Roberts doesn't mention victim in last words

Thursday, February 10th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) -- Michael Donald Roberts told family members who witnessed his execution early Thursday they would have to forgive a state that kills condemned men. He said nothing about Lula Mae Brooks, the 80-year-old Oklahoma City neighbor he was convicted of stabbing to death Jan. 16, 1988.

Attorney General Drew Edmondson said he chose to remember Brooks. "We must remember the reason the jury imposed the ultimate penalty in this case," Edmondson said. Brooks drowned in her own blood after being stabbed and having her throat cut.

Roberts, who lived three doors down from Brooks, confessed to killing her during a burglary of her home. He later recanted his confession during his trial. Edmondson said Roberts also confessed to 20 burglaries and one sexual assault and occasionally laughed and made light of victims' fears during a police interrogation. "This guy was a walking crime wave, " Edmondson said Wednesday afternoon, hours before Roberts' death.

In his last words, Roberts thanked his legal team and criticized the death penalty process. "What y'all see here today is wrong," he said as he was strapped to a gurney in the execution room of the H Unit, or death row, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. "This is supposed to be a Christian state," Roberts continued. "You just have to ask God to forgive them."

Two family members and an attorney were among six witnesses for Roberts. None of Brooks' family attended. As the time drew near, the U.S. Supreme Court, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Gov. Frank Keating denied requests from Roberts' attorneys to stop the execution.

Outside the prison walls Wednesday night, a few death penalty foes and advocates rallied separately to their causes with a prayer vigil and posters of murder victims. Inside, media witnesses who waited in the H Unit's cramped law library just before the execution could hear the rumble of condemned inmates banging on their cell doors and whistling and shouting, a common ritual on execution nights.

In the quiet viewing room, the blinds were opened about 12:15a.m. Two intravenous lines extended from an adjacent room through a hole in the wall. One line was attached to each arm. A microphone was mounted just above Roberts' head. Roberts told his family members seated in folding metal chairs in the viewing room that he loved them and that he loved his mother. "I love all of y'all and thank the good Lord for bringing you into my life," he said. He leaned up and looked at family members, who gave a restrained wave and a thumbs up. He leaned back down, then up again and made a kissing gesture to them.

Warden Gary Gibson ordered the execution to begin at 12:18 a.m. A minister read a passage from the fourth chapter of I Thessalonians on the second coming of Christ and finally, Psalm 23. A dose of sodium thiopental injected through one of the tubes caused Roberts to lose consciousness immediately. He panted, his shoulder twitched, then he stopped breathing about 12:19 as a dose of pancuronium bromide arrested his respiration. In the end, a doctor used a stethoscope to verify that an injection of potassium chloride stopped Roberts' heart. He was pronounced dead at 12:21.

Roberts became the 105th Oklahoma inmate to be executed since Henry Bookman on Dec. 10, 1915. He was the 22nd inmate executed since Oklahoma reinstated the death penalty by lethal injection in 1977 and injected the first inmate, Charles Troy Coleman, on Sept. 10, 1990. As of Feb. 1, there were 143 with a death sentences in Oklahoma with 141 inmates on death row, including 138 men and three women. Two more executions are scheduled for next month. Edmondson has said as many as 20 could be held this year.

Loyd Winford Lafevers is scheduled to die March 9 for the 1985 murder of 84-year-old Addie Hawley of Oklahoma City. Kelly Lamont Rogers is scheduled to be executed March 23 for the1990 murder of 21-year-old Karen Marie Lauffenburger in her Stillwater apartment. Ronald Keith Boyd's final appeal is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Boyd is convicted of the 1986 murder of Oklahoma City police officer Richard Oldham Riggs.