Court sets date for execution of cop killer

Ohio man shot officer in face during traffic stop.

The Ohio COLUMBUS —

Supreme Court has set an Oct. 26, 2022, execution date for Cleveland murderer Quisi Bryan, who shot and killed Cleveland police officer Wayne Leon during a traffic stop in 2000.

The state’s high court set Bryan’s execution Tuesday, after the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year denied another challenge to his convictions and sentence. Cuyahoga County prosecutors in October asked for the execution date to be set.

He will be executed at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

Bryan, 47, is on death row for fatally shooting Leon in the face on June 25, 2000, after the officer pulled him over for a traffic violation in the city’s Central neighborhood. Leon died instantly and Bryan was eventually captured in Columbus.

His most recent challenge to his death sentence was somewhat successful at first, when Senior U.S. District Judge James Carr in Toledo overturned his case and said prosecutors improperly tried to remove a prospective black juror from Bryan’s trial because of her race.

The judge wrote that the prosecutor incorrectly stated the plot of a book and “directly and unilaterally injected a racial component into the equation.”

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Carr’s decision 2-1 last year.