LUCASVILLE, Ohio - For the first time since Ohio resumed executions in 1999 after 36 years, a condemned inmate resisted yesterday as the state prepared to kill him.

Four guards on the execution team had to carry Lewis Williams into the death chamber at the state maximum-security prison. Williams was convicted of fatally shooting a 76-year-old Cleveland woman in the face during a 1983 robbery in her home.

In an effort to settle a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed last year, the state yesterday for the first time allowed witnesses to watch the execution team prepare the inmate for lethal injection.

What unfolded prompted Reginald Wilkinson, director of the state prison system, to say that the state would re-examine whether witnesses should be allowed to see it again.

“I would say it was disturbing; I would say it was traumatic, probably as traumatic as anything our staff has gone through,” Mr. Wilkinson said. Williams, 45, was the first of the nine men executed in Ohio since 1999 to resist.

At 9:51 a.m., guards escorted Williams from a holding cell to a “prep” room down the hall from the death chamber.

Williams knelt and then grabbed onto a gurney in the room as execution team members prepared to place shunts in both of his arms. The shunts are used to make it easier to inject the inmate with sodium pentothal, which puts the condemned to sleep; pancuronium bromide, which stops the breathing; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Several execution team members picked up Williams and placed him on the gurney. At least nine guards strapped Williams - who was 5-foot-3 and and weighed 117 pounds - to the gurney.

Williams yelled, shook his head, and tried to lift himself. Watching on a television monitor from the nearby witness room, his mother, 66-year-old Bonnie Williams of Columbus, sobbed uncontrollably and her knees shook.

“I m not guilty, I m not guilty, God, please help me,” Williams yelled at about 10:04 a.m. as four execution team members carried him into the death chamber with the shunts in place. “God, please help me,” Williams said several times, as he was strapped to the gurney in the death chamber.

Tears could be seen from his left eye.

At 10:06 a.m., an execution team member attached the tubes carrying the flow of lethal chemicals to the shunts in Williams arms.

Bonnie Williams got out of her chair and leaned against the window that separated her from her son. Williams didn t look at her. She continued to sob.

“God, please help, God, please hear my cry,” Williams said several times.

A minute later, Williams stopped speaking, and his mother s cries became louder. “My boy,” she said.

Williams was convicted in Cuyahoga County in the murder and robbery of Leoma Chmielewski, a neighbor of his cousin s who was found in her home on the east side of Cleveland on Jan. 21, 1983. There was blood flowing from a bullet hole in her head and her purse was gone.

Mrs. Chmielewski s stepdaughter, Dorothy Beverly, did not witness Williams execution because she did not have transportation from the Cleveland area to Lucasville, said state prison spokesman Andrea Dean. The state called Ms. Beverly to inform her of Williams death, Ms. Dean said.

At a court hearing last year, Ms. Beverly told the Associated Press that she was “totally outraged” that the state had allowed Williams to avoid execution for 20 years. Williams was scheduled to be executed last year, but he received a delay after claiming he was mentally retarded - a claim that courts rejected.

Before yesterday s execution, witnesses first saw the inmate escorted into the death chamber and then strapped to the gurney. They watched on two monitors as a closed-circuit TV camera on the ceiling showed the execution team preparing Williams for the execution in the nearby prep room.

Stephen Ferrell, an assistant state public defender who represented Williams, said it was an “awful thing to watch, someone struggling like that.”

“I ve known Lewis for 10 years, and it was horrible,” Mr. Ferrell said.

Williams attorneys tried unsuccessfully to delay his execution by arguing that pancuronium bromide can wear off and the inmate can be conscious as the final drug stops the heart. They said that is a violation of the federal Constitution s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, an argument the state denied. A federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to delay Williams execution.

Mr. Ferrell said there was no way to determine if Williams suffered yesterday. “The drugs prevent anyone from seeing it. We really don t know what he was feeling,” he said.

About 30 minutes after Williams execution, Mr. Wilkinson said he did not like using closed-circuit TV to show the execution team preparing the condemned inmate for the execution. “I don t know what the value is of doing that,” he said.

The ACLU of Ohio Foundation sued the state in federal court in Columbus, charging that the state has violated the law by inserting the needles used to inject lethal chemicals into the inmate s arm “outside the view of witnesses.”

The ACLU said that practice violated a state law requiring that executions are held in front of witnesses and was an attempt by the state to “sanitize what is essentially a brutal process.”

“The state would often lead us to believe that an execution is putting someone to sleep - not at all the case,” said Christine Link, executive director of ACLU-Ohio. “It is a horrific experience for all involved.”

She said the ACLU would fight any effort by the state to prevent witnesses from being able to see the execution team prepare the inmate for death.

Jim Canepa, chief deputy attorney general, said the state prison system agreed to expand what the witnesses can see to settle the ACLU s lawsuit. “It is not unusual or unexpected to believe an inmate who is punished to death did not want to do that. The mother of the inmate reacts sadly. The cameras have nothing to do with that,” he said.

Mr. Wilkinson praised the professionalism of the 12-member execution team. “The staff here are about managing this process. Only a few people in the world do something like this.”

With Williams execution, Ohio now has 211 inmates on death row.

First Published January 15, 2004, 1:29 p.m.