CINCINNATI (AP) — The attorney for an Ohio death-row inmate set for execution says the condemned man is sorry for killing two strangers 23 years ago and wants to give their families justice.
Forty-three-year-old Donald Palmer is in the state's single-cell death house in Lucasville in southern Ohio as state officials prepare to execute him by lethal injection at 10 a.m. Thursday.
His lawyer, David Stebbins of Columbus, says that he doesn't plan to file any other appeals on Palmer's behalf and expects the execution to proceed.
Palmer was convicted of aggravated murder in the May 1989 shooting deaths of Charles Sponhaltz and Steven Vargo along a Belmont County road in eastern Ohio. The married fathers both were shot in the head.
Both Sponhaltz's and Vargo's widows plan to attend the execution.
