toledoblade.com --

LUCASVILLE, Ohio - Condemned inmate William Zuern did not want to listen.

In the hours leading to his death yesterday morning, Zuern stuck toilet paper in his ears as members of the execution team explained the lethal injection procedure and were ready to answer his questions.

"He said he didn't want to hear anything they had to say," said Andrea Dean, a state prison spokesman.

Zuern's sisters, Ruby Simpkins and Ester Zuern, traveled to the state maximum-security prison from their homes in the Dayton area.

Zuern, 45, refused to meet with them. They left the prison 90 minutes before the execution, and a prison official described them as very sad.

"They wanted to visit with their brother before the execution, and he chose not to," said Ms. Dean. "That is why they haven't visited him in his entire prison stay. He told them not to come and see him. They thought because this would be the last time they could be together as a family, he would have a change of heart today. But in fact he did not do that."

The state executed Zuern, a former Cincinnati resident, for the aggravated murder of Phillip Pence, a jail officer at the Community Correctional Institution, which was known as the "workhouse" and is now closed.

Zuern was in jail on charges that he murdered 26-year-old Gregory Earls. On June 9, 1984, Mr. Pence and other jail guards went to search Zuern's cell after being tipped off he had made a knife out of a piece of metal.

As the cell door opened, Zuern stabbed the 26-year-old Pence in the chest, piercing his heart.

"William Zuern went too easy today," said Gary Roush, a fellow Hamilton County sheriff's deputy who was 22 and with Mr. Pence when Zuern stabbed him. "I believe he should have died the way that Phil died; the panicked look on his face, the pain."

"Any opponents of the death penalty, this case here is nothing worse than putting a mad dog to sleep. In society, there is a place for vengeance," said Mr. Roush, who now works for a township police department in Clermont County.

The time of Zuern's death was 10:04 a.m. He was the 12th man to be executed in Ohio since the state resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1999.

Zuern never made eye contact with the three victim witnesses and did not struggle or show any emotion as he was strapped to the gurney and injected with three drugs that made him unconscious, paralyzed his lungs, and stopped his heart. He had declined to choose anyone to witness his death.

When asked by Warden James Haviland if he had a final statement, Zuern replied: "Nope."

"I did tell the victim's family that it hits closer to home, especially since there were … people murdered right here at this prison," said state prison director Reginald Wilkinson, referring to the 1993 riot in which one guard was killed.

"The people who work in this business are a pretty tight-knit group of people, and definitely don't like it when people disrespect the people who perform this very serious work," Mr. Wilkinson added.

Zuern became the first condemned inmate since 1999 to decline access to a spiritual adviser, Ms. Dean said.

Shortly after arriving at the maximum-security prison in Lucasville on Monday from death row at the prison in Mansfield, he asked for the Bible to be removed from his holding cell. It was.

Despite placing toilet paper in his ears, Zuern could hear what the execution team members told him about the lethal injection process, Ms. Dean said. In the holding cell down the hall from the execution chamber, Zuern kept his back to the execution team members in the hours leading to his death and was very distant, Ms. Dean said.

Zuern's funeral is set for tomorrow afternoon. His body will be buried at the state prison cemetery in Chillicothe.

Zuern asked the state to throw away the personal belongings he brought with him to Lucasville from Mansfield: a radio, five books, a fan, envelopes, a typewriter, and containers of hot sauce, cocoa butter, and garlic powder.

Contact James Drew at:
jdrew@theblade.com
or 614-221-0496.

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