LUCASVILLE (AP) - A man hours away from execution for beating and stabbing to death a friend's wife spent a restful night, the prisons system said.

David Brewer, 44, was to be executed by injection this morning for killing 21-year-old Sherry Byrne 18 years ago in southwest Ohio. He was refused clemency last week, and no more appeals were planned.

Brewer was awakened at 6 a.m. and had Rice Krispies and water for breakfast, said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

Outside the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, the Rev. Neil Kookoothe, associate pastor of St. Clarence Roman Catholic Church in the Cleveland suburb of North Olmsted, arrived early to set up poster boards that protesters have brought to every execution since Ohio resumed the death penalty in 1999.

The posters have laminated lists of every inmate on Ohio's death row, with those who have died in red. Kookoothe didn't have time to print out a new sheet with Brewer's name switched to red, he said.

He didn't expect the busloads of school children that had appeared at executions earlier this year.

''The protests are taking place locally,'' he said. ''The people are doing it, they're just not coming down to Lucasville. People have to work in the morning.''

Defense attorneys had argued that Brewer deserved mercy because he had no criminal record before the slaying and has been a model prisoner.

Brewer, who lived in Centerville, near Dayton, and managed a rental appliance store, was a former fraternity brother of Byrne's husband, Joe Byrne. He later told police he was attracted to his friend's wife.

Brewer lured Sherry Byrne from her home to a suburban Cincinnati motel in 1985, on the pretense she would be meeting him and his wife.

Authorities said Brewer sexually assaulted and beat Byrne in a motel room before abducting her and driving around with her in the trunk of his car for several hours.

Police said passing motorists at one point reported seeing a piece of paper with ''help me please'' written in lipstick shoved through the crack in the trunk of a car.

Brewer killed Byrne after she tried to escape in Beavercreek, a Dayton suburb. He later told police where to find her body.

Police said she had been beaten, choked with a necktie and stabbed 15 times.

Brewer spent Monday night visiting with family members, Dean said. He ordered a special meal of fried chicken, baked potato with butter, macaroni and cheese, corn, dinner rolls, a slice of apple pie and root beer.

''If there's no new facts other than those already reviewed through the court system, you can't file a challenge just because you don't want your client to die,'' Greg Meyers, an assistant state public defender, said Monday.

Byrne's mother, Myrtle Kaylor, planned to watch the execution. She said she hopes it will bring her some relief.

''It's not going to be a celebration,'' Kaylor said. ''I don't celebrate somebody else's downfall but, at the same time, it means I don't have to deal with more hearings and more appeals and read about it in the paper.

''There's a void in my life, as if it's never really complete,'' she said.