As protesters outside Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet denounced the death penalty Tuesday night, prison officials prepared to execute convicted murderers Walter Stewart, 42, and Durlyn Eddmonds, 45, with lethal injections.
It was to be the second double execution in Illinois since the death penalty was reinstated by the state legislature in 1977; the 9th and 10th executions overall.
The sentences were scheduled to be carried out before about 30 state and media witnesses. Relatives of Thomas Pavlopoulos, 27, and Danilo Rodica, 39, who were fatally shot by Stewart during a 1980 jewelry store robbery in Berwyn, were told they could watch on closed-circuit TV in a separate room, as were relatives of Eddmonds’ victim, 9-year-old Richard Lee Miller.
Eddmonds was convicted of sodomizing and suffocating the boy shortly after noticing the boy being molested by two other men in an alley on Chicago’s South Side in 1977.
Eddmonds’ attorneys argued he should not be sentenced to death because he suffered a lifetime of profound mental disturbances, including psychosis and schizophrenia, while lawyers for Stewart maintained his life should be spared because he was sorry for his actions and had been rehabilitated in prison.
But shortly after 2 p.m. Tuesday, Gov. Jim Edgar denied appeals for clemency from both inmates.
“The two cases are entirely different, but the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for both of these murderers,” Edgar said in a written statement. “After numerous mental examinations, the courts ruled Durlyn Eddmonds was legally sane at the time of the crime against the boy and competent to stand trial. He was convicted of three previous sexual assaults, including an attack on an 11-year-old girl, an indisputable indication that he is a dangerous, vicious sexual predator.”
Edgar noted both Eddmonds and Stewart admitted guilt, despite arguments by their current attorneys that each had earlier received inadequate representation.
“(Stewart) has thoroughly appealed the issue of the sentencing procedure and the voluntariness of his guilty plea,” Edgar wrote. “The people in the jewelry store at the time of the robbery had done everything he told them to do. He opened fire on the store owner after she had made a non-threatening move. He shot two men in the ensuing struggle and shot one again as he lay writhing on the floor. He then pointed his gun at a 17-year-old store clerk, who begged for mercy. He pulled the trigger and could have killed her had he not run out of ammunition.” The store owner survived her wounds.
Earlier Tuesday, both men were allowed to request a last meal: Stewart chose fried pork chops, candied yams, string beans, black-eyed peas, fried corn bread, peach cobbler and papaya-orange juice; Eddmonds chose fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and apple pie.
Each man spent much of the day Tuesday visiting in person or on the phone with family members and attorneys.
David Thomas, one of Stewart’s attorneys, said after one phone conversation that “He’s doing pretty well. He told me to keep the faith.” Stewart converted to Christianity in 1994, Thomas said, and his faith “is standing him in good stead.”
Eddmonds, who last week started requesting Valium to help settle his nerves, according to his attorney, Richard Cunningham, was said to be having a harder time coping.
Last-minute appeals to the Illinois and U.S. Supreme Courts by both inmates were rejected, Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman Nic Howell said.
