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Thread: David Lee McNish - Tennessee

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    David Lee McNish - Tennessee


    David Lee McNish


    Facts of the Crime:

    David Lee McNish was sentenced to death on August 15, 1984 for the beating death of a 70-year-old woman in Elizabethton on April 5, 1983. McNish’s victim, Gladys Smith, was bludgeoned to death with a glass vase in the apartment where she lived alone.

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On March 21, 2000, McNish filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/ten...cv00095/11965/

    On February 12, 2013, his habeas petition was DENIED.

    http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal...095/11965/188/

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    On March 14, 2013, McNish filed an appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cir...s/ca6/13-5339/

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Federal Court vacates McNish death penalty

    KNOXVILLE — The U.S. District Court ordered the 32-year-old death sentence of Carter Countian David McNish vacated and ordered the 1st Judicial District to conduct a new sentencing hearing or impose a lesser sentence on McNish within 180 days.

    District Judge Pamela Reeves ruled McNish had some merit to his claim he had ineffective assistance from his legal counsel following his conviction because the counsel failed to consider mitigating circumstances about the abusive environment he grew up in, his family problems and his mental problems.

    McNish was sentenced to death by a Carter County jury in 1984 following his conviction of first-degree murder in the April 5, 1983, of then 70-year-old Gladys Smith

    Reeves said the record indicates McNish’s case “bounced around from one attorney to the next during the state’s post-conviction appeal proceedings, none of Petitioner’s counsel thoroughly investigated the lack of mitigating evidence in the form of Petitioner’s social, mental and family history.”

    During the post-sentencing phase, new evidence was presented from McNish’s family members that described an abusive environment in which McNish grew up. Affidavits from the family members said McNish’s mother was an alcoholic who drank throughout all her pregnancies, and his parents ran a bootleg alcohol business, using their children to deliver and hide the illegal alcohol.

    The affidavits also indicated many strangers came to the McNish home to buy alcohol and his parents hosted all-night parties where his mother “got drunk and engaged in sexual relationships with the men. Some of these men also attacked the McNish children, and his parents did nothing to stop them. Petitioner’s father, George McNish, abused his children, and his mother did not take the children to see a doctor because she did not want people to find out what he was doing to the children. In addition, petitioner had to watch his sisters being molested by his older brothers, some of whom also abused him.”

    McNish’s older brother and sisters ran away from home at young ages. As a child, McNish did not go far from home, but he did climb high into trees and stay there as long as he could. He joined the Army at 17, but was discharged after a doctor discovered a birth defect when McNish suffered a back injury.

    McNish said he had been self-medicating for his back pain and compounded this with pain medicine for headaches after he was injured in a car accident. McNish said he attempted suicide by overdosing on nerve pills. He was diagnosed with hysterical personality and drug dependence prior to the murder.

    He also said he was taking a many as 80 pills of seconal, darvon, valium, nimbutal and meprobamate on a daily basis. Reeves said ’’having found that this claim has some merit, counsel’s actions in ignoring this avenue that was potentially successful cannot be rationalized.’’

    http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/Cour...-death-penalty
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On June 22, 2016, the State of Tennessee filed an appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ci...ts/ca6/16-5936

  6. #6
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Carter County death row inmate found dead

    A death row inmate died Wednesday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

    David McNish, 63, was found unresponsive by medical staff about 5:55 a.m. in the prison's infirmary, according to a Tennessee Department of Correction news release.

    McNish appears to have died of natural causes, according to the department. A final medical assessment by a coroner is pending.

    He was sentenced to death in Carter County in 1984 after being convicted of first-degree murder in the beating death of his 70-year-old neighbor on April 5, 1983, with a glass vase.

    http://www.knoxnews.com/news/crime-c...396038711.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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