Gov. Mitch Daniels said Friday he spared the life of Arthur P. Baird II, but not Alan Matheney, because jurors and family members in the Baird case made a "clear expression" that they supported clemency.

"The Baird case had some very unique features," Daniels said in his first public comments on the recent death penalty cases, both of which involved inmates who said they were mentally ill.

Baird was sent to Death Row after the 1985 stabbing deaths of his parents, Kathryn and Arthur Baird, in Montgomery County. The day before Baird killed his parents, he strangled his pregnant wife, Nadine, killing their unborn child. A psychologist hired by the Indiana Parole Board before Baird's scheduled execution said he appeared to be psychotic.

Daniels said he was convinced in the Baird case that the families of the victims, and the jurors in the case who were located, would have chosen life in prison without parole over the death penalty, had that been an option.

Even the prosecutor in the case at the time offered Baird a term of years that essentially would have kept him in prison for life. But because of his mental illness, Daniels noted, Baird rejected that offer.

"To me, that was a very unique circumstance, and I tried to make clear that was the governing factor," said Daniels, who granted Baird clemency Aug. 29 but has been careful not to wade into the issue of whether the mentally ill should be executed.

In the Matheney case, there were no such beliefs expressed openly by the family, or jurors, that he deserved life without parole and not death.

Matheney was executed early Wednesday morning for the 1989 beating death of his ex-wife, Lisa Marie Bianco, 29.

At the time of the crime, he was on an eight-hour furlough from the Correctional Industrial Facility near Pendleton, where he was serving a seven-year sentence for beating her and trying to abduct their two daughters.

Though mental health experts testified at his trial that Matheney was delusional, his attorneys were unable to prove insanity to the jury.

Daniels denied him clemency without a written explanation.