First Idaho Execution in 36 Years: A Killer Who Used a Baseball Bat

Idaho today executed a man who said he had beaten two people to death with a baseball bat at a bar for no reason other than that "it was time for them to die."

The execution, by injection, was Idaho's first in 36 years.

As the execution of the inmate, Keith Eugene Wells, 31, went ahead at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, inmates pounded on walls and stomped on the floor in protest. And foes of the death penalty staged vigils at the State Capitol and the prison.

The United States Supreme Court had rejected an appeal filed against Mr. Wells's wishes. The vote was 7 to 2, with Justices John Paul Stevens and Harry A. Blackmun in the minority. Mr. Wells's lawyer, Rolf Kehne, had contended that his client was incompetent and therefore not capable of deciding whether to appeal his conviction. Mr. Wells had no final statement. But a reporter for KTVB-TV, Dee Sarton, said Mr. Wells called her at home on Wednesday night to ask her to tell his victims' relatives that he was sorry.

Mr. Wells was convicted in the slayings of John Justad, 23, and Brandi Rains, 20, at a tavern here in 1990. He was on parole for robbery at the time and described himself that night as "a predator on the prowl for prey."

In an interview with The Idaho Statesman, Mr. Wells said he had been at the bar for about two hours when "I knew it was time for them to die." Using a bat he had brought with him, he beat Mr. Justad, a patron, as he came out of the bathroom, and turned on Ms. Rains, a tavern employee, when she came to see what was happening.

Mr. Kehne had argued that the defense was not given adequate opportunity to establish that Mr. Wells was incompetent to stand trial. He said Mr. Wells believed that he was possessed by demons and that he would rid himself of them by dying.

The execution was the first in the nation in 1994 and Idaho's first since Oct. 18, 1957, when Raymond Allen Snowden, a 35-year-old itinerant laborer, was hanged for the murder and mutilation of a woman he met at a bar.

Idaho reinstated the death penalty in 1977 after the Supreme allowed capital punishment to resume. It changed the method of execution to lethal injection in 1982. Twenty-one people remain on Idaho's death row.