The Associated Press
LEBANON, Ohio — An inmate who was spared from execution last week by Ohio’s governor tells a newspaper he felt relief for his mother, because his death would have broken her heart.
Shawn Hawkins says she has already lost two children: one daughter to a childhood illness and another to a gunshot.
Hawkins was interviewed by The Columbus Dispatch at a prison in southwest Ohio on Tuesday, the day he was supposed to have died by lethal injection for a 1989 double killing in the Cincinnati area. Gov. John Kasich granted mercy last Wednesday, saying details of the case were “frustratingly unclear.”
The governor ordered that Hawkins spend life in prison with no chance of getting out, a fate Hawkins calls a “harsh reality.” His attorney is appealing for a new trial.