THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 15, 1994 TAG: 9406150682
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: 940615 LENGTH: RALEIGH
David Lawson, 38, was executed for the 1980 murder of Wayne Shinn, who caught Lawson breaking into his house.
{REST} Strapped into a wooden chair and wearing only white boxer shorts, a diaper and socks, Lawson began yelling as his executioners masked his face.
His words weren't clear through the double-paned windows of the death chamber, but he seemed to shout ``I'm human, I'm human!'' as the airtight door to the room was clamped shut.
He continued screaming as the fog of gas rose about him, then gasped for about five minutes, then was still.
``I am a human being, no more and no less than any other human being. It is no more right for the state of North Carolina to take my life than it was for me to kill Wayne Shinn,'' he said earlier, in his final statement. ``I'm sorry I killed Wayne Shinn. I hope North Carolina will one day be sorry that they killed me.''
Shinn's relatives said Lawson was only a con trying to beg his way free, even as the poisonous mist rose from beneath the wooden chair he was strapped to.
``I expected something like that out of him,'' said Shinn's sister, Carolyn Kluttz. She waved a tiny North Carolina flag during a news conference and said she was angry at a judicial system that allowed Lawson to have two appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lawson had said televising his execution would give his life meaning. Donahue, a death penalty opponent, contended the public has the right to see executions to decide whether capital punishment is right or wrong. State officials argued that televising the execution would make a circus of it.
``I think it's a deterrent,'' said Mrs. Kluttz. ``If every child in North Carolina could see what we have seen, it would be a deterrent.''
Death row inmates in North Carolina have the option of lethal injection, but Lawson refused to choose, saying that would amount to sanctioning his execution. Officials had no choice but to send him to the gas chamber.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the argument that death in the gas chamber is cruel and unusual punishment. Only Justice Harry Blackmun dissented.
The court also rejected without comment Lawson and Donahue's request to videotape the execution.
Shinn, 35, was shot in the back of the head at point-blank range as he pleaded for his life; his father was also shot in the head but survived.
Lawson said depression that began in his youth after his parents split up led him to kill Shinn because he had no value for human life. Since being treated by a prison psychiatrist, Lawson said, he was different from the old Lawson.
The old Lawson was a gun-toting gambler who used amphetamines and told his jury in 1981 to gas him if they thought he was guilty. He also had said he regretted not killing Shinn's father instead of only wounding him.
{KEYWORDS} GAS CHAMBER EXECUTION CAPITAL PUNISHMENT by CNB