The Life and Death of Dennis McGuire
Dennis McGuire died suddenly…or not so suddenly depending on who you talk to, at the hands of the state of Ohio Thursday, January 16th at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio. Mr McGuire was executed for the 1994 rape and murder of 22-year old Joy Stewart, who was 7 months pregnant at the time of her death.
What is making national headlines is that it took Mr. McGuire substantially longer to die from lethal injection because Ohio was forced to use a 2-drug lethal combo instead of the 3-drug combo they had previously used. It seems European countries, where the drugs are obtained, have stopped supplying these drugs due to their position against capital punishment.
To the witnesses who watched the execution; which included the press, and family members from both the victim and the condemned, it appeared that Mr. McGuire, while unconscious, was gasping for breath for 10 to 15 minutes. In total, according to witnesses, it took Mr. McGuire 24 minutes to die.
His legal team, in weeks leading up to his execution, had filed appeals using testimony from a law professor who argued that McGuire would "suffocate to death in agony and terror." The ACLU will use McGuire’s execution to argue that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment.
There’s no easy way around this business of capital punishment. I don’t care how many different names we call it to lighten the brutality of it…stopping one’s heart from beating is nasty business. Our bodies instinctively fight back. They will marshal every last ounce of energy in its effort to survive. The whole argument of saying that we have to find a painless way to put down these individuals we deem unworthy to live seems foolish. No matter what you call it, or how you do it…it is still killing someone. If you are against capital punishment then be against capital punishment. This argument that it is inhumane because of the way we choose to end a person’s life just seems like you are trying to win on a technicality.
What seems lost to me in all this national attention regarding Mr. McGuire’s last half hour on Earth, is what about the victim’s last half hour? I’d also like to spend a few minutes talking about the person that Mr McGuire killed. Perhaps chronicling her death is noteworthy as well. After all, Mr. McGuire would still be alive if he hadn’t killed Mrs. Stewart and her unborn child.
I was a victim of an armed robbery. I had a loaded gun pointed at me by a monster, who threatened to kill me if he didn’t get what he wanted. So I have some firsthand experience of what Joy Stewart went through. Thankfully, God allowed me to get off my terror train prior to arriving at the final stop. Unfortunately, Joy Stewart wasn’t so lucky. I was around 23 when it happened to me. I am now 64, and it is still fresh in my mind all these years later.
The first thing one experiences, when confronted by someone wishing to do you harm, is stunned disbelief. You are going about your business, absorbed in your daily routine when you are suddenly jolted into a reality of horror. At first you think it is someone pulling a prank. You are trying not to over-react because you don’t want to appear foolish. Is anyone around..who is watching? What comes next is the horrible realization that this isn’t a joke…this is really happening.
Your body starts to kick into survival mode. Suddenly the cobwebs quickly clear from your brain. Your heart starts racing and your mind starts going into overdrive as your instincts race to access the situation. Can I escape? Can I run? Should I scream? You mentally start checking off all your options…and, as was my situation, you soon come to realize there is no option; but to do as you are ordered.
You comply with your captor in the hopes you will be released unharmed. Your mind starts replaying the events prior to this horrible moment. You think of leaving the house that morning; saying goodbye, in my case, to my wife and my 2-year son…thinking about my last words to them, and them to me. I remember regretting that I didn’t say more…feeling sad for not hugging them one more time, kissing them longer.
Next, comes anger. You feel so violated…so helpless. Someone is holding you against your will. They are threatening to kill you, and you hate this feeling of helplessness. You wonder how the rest of the world could be going about its normal routine, while your world is totally turned upside down.
As I said at the beginning, my journey ended at this point. The robber got the money he was after and I lived to tell about it all these years later. For Joy Stewart, the journey continued. Joy Stewart was sodomized by Mr. McGuire while a knife was held against her throat. She probably thought, if she just gave him this, he would let her live. Instead, Mr. McGuire then slit her throat. She lay on the ground in her own pool of blood as her life slipped away. She died alone, except for the monster who did this to her. She wasn’t surrounded by family, or friends. Her hopes and dreams were taken away. I imagine that her breathing, in the final moments of her life, was labored too. A husband and her family were left to relive her death through countless court proceedings.
I know that killing Mr. McGuire will not bring Joy back. The murderer recently wrote a letter of apology to Joy’s family. The family accepted the apology, but also felt that Mr. McGuire should pay for his crime…and so he did. During his lengthy appeal process over the last 20-plus years, new DNA evidence came forward; which confirmed that the right man had been found guilty. McGuire, in a last ditch effort to avoid last Thursday, had written a letter to Ohio’s governor in which he confessed that he had been Joy’s murderer.
Sadly, with these things…there are no winners, only losers. I just felt it important to chronicle Joy’s last half hour…we owed her that much!
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