Last Bad Words

An interesting discussion for the journalism wonks: if the last words are words you cannot say on broadcast radio and television or print in the family-friendly newspaper are they still newsworthy?

First, bad words.

When asked for any last words before execution Richard Wade Cooey responded "...you mother******s haven't paid attention to what I've had to say the past 22 years, why are you going to pay attention to what I have to say now." It isn't surprising to know that would be his final statement; Cooey never took responsibility for the kidnap, rape and murders of Dawn McCreery and Wendy Offredo during interviews in 2003 with the Beacon Journal's Phil Trexler or myself, and he didn't seem to have any remorse in his last interview with the Associated Press.

Behind the view of the story: this was one of the topics our reporter, Chris Keppler, was concerned about before heading down to Lucasville. What if those last words were nothing but profanity? How would we -- should we -- report for the record? Should his reporting of Cooey's statement exclude those words we won't say on the air out of deference to our audience and the threat of hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines? Does it glorify someone of Cooey's stature to give his vulgarity the same treatment we would a White House pronouncement?

Phil Trexler and Eric Mansfield, our colleagues at the Beacon Journal and WKYC Channel 3 News, must have had similar thoughts. These are words we hear often in the context of anger and hate, far too often...but not those we would share with friends and family back home. They carried the additional burden, as did Chris, of serving as witnesses for the media and charged with presenting what happened in Ohio's death chamber to the rest of the media waiting outside.

They were the record.

The concerns Chris had were appropriate and on the money; it was profane, it was something we would normally not report verbatim on the air, and like it or not it did get the treatment of a top story, even to the point of making national newscasts.

State executions in Ohio are still relatively rare enough to make the news, although certainly not at the level when they first resumed in 1999 with Wilford "The Volunteer" Berry. Summit County's Robert Buell died by lethal injection in 2002; their story and that of the victims of their crimes were and will continue to be news. We are an odd mix of readers, listeners and viewers when it comes to these stories: on the surface we don't want to be confronted by such evil, but we don't shy away from looking for these stories. In a world of grey the choices of right or wrong are never more stark than in capital cases, even as the debate continues on whether the death penalty is ever appropriate.

For our part in our newsroom, we decided it was important to frame what Cooey said as clearly as possible. Our Operations Manager ran into the room when Chris first filed his report on WAKR, saying the use of "M-F" was wrong. I disagree, and told Chris this morning it was appropriate since it conveyed the record of what happened -- the reason Chris was in Lucasville as a witness. His job was to act as the eyes and ears of those back home, and act as a filter only in the extreme. Not using the entire phrase verbatim was responsible, but somehow downplaying it as "expletive deleted" soft-peddles the evil killer without a soul portrayed by Wendy and Dawn's families.

It isn't pandering to report how and what he said, as clearly and honestly as we can without crossing that line. I tend to side on reporting the truth, and the truth is Richard Cooey left this world much as many of you reading this post expected -- a man condemned by more than a three judge panel.

I had a similar issue in 2006 when Glenn Benner was executed for the slayings of Cynthia Sedgwich in 1985 and Trina Bowser in 1986, but this time the profanity came from a family member who wasn't buying Benner's last words. As a pool reporter it was my job to report what I had seen and heard, which I did -- in true detail -- following the execution. For our reporting I noted the family had strong language but didn't cross the line of a verbatim report.

It wasn't my job to filter what was happening; we can leave that to pundits on news talk shows; as reporters it is our duty to report.

Cooey Isn't The Victim

There's been plenty of writing and reporting over the past few weeks on the scheduled execution of Richard Wade Cooey that refers to his kidnap, rape and murders of "...two University of Akron coeds."

Enough. The real victims have names.

Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery were simply wrapping up a night's work at the Brown Derby restaurant and were looking forward to a night of fun before turning in. It was simple until Cooey, buddy Clint Dickens and a friend thought it would be a hoot to drop chunks of concrete from a highway overpass onto the vehicles below.

