The Associated Press
LUCASVILLE, Ohio — Two U.S. men were executed Tuesday, one for killing his three sleeping sons, the other for killing a woman and her two daughters after they visited Disney World.
In Ohio, Reginald Brooks of East Cleveland who fatally shot his three sons while they slept in 1982, shortly after his wife filed for divorce, was executed in with each of his hands clenched in an obscene gesture.
In Florida, Oba Chandler was executed for killing an Ohio woman and her two teenage daughters in June 1989 as the victims returned from a dream vacation to Disney World.
Brooks died first at 2:04 p.m. local time, ending a nearly six-month break in the use of capital punishment in Ohio, which often trails only Texas in the number of annual inmate executions.
Dressed in the standard white T-shirt and blue pants, Brooks declined to make a final statement and remained silent as he received the lethal injection. Witnesses, which included his former wife and her sisters, had a view of his left hand, its middle finger raised. Prison officials said he was making the same gesture with his right hand.
Brooks’ actions appear to have been unprecedented since the state resumed executions in 1999. Condemned Ohio inmates in the past have criticized their sentences, professed their innocence, given angry final statements and pleaded to be spared, but never made an obscene gesture.
State and federal courts rejected attorneys’ arguments that Brooks was not mentally competent and that the government hid relevant evidence that could have affected his case. The execution was delayed by more than three hours as attorneys exhausted Brooks’ appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court refused Tuesday to halt the execution.
He is the fourth inmate in Ohio to be put to death using the surgical sedative pentobarbital as a stand-alone execution drug.
Beverly Brooks, who found her 11-, 15- and 17-year-old sons dead when she returned from work, and her two sisters sat silently during the execution, gripping each other’s shoulders or hands and occasionally sniffling. They were joined by a close friend, and all four wore white T-shirts printed with a photo of the boys.
At 66, Brooks is the oldest person put to death since Ohio resumed executions in 1999.
In Florida, Chandler, 65, was administered a lethal injection and pronounced dead at 4:25 p.m. local time Tuesday at the state prison, Gov. Rick Scott’s office said. Chandler’s death warrant was the second Scott has signed since taking office.
Chandler was convicted in 1994 of killing 36-year-old Joan Rogers and her daughters, Christe and Michelle, who were 14 and 17. The three were on vacation in Florida — their first ever — and were on their way home to their small farming community in Ohio when they met Chandler.
Authorities concluded that the women met Chandler when they stopped and asked him for directions to their Tampa-area motel. Chandler, who had ties to Ohio, sweet-talked the women into going on his boat, police said.
Once there, detectives said Chandler bound the womens’ arms and legs, tied concrete blocks to ropes around their necks, then threw them overboard. The three were found floating in Tampa Bay a few days later, naked from the waist down.
Detectives didn’t crack the case for three years. Two things helped make the arrest: a tourist brochure with Chandler’s handwriting was found in Rogers’ car, and Chandler looked similar to a composite sketch of a suspect wanted in an unsolved assault of a Canadian woman aboard a boat in Tampa Bay.
Authorities took the unusual step of publicizing the handwriting on the tourist brochure, putting it on a billboard to see if anyone recognized it.
One of Chandler’s neighbors recognized the writing and called authorities.
For his last meal, Chandler ate two salami sandwiches on white bread, a half of a peanut butter sandwich and coffee.