as they watched.
Wilson's attorneys had sought to avoid his execution, telling the Ohio Parole Board he was beaten as a child by an alcoholic father who would handcuff him to a chair.
"There are millions of people who have rough childhoods and lives, and people don't do what he did," Martha Lutz said. "I know today his death was nothing, nothing like Carol's. There was no suffering, no pain, just him going off to sleep." 