The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
State begins process of executing killer
A 58-year-old man is scheduled to die by lethal injection for strangling and stabbing to death a man.
COLUMBUS » Ohio moved a condemned killer to the state death house Tuesday as officials began preparations for the state’s first execution in several months.
Inmate Robert Van Hook was sentenced to die for fatally strangling and stabbing David Self after picking him up in a bar in Cincinnati in 1985. Van Hook, 58, has no remaining appeals, and Republican Gov. John Kasich rejected his request for clemency without comment.
At the time of the killing, Van Hook was suffer- ing from long-term effects of untreated mental, physical and sexual abuse as a child and was depressed that his life seemed to be falling apart, his attorneys argue.
Kasich should have given more weight to Van Hook’s military service and his inability to receive care from Veterans Affairs for his mental health and addiction issues after his honorable discharge, according to Van Hook’s attorneys.
Van Hook arrived at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville shortly before 10 a.m., and was to begin receiving visitors late in the afternoon, said prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith.
Van Hook was “in good spirits and calm,” and a medical check found no problems with his veins ahead of his scheduled lethal injection Wednesday morning, Smith said.
His choice for a last meal, called a special meal in Ohio and served the day before, included double cheeseburgers, fries, strawberry cheese cake with whipped cream, a vanilla milkshake and grapefruit juice.
Smith says execution witnesses for the Self family will include Self’s brother and sister and brother-in-law. Van Hook’s witnesses will be an uncle; a spiritual adviser; and a priest.
The Ohio Parole Board said that despite Van Hook’s tough childhood, he was shown love and support by relatives he stayed with for long periods as a child. But that positive influence doesn’t outweigh the “gratuitous violence” Van Hook demonstrated, the board said.
Previous attorneys representing Van Hook attempted a “homosexual panic” claim in his defense.