Ohio executes Darryl Durr

As his victim's mother watched, Darryl Durr (pictured) was executed this morning for abducting and murdering 16-year-old Angel Vincent of Elyria.

Durr, 46, was pronounced dead at 10:36 a.m. after being injected with a single, large dose of thiopental sodium, a powerful anesthetic.

Durr's legal team threw up a flurry of last-minute appeals, claiming he might have a severe allergic reaction to the killing drug and that it has not been approved for executions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio filed a suit as well, arguing that Durr was illegally prevented from obtaining a DNA test on the dead girl's necklace that could have produced evidence showing he was not guilty of the crime.

State and federal courts rejected all the appeals, however, clearing the way for Durr's execution - Ohio's fourth in as many months and 37th since 1999.

Gov. Ted Strickland rejected Durr's clemency request yesterday.

The condemned man contended to the end that he was innocent not only of killing Vincent, but of committing rapes of other young women with which he was also charged.

Courts records said Vincent disappeared from her home in Elyria on Jan. 31, 1988. Earlier that evening, the girl spoke with her mother by telephone, telling her that her friend, Deborah Mullins, was with her, and that Mullins' boyfriend, Durr, was coming to the house.

She was never seen alive again.

About 3 months later, 3 boys playing in Brookside Park found the girl's body wrapped in a blanket inside 2 orange barrels placed open end to end. The body was so badly decomposed that the coroner could not accurately determine the cause of death.

Durr was charged with Vincent's death in Sept. 1988 after being arrested for raping 2 other young women.

Mullins testified against her former boyfriend, who is the father of her daughter, also named Angel. She said she saw Vincent bound and gagged in Durr's car. He later told Mullins that he "wasted" the girl, choking her to death with her dog-tag necklace.

Durr burned some of Vincent's clothes and threw away the others, Mullins testified.

Durr becomes the 4th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Ohio and the 37th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999.

Durr becomes the 13th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1201st overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Sources: Columbus Dispatch & Rick Halperin, April 20, 2010

Related:
Da'rryl Durr on the death penalty
by Erwin James, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 April 2010

In a telephone call from death row, Da'rryl Durr describes capital punishment as 'murder by the state'.