Man executed for murder of elderly woman

Eddie Leroy Trice, 48, was pronounced dead at 9:15 p.m. after receiving a lethal dose of drugs at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. He thanked his family and apologized to the victim's family.

"To my family, `I love you and I will always love you," he said shortly before he was executed. "To the other family, `I'm sorry again, God bless you."'

After the drugs were injected, he coughed, wheezed and went unconscious.

Trice was handed the death sentence for the Feb. 14, 1987, slaying of Ernestine Jones, 84, in her northeast Oklahoma City home.

The victim's son, Elmer Jones, and daughter, Velma Harris, thanked the media and state officials for helping their family.

"We also offer our sympathy to Mr. Trice and his family and he himself and I think he was very gracious in the end," Jones said.

"He told his family he loved them and to the victim's family that he was sorry. I'm sure with him saying that, he may be able to forgive himself."

Death penalty opponents held prayer vigils outside the prison before the execution and about 60 people held a protest outside the governor's mansion. Members of the Homicide Survivors Support Group set up displays of victims near the prayer vigil.

"Strapping him or her on a gurney and pumping poison into his or her veins ... is not a creative, humane or constructive solution to violent crime," Kevin Acers, president of the Oklahoma City chapter of Amnesty International, said at the protest outside the mansion.

Authorities said Trice entered Jones' home just after midnight through a bedroom window and beat Jones with a martial arts weapon, called nunchakus, before making off with $500.

Jones received blows to the head, fractured jaw and cheek bones, broken ribs and fingers and contusions to the heart and lungs. She was also raped.

Jones' 63-year-old retarded son, Emanuel Jones, was also severely beaten after attempting to come to his mother's aid.

Trice's roommate called police after Trice returned home with a lot of money and claimed to have whipped a homosexual with his nunchakus. The roommate said Trice had hidden his bloody clothes in a nearby abandoned house.

Trice was arrested four days after the murder and later confessed, said Oklahoma City police inspector Eric Mullenix. He was sentenced to death in June 1987.

"I have not the words to describe the brutality and savagery of what I observed in the crime scene," Mullenix wrote in October to oppose clemency for Trice. Mullenix said Trice never showed remorse. The state Pardon and Parole Board rejected the clemency request in November.

Jurors ruled that the death penalty was warranted because the crime met four of eight aggravating circumstances.

Trice had a previous felony conviction involving the use of threat of violence and knowingly created a great risk of death to more than one person during the crime.

Jurors also said the killing was a heinous, atrocious or cruel act and deemed Trice a continuing threat to society.

For his last meal, Trice requested fried chicken, potatoes with onions, sweet potato pie, hot rolls and a Coke, said Jerry Massie, a spokesman for the state corrections department.

Reforms that have shortened the appeals process and the fact that five of the condemned inmates have been on death row for more than 11 years have contributed to the surge in executions in Oklahoma.

Included among the eight executions planned by Feb. 1 include Wanda Jean Allen, who would be the first woman executed in Oklahoma since statehood. She was convicted in the 1988 shooting death of another woman and is scheduled to face the executioner on Thursday.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson sent Gov. Frank Keating a letter asking that he issue a death penalty moratorium.

"I appeal to you, as a fellow human being, to stop this bloodbath before it begins," wrote the longtime civil rights leader.

"On the heels of your national championship, you should be proud that Oklahoma is No. 1 in football," Jackson wrote.

"However, there should be no joy in the fact that Oklahoma will soon be No. 1 per capita in executions."

Keating, a strong death penalty advocate, has stood his ground.

"Instead of marching and demanding, what we ought to do is make sure the people who are subject to an execution have solid and sound representation and all of the scientific evidence to support their guilt," Keating said.

Trice was the 31st inmate executed in Oklahoma since Oklahoma restarted the death penalty and executed the first man by lethal injection in 1990. He was the 114th man executed in the state.