Inhuman Killer's Justice is Denied

Perhaps a better way to execute this guy would be to chop his head off. Justice must be served on this guy, if not lethal injection then what? Maybe he could choose the method of his own execution. Yeah, give each person to be executed a choice... hanging, beheading, or lethal injection. Which would you choose?

U.S. Supreme Court blocks execution of inmate who scattered victim's remains

ERICA RYAN Associated Press Writer

(AP) - LUCASVILLE, Ohio-The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution of a man who had been scheduled to die for killing a woman in 1991 and scattering her remains across two states.

Kenneth Biros - and the family of the victim, Tami Engstrom - had waited for the decision more than six hours past his scheduled execution time Tuesday. When told of the ruling, Biros' mother clasped his hands through the bars of his cell and he thanked God, said defense attorney John P. Parker.

The justices' one-sentence decision agreed with two lower courts that delayed the execution so he could continue arguing that Ohio's method of lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused earlier Tuesday to allow a hearing before the full court to consider the state's appeal.

"To put these poor people through that is just not right," defense attorney Timothy Sweeney said of Biros and his family.

Prisons director Terry Collins said the state planned to move Biros out of the death house shortly after the ruling came.

Biros, 48, acknowledged that he killed Engstrom, 22, but said he did it during a drunken rage.

They met after work in 1991 at a tavern. Police believed she fled his advances and fell or was struck or strangled when Biros tried to quiet her. An autopsy found several beating and stab wounds before her death, and the coroner said she was stabbed five times immediately afterward and dismembered within minutes.

Engstrom's head, right breast and right leg had been severed. Intestines were found in a swampy area in Ohio, and the torso was found in a rural area of Pennsylvania. Part of a liver was found in Biros' car.

Engstrom's sister, Debi Heiss, 41, had said previously that the delay had been hard on her family. She said after the execution was called off that she was too upset to talk.

State Attorney General Marc Dann said he would renew his efforts to have the sentence carried out.