Vehicles driven by people just like Wendy and Dawn. It was Wendy and Dawn in that car when the man-made rock crashed into their car. Cooey and company flocked to the scene like vultures, but at first they were the doves of peace -- offering to help, even driving the girls to use the phone to call their parents. Wendy and Dawn were found later, when it was too late for any help.


Cooey, 19, got a death sentence handed down by three judges; Dickens got life in prison thanks to the calendar and being under 18 at the time.

Wendy and Dawn had full lives ahead of them, both attending University, both working hard to make their way through the world. They were so typical of young women then and today: opportunities they had the power to make for themselves. Wendy and Dawn are your daughters, your sisters, your friends, your girlfriends, your mothers.

But they've been somehow lost in this equation as the attention of the legal system and the media following behind focuses on one of the men who victimized and are not victims. We must remember them, we should mourn their loss, we shouldn't forget their faces forever frozen in memory, we shouldn't describe them as just the "coeds."

What he took away from Dawn McCreery and Wendy Offredo and their families is the reason Richard Cooey is where he is. He's not in this situation because the law was stacked against him; judge after judge has heard the case, to the point where it is a new generation of judges and appeals panels that listen to the petitions of an even newer generation of public defenders who represent him. It is a new generation of prosecutors who represent Dawn and Wendy, and the families that have waited for what the justice system promised them more than two decades ago. It is a new generation of reporters who write the stories who need to remember behind the tale of a killer is the stolen hope and promise of two young women who deserve to be remembered for who they were, not what Richard Cooey turned them into.


On Tuesday morning, barring again any last-minute rulings from appeals courts that have already ruled on fitness to take a needle, or turned aside arguments prison food made him too fat to kill, or the medicines he got behind bars makes injection cruel, Richard Cooey will lead the story but it is Wendy and Dawn who should be on our minds.

Defense 101: "I'm Too Fat" To Kill

There are times I think "only in America"...and today's story out of the Richard Cooey saga fits the bill. His defense lawyers now claim being overweight is reason to spare this killer's life.

I remember interviewing Cooey prior to his first trip to the Death Chamber in Lucasville. Even then he was a beefy guy, but I attributed much to muscle from what many inmates take as a daily weight-lifting regimen behind bars. It was my distinct impression, back then, that Cooey could clearly defend himself against anything that came his way while spending time on Death Row.

Anything, including attempts to serve the execution order that has put him away from the public for more than a generation.

Back then, Cooey won a stay from three levels of federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, that gave him the distinction of getting more than one "final meal" while in the cell adjoining Ohio's Death Chamber at the Southern Ohio Correctional Center in Lucasville. Apparently his appetite is now his defense, as his lawyers try to derail a scheduled return trip for another try by the State on October 14th of this year.

The defense in this case has never been about guilt, never about innocence. From the beginning, it has been a death penalty campaign waged by lawyers who cannot point to facts in the case as mitigating factors to spare Richard Wade Cooey his life. Cooey himself admitted to me his defense efforts came simply because he could file.

There's never been much doubt he and a friend murdered Dawn McCreery and Wendy Offredo in 1986; he's been in death penalty lockup ever since, while anti-capital punishment advocates worked the system to the point where even they were removed as his lawyers by an appeals court after running up the tab. His claims that lethal injection itself was "cruel and unusual" failed, so now his 5'7" 270 pound frame poses grounds that killing him isn't right, because executioners will have trouble finding his veins.

I went through gastric bypass surgery; at 6'4" and then-nearly 400 pounds I should have an idea of the pain finding a vein involves, yet the doctors and nurses, medical techs at the hospital, and blood test laboratory workers never seemed to have any trouble that I recall. We have a fellow here at the station who undergoes dialysis treatment three times a week, and he's got a few pounds on Cooey -- yet he still gets his treatments.

