10-10-2013, 07:42 PM
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Purveyor, Fine Asian Porn
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Join Date: Jul 2004
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The execution of 71-year-old Edward Harold Schad Jr. came about two hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his final appeals.
At about 10 a.m., the warden at the state prison in Florence read Schad's execution warrant and asked him if he had anything to say.
Schad responded: "Well, after 34 years I'm free to fly away home. Thank you, warden. Those are my last words."
He then lay quietly and looked at the ceiling as he was given a lethal dose of pentobarbital through IV needles in both arms. He was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m.
Schad, who was raised in the Syracuse area, was sentenced to death for killing Lorimer "Leroy" Grove, whose body was found Aug. 9, 1978, in underbrush off the shoulder of U.S. 89 south of Prescott. A sash-like cord used to strangle Grove was still knotted around his neck.
Schad was arrested several weeks later in Utah while driving Grove's Cadillac. Authorities say he had driven the car across the country, used Grove's credit cards and forged a check from Grove's bank account.
At the time, Schad was on parole for second-degree murder in the 1968 strangulation death of a male sex partner in Utah. His lawyers in that case said the death was an accident.
Schad was convicted in Grove's death in 1979 and again in 1985 after the previous conviction was thrown out. The conviction was upheld by the state Supreme Court in 1989 but later became tied up in a series of federal court appeals.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June lifted a stay put in place by an appeals court, ordering the court to issue the execution authorization.
Schad always maintained he didn't kill Grove but told the state's clemency board at a hearing last week that he has accepted his fate.
A top Yavapai County prosecutor told the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency that despite Schad's denial, he was twice convicted by juries that rejected his assertion of innocence.
"He doesn't take any responsibility for what he did," chief deputy Dennis McGrane told the board. "Accidents two times, died of strangulation? I don't think so."
The board refused to recommend to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer that Schad's sentenced be commuted to life in prison.
Schad's execution was Arizona's 35th since 1992. His death leaves 121 people on the death row in the state, including two women.
In his final hours, Schad thanked his lawyers and corrections officers who watched over him during the 35 days since his execution was scheduled, said Kelley Henry, a federal public defender who helped represent him.
"Ed Schad was a model inmate to the end," Henry said in a statement released by the defender's office in Phoenix.
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He always maintained his innocence and told the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency last week that he was a thief and a forger but not a murderer.
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Last night, Schad had a last meal of a 12-inch meatball submarine sandwich, a large order of french fries with catsup, two ears of corn on the cob, two ounces of cranberry sauce, a slice of apple pie and a 20-ounce vanilla milkshake.
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Schad maintains he should not have been on death row at all and claims Grove's murder, and an earlier murder he was convicted for, were a misunderstanding.
He was first arrested in Salt Lake City in 1968 and charged with killing a man named Clare Mortenson who was found naked with a white cloth over his face and neck and his hands tied behind his back.
Investigators found a credit-card receipt for an airline flight to Germany booked in Schad?s name, and military police arrested him there. He had Mortenson?s jacket in his duffel bag.
He was sent to prison and paroled in 1977.
Less than six months later, he murdered Lorimer Grove.
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