Maryland Executes Oken

Ehrlich, a strong supporter of the death penalty, had pledged repeatedly since taking office that he would carefully review any case that came before him. This was his first opportunity to do so, and Ehrlich wrote that he had employed "a deliberative process," examining all the facts and judicial opinions, and "as thoughtful decision making as I am able to summon in this so tragic matter."

In an interview earlier in the day, Ehrlich said he was not troubled by the weight of the decision. "That's why I get paid," he said. "Executives make decisions. If you have difficulty making tough decisions, maybe you shouldn't be an executive. It's part of the job."

Oken faced the death penalty for Garvin's slaying. He received two terms of life without parole for his other crimes -- the killing in Maryland of his sister-in-law, Patricia Hirt, and the slaying of Lori Ward, a young motel clerk in Maine whom he chanced upon while fleeing up the coast. By agreement between the states, had Ehrlich granted clemency to any degree, Oken would have been transferred to Maine and served the rest of his life behind bars there.

The governor's conclusion, though, was no surprise: "It is my decision not to override the judicial determinations of the sentence of death imposed upon Steven Oken." In a separate statement, he said, "My sympathies tonight lie with the families of all those involved in these heinous crimes."

The various groups that have rallied around Oken, despite the details of the murders and his undisputed guilt, lamented Ehrlich's refusal to intervene. "That would have been the humane thing to do and would have avoided the media circus" of the past week, said Cathy Knepper, Amnesty International's coordinator for abolition of the death penalty in Maryland. "I'm thinking of the Romano and Oken families. This was all unnecessary, and I can't imagine what it's put these two families through. Because he clearly was never going to get out."

But after more than a decade of court appeals, Bennett said his client was "ready to die." Before being transported across the street from the Supermax prison, where officials recently moved him from death row to solitary confinement, Oken composed a two-page letter to Ehrlich that Bennett said expresses contrition.

Oken offered no words for the witnesses as he lay on the padded, stainless steel table, catheters inserted in both arms and a pale blue sheet pulled up to his chest. Witnesses said Oken was conscious and seemed to be joking with a prison chaplain immediately before the procedure.

He offered no resistance as the solution began to flow at 9:09. There was no movement after 9:11. He was pronounced dead at 9:18.

Seventeen years ago, Oken was a college dropout working at his parents' pharmacy near Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and watching as his marriage fell apart. He'd been drinking heavily, stealing antidepressants and other drugs from the pharmacy shelves and generally spiraling downward.

In court, he initially claimed that he could not remember what happened the night Garvin was killed -- a memory lapse he blamed on the booze, pills and a "sexual sadism" that he could not control. Psychiatrists who testified for him after he recovered his memory late in the trial provided horrific details of what he said he did to Garvin after he approached her as she walked her dog and persuaded her to let him use her phone.

Garvin's father discovered her body in her White Marsh apartment, a nightmarish scene that has haunted him ever since.

"You are a very evil and dangerous man," declared Baltimore County Circuit Judge James T. Smith Jr. at the conclusion of Oken's trial in 1991. His death penalty launched appeals in state and federal court on a multiplicity of issues. Twice, Maryland's highest court came within one vote of ruling that Supreme Court decisions had rendered his sentence illegal. One death warrant lapsed because of an execution moratorium imposed by then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D), responding to growing concern about racial and geographic disparities in the way the system is administered in Maryland.

Staff writer Matthew Mosk contributed to this report.