By Jacob Jordan The Associated PRess
Peggy Ferrell says she wants at least some compassion from the condemned man who fatally stabbed her daughter more than 10 years ago - even if it's his final words.
Ferrell's daughter, Julie Johnson, was killed in May 1993 with her own kitchen knife as she slept on a sofa in her downtown Columbia home. Her husband and three children also were asleep but didn't wake up until after Johnson had been stabbed several times.
Jason Scott Byram, 38, is scheduled to die for the killing today. His final appeal was denied by the state Supreme Court on Thursday.
Ferrell, of Spartanburg, said she wanted to witness the execution for her daughter. She said Byram's actions have made the execution a little easier.
She said she will never forget the end of the two-week trial when Circuit Judge Gary Clary said, "May God have mercy on your soul," and Byram quipped back, "Yours, too."
"He was so surly and unrepentive," said Ferrell, a 70-year-old registered nurse who still works part-time. "This guy was cold, cold, cold. People that look at his picture say, 'He just looks like evil.' ... He never changed his expression the two weeks we sat in that courtroom."
Asked if his client has ever shown any remorse, attorney Jay Elliot would not comment, citing the attorney-client privilege. He didn't know if he would talk to Byram before Friday or if his client would have a final statement.
But Elliott said his client is not evil.
Byram was abandoned as a child and abused by his foster mother, Elliott said, though he said none of that justifies the crime.
"There are certainly degrees of human frailty and Jason Byram is a human being," Elliot said.
Though Ferrell doesn't expect Byram to show any remorse before he dies, she's not angry at him.
"I don't wish vengeance or hell fire for him, I just want him to be punished for what he did and I want it to be over," Ferrell said.
The killing in 1993 shook Johnson's quiet neighborhood, prompting front-page headlines in the local newspaper. No one has ever explained to Ferrell why Byram broke into the home, stole the keys to the Johnson's van and drove away - only to come back apparently to steal a TV and VCR.
Upon his return, he woke Johnson and confronted her with a knife. After she was stabbed, Johnson made it to the front yard where her husband and a police officer heard her final words. She died on the way to the hospital.
Prosecutor Barney Giese said he'll always remember this case. It wasn't his first death penalty trial, but it is the first one in which the execution will be carried out.
"I still remember the case very vividly even over all those years, and I think the reason I remember it was because the facts were so horrific," Giese said.
Many people were affected by Johnson's death, including her family and her students.
"She was a special needs teacher who was beloved by her students," Giese said.
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