ANGOLA, La., May 16 -- Convicted killer Thomas Lee Ward was executed early Tuesday by lethal injection at Louisiana State Penitentiary for the 1983 murder of his stepfather. Ward, 59, was declared dead at 12:12 a.m. CDT by Dr. Royce McAnally, Coroner of West Feliciana Parish, said Warden Burl Cain. Ward was convicted of fatally shooting Wilbert John Spencer and wounding his wife during a domestic dispute. The shooting occurred as Ward tried to remove his eight children from his stepfather's New Orleans home. In a strange twist, Ward was married to Spencer's daughter Linda at the time, but Ward also had lived with Spencer's wife Lydia 25 years earlier. Ward's last few hours at the prison 40 miles north of Baton Rouge were uneventful. He requested and received servings of butter pecan ice cream and grapes, but declined to talk to a minister, instead opting to spend the time with his attorney. Six witnesses observed the execution through a glass partition, including three members of the press. Cain said he was alone with the condemned man in the death chamber when the lethal mixture of drugs was administered. At two minutes after midnight, 'to make sure the clock wasn't fast' and leave time for a last minute call from the Supreme Court or the governor's office, Cain said, he nodded to the executioner in another room who sent a deadly mix of chemicals coursing into Ward's left arm through an intravenous line. 'He took two real deep breaths soon after the injection then stopped breathing,' Cain said, adding that Ward remained calm throughout the process.
From the time he entered the death chamber in leg and arm restraints and was strapped to a gurney, until he stopped breathing, Ward kept his eyes closed and remained silent, Cain said. Six witnesses observed the execution, some in tears, Cain said. The execution had its opponents. A New Orleans anti-death penalty coalition had asked Boston death penalty specialists Greg Bialecki and David Hoffman to represent Ward. They argued that Ward was sentenced to death because of his sordid past. During the trial, jurors were allowed to hear testimony that Ward had sexually molested his 10-year-old daughter and other children. His lawyers said that at the time of the murder, Ward was drinking heavily and taking cocaine, and saw Spencer as someone trying to keep him from his children. Ward wanted to take his home to his native New York. Bialecki and Hoffman questioned the instructions to the jury in the Ward case. They also said there was no premeditation, robbery, or other circumstance that, under the law, are required to mandate the death penalty. The State Pardon Board refused to commute Ward's sentence and the U. S. Supreme Court reported just before midnight Monday that it would not hear the case. The two women in the case, Ward's former wife and Spencer's wife, told the Pardon Board that they wanted Ward to die. They said he told them that, 'if he ever got free, he would come looking for (us) and finish the job'.
