Pennsylvania Execution Is 1st in 33 Years

A man who begged the courts to let him die because “brain disease” made his life in prison hell was executed Tuesday, becoming the first inmate killed in Pennsylvania in 33 years.

Keith Zettlemoyer was declared dead at Rockview State Prison at 10:25 p.m., about 10 minutes after drugs began dripping into each arm through intravenous tubes. Zettlemoyer took a sedative in the hours leading up to his death and no complications occurred during the execution, said Ben Livingood of the Corrections Department.

Zettlemoyer was convicted of the 1980 murder of a friend who planned to testify against him in a robbery trial. After 14 years of appeals, the 39-year-old recently fired his attorneys and dropped his efforts to live.

“I see my execution as an end of suffering to my imprisonment--a blessed, merciful release from all these health symptoms that I’m constantly suffering with,” he testified Saturday in U.S. District Court. Zettlemoyer complained of an unspecified “brain disease,” though doctors said they could find nothing physically wrong.