Justice? American-style.

Maryland executed three-time killer Steven Oken last night. It was the fourth execution in the state since 1998. Former gov. Parris Glendening imposed a moratorium on the death penalty for two years, but when Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, took office last year, he lifted it.

Yesterday, Oken issued his second-to-last appeal for life to Gov. Ehrlich, who faxed back a terse, three-paragraph statement at 5:08 p.m. denying his request. Oken's last-ditch attempt to live, an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals, failed at 8:41 p.m. He died 28 minutes later.

"I feel good. I feel really good right now," said Fred Romano, Sr., the father of one of the women Oken murdered, minutes after the convict died by lethal injection.

"The system has failed," said Fred Bennett, Oken's long-time attorney.

Maybe I'll write sometime about how I covered the execution of a two-time killer in the late 1990's, when I was a metro reporter at a Virginia newspaper. The state, whose advertising tagline is, "Virginia is for Lovers," is second only to Texas in the number of men put to death in the name of justice each year. In 1999 alone, 14 Virginians died by lethal injection.

Cue the violins: I hate being sick. I was up until 3:30 last night coughing, sneezing, and getting up intermittently to throw a wad of used Kleenex in the trash. Yuck. Good thing the SO is in Manhattan for a journalism conference, or else he'd be completely grossed out.

It's also hot as Hades and as humid as a South American tropical rainforest here, but I am an avowed energy-saver, so the thermostat is always set at 78 degrees. That doesn't help when one is emanating waves of feverish heat.

Make that almost always. At 2:30 last night, I buckled and lowered the temperature to 71 degrees. Ahh, much better. Then I took some Sudafed, nibbled on a See's chocolate truffle, and started reading 24/7 (see "On My Nightstand" at left).

I finally conked out 45 minutes later, and slept blissfully until 9:30 this morning. Still feeling logy and foggy-headed, but one more day at home should do the trick.