Spenkelink

goes to chair

From First Page

"There are no stays at this time. May God be with us," an aide quoted Graham as saying before he hung up the phone.

Opponents of capital punishment gave all they had to the Spenkelink case, fearing that if he went many of the more than 500 others on the nation's death rows would follow.

Although Spenkelink was white, foes of the death penalty say it is used most often against minorities. A black prisoner, Willie Jasper Darden Jr., had originally been scheduled to die with Spenkelink, but he won a-stay.

Spenkelink was strapped immobile in the three-legged chair called "Old Sparky" when a curtain was raised, making him visible. to 32 witnesses, at 10 am.

Spenkelink could not speak. A heavy strap bound his chin. "He looked terrified and helpless," said Tom Slaughter, an Associated Press writer. "His eyes were wide open."

Behind a wall, a hooded executioner threw a switch to send a series of charges through Spenkelink's body.

The execution started 12 minutes late, heightening the tension among the several dozen protesters and the dozens of reporters who gathered in a field a quarter-mile from the prison. Executions traditionally start a little late to give time for last-minute stays of execution.

In the back of the witness room, Feamster read from the 5th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.

Then he spoke to the witnesses: "I hope you gentlemen are praying that this is just and merciful pun-

ishment. In the name of God, for our sake."

With less than two hours left in his life, Spenkelink did deliver a written epitaph to Feamster during the minister's last visit to the death house.

"Man is what he chooses to be. He chooses that for himself," Spenkelink wrote. He also took communion.

Outside the prison, Spenkelink's sister Carol wept in the arms of her husband, Tim Meyers. Spenkelink's 67-year-old mother, Lois, who had spoken frequently with reporters before the execution, was in seclusion withfriends

afterwards.

Spenkelink's supporters complained many times that the prisoner and his family were, brutalized by his brushes with the executioner. In 1977, he won a stay three days before his execution date. And his original date with the chair Wednesday morning was put off with less than eight hours

to go.

-Spinkelink, son of an Iowa farmer. who committed suicide when John was 11 the boy himself found his father's body and removed the hose from the exhaust pipe that fed carbon monoxide into the family car lived the life of a loner and a loser.

-

In one scrape after another throughout his teens, he was ultimately convicted in 1973 of murdering a fellow ex-convict in a Tallahassee motel room while he was then on escape from à California prison.

The victim was bludgeoned with a hatchet and shot twice John Spinkelink maintained to the last

This is a sketch of John A. Spenkelink as he appeared to artist Howard Brodie who witnessed the execution. Two masked executioners are shown at left. Before the current was turned on, a hood was placed over Spenkelink's head.

that the killing was in self-defense and that the man had forced him to commit homosexual acts, robbed him and held him prisoner.

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Although his case reached the Supreme Court six times, that contention was never given credence.

Spenkelink's lawyers blocked the Wednesday morning execution with. stays from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and U.S. Court of Appeals (5th Circuit) Judge Elbert Tuttle of Atlanta.

The Supreme Court overturned Marshall's stay Thursday morning and a three-judge panel in New Orleans lifted Tuttle's stay Thursday night. No other judge would halt the execution.

Associated Press

A 1977 photo of John A. Spenkelink.