Judge refuses TV execution suit

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A judge refused to delay Friday's execution of convicted killer Alton Coleman, despite his lawyers' arguments that a closed-circuit transmission would turn his death into a "spectator sport."\nColeman's lawyers were considering appealing the decision and also on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to delay the execution.\nColeman, of Waukegan, Ill., is scheduled to die Friday by injection for the 1984 beating death of Marlene Walters, 44, of Norwood in suburban Cincinnati. He also has been convicted of four murders that occurred during a multistate crime spree in 1984 and has been sentenced to death in Indiana and Illinois.\nJudge Beverly Pfeiffer of Franklin County Common Pleas Court on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit that sought to prevent the state from televising Coleman's scheduled execution to relatives of his victims.\nBecause there are so many witnesses from victims' families, the state plans to let them watch Coleman's execution from a closed-circuit television in a room of the prison where he will be executed.\nPfeiffer said Coleman's lawyers presented no evidence to justify their claim that broadcasting the execution on closed-circuit television would violate his rights.\n"The judge has sanctioned Mr. Coleman's execution to being a spectator sport," said Lori Leon, an attorney representing Coleman.\nColeman's lawyers argued that state law prohibits broadcasting equipment at executions, but Pfeiffer said the law referred only to recording an execution.\n"It's a closed-circuit transmission," she said. "It goes from one room to another. There is no capability for any recording to be made."\nShe also said there is nothing in state law preventing prison officials from inviting an unlimited number of reporters to watch an execution.\nThe state "could authorize 250 members of the news media and that doesn't violate an offender's rights," she said. "But the minute there are three additional family members, that somehow does violate an offender's rights."\nColeman was sentenced to die in Indiana for killing Tamika Turks, 7, of Gary, in 1984. Coleman's common-law wife, Debra Denise Brown, traveled with him during the killing spree and was sentenced to death in the Turks killing.\nIndiana prosecutors say Coleman and Brown lured Turks and her 9-year-old aunt into a wooded area as they left a candy store near their Gary home.\nWhile Brown held Tamika Turks' nose and mouth, Coleman stomped on her chest. The pair then raped the older girl and choked her until she was unconscious, but she survived to testify against them in court.\nAlso on Tuesday, Coleman's lawyers asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to stop the execution.\nThe request was part of an appeal of a decision Monday by U.S. District Judge Sandra Beckwith of Cincinnati. Beckwith rejected an argument that Coleman was ineffectively represented by his lawyers in appealing his capital-murder conviction in the Walters' case.\n Monday, Coleman asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his claim that prosecutors chose a racially biased jury 17 years ago. He also asked Justice John Paul Stevens, who oversees death penalty appeals in Ohio, to delay the execution while the court considers the appeal.\n The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal April 16 on a technical procedure and refused to postpone Coleman's execution.\n Coleman, 46, has accused prosecutors of racism during jury selection in his 1985 trial for Walters' death.\n Coleman's lawyers claimed that then-Hamilton County Prosecutor Arthur Ney's team improperly removed nine of 12 black jurors from the trial. Coleman is black.\nThe Ohio Supreme Court unanimously ruled Friday that Coleman's request came too late. It should have been raised on the direct appeal of his conviction, rather than after his appeals ran out, the court said.