I figure there are thousands of patients at AGMC, Summa and even Children's Hospital right here in Akron who could share stories of what a joy it is to have someone find a vein to stick a needle; I'm also imagining not everyone of them is in perfect shape, either. Does that translate to cruel punishment? The courts, for the most part, say no. Now the fat defense...

At what point does cynicism tip the justice scales?

Cruel and Unusual

Richard Cooey has another date with the Death Chamber in Lucasville, but first the process takes precedence.

As we reported on AkronNewsNow this morning, the Ohio Supreme Court has set Tuesday, October 14, 2008 for Cooey's second trip from an Ohio Death Row to the Southern Ohio Correctional Institution in Lucasville (for the sake of brevity we'll call it a state prison). Back in 2004 Phil Trexler of the Akron Beacon Journal and I were among the local media covering the story, including serving as witnesses to the execution. It didn't happen after three different levels of federal judges -- a circuit judge in Cleveland, the Court of Appeals in Cincinnati and finally the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. issued stay after stay. The final order came down with about an hour and 15 minutes to spare; if the nation's highest court had ordered the lethal injection to go ahead Cooey's last moments would have ended the day of legal wrangling and nearly 20 years waiting for his sentence to be carried out.

Both Phil and I had interviews with Cooey on Death Row, then at the state prison in Mansfield. You can listen to portions of the interview through this link; it was chilling then and still has an impact to hear this man who has spent more time on Death Row than as a free man. At the time he did not dispute his murders of Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery in the woods behind Rolling Acres Mall after a night of terrorizing the young women; he asked no forgiveness, neither from God nor his victims nor their families. He didn't even protest that the Death Penalty was too strict for his crime: he was appealing, he told me, because he could. Innocence or legal malpractice weren't the grounds: because someone else was challenging it would be enough.


It worked, if only to give him a four-year postponement of what the McCreery family has pushed for since the 1986 death of their daughter and her friend: final justice. But don't consider October 14th to be written in stone.

There's a new Governor in office, and while Bob Taft swiftly denied any clemency that decision will now rest with Ted Strickland. This Governor, with his background of working with inmates and his faith, has shown he's not a rubber-stamp for opponents of capital punishment. It is hard to imagine he will stray far from the sentence in this case, either. The inmate doesn't really dispute the facts nor the punishment; his lawyers cleverly argued the case should piggyback talk that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment, and that was enough to extend another reprieve. There will need to be another hearing to determine if Cooey is worthy of executive clemency, and appeals of other cases may still carry enough weight to trigger another round of federal appeals. If so, the families of the victims will have to continue the wait they've endured for 22 years; when taking a life, society owes it to the process to make sure the process is fully satisfied, but the core question is determining that satisfaction.

I find the argument on "cruel and unusual" a crock. Each day across this country there are millions of individuals who undergo the usual of injection -- for regular blood tests, while in the hospital, even part of a legal system that may need a blood sample for prove or disprove charges. Hardly unusual. If inserting a shunt into one's arm is unusual, ask the thousands who regularly walk into dialysis everyday for life-saving blood cleansing.

As to whether it is cruel? Very few, if any, of those getting stuck think it's a walk in the park. But in searching for a humane way to put animals down society has chosen an swift injection which put them to sleep. In the case of executing men and women who have committed the most heinous of crimes, the argument that being forced to go to sleep while another drug stops the breathing and beating of the heart (a six-minute process, on average by my observation as a witness to three other executions) is not cruel, it is humane.

The case of The People v Richard Wade Cooey has victims all around: Wendy and Dawn, their families and friends, strangers who worried about their daughter's safety because of the case, Cooey's adopted father, an Akron police officer who died of a broken heart. It is hard to imagine Cooey as a victim, especially in listening to his own words to draw the conclusion he doesn't even see himself as a victim but as someone caught who had an opportunity to use the system he despoiled to live another day.

There are plenty of cases involving the death penalty that cry out for time to appeal, time to reconsider, time to examine whether the process was righteous, fair and proper. To say no one innocent ever walked those final steps is incredibly naive, but this is not one of those cases.