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Thread: Herbert Lee Richardson - Alabama Execution - August 18, 1989

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    Herbert Lee Richardson - Alabama Execution - August 18, 1989

    Summary of Offense: Convicted for the 1977 killing of Rena Mae Callins, whose aunt had broken off a close relationship with Mr. Richardson. The girl was killed by a pipe bomb left on the porch of her home. The bomb detonated when the girl picked it up.

    Victim: Rena Mae Callins

    Time of Death: 12:14 a.m.

    Manner of execution: Electric Chair

    Last Meal:

    Final Statement: ''I have no ill feeling and hold nothing against anyone.''

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    August 19, 1989

    Alabama Man, 43, Is Executed For Killing Girl With Pipe Bomb

    ATMORE, Ala. — A murderer who was married in a prison ceremony last week was executed in Alabama's electric chair early today for the slaying of an 11-year-old girl.

    The 43-year-old convict, Herbert Lee Richardson, was pronounced dead at 12:14 A.M., said a spokeswoman for the State Department of Corrections.

    Mr. Richardson was executed for the 1977 killing of Rena Mae Callins, whose aunt had broken off a close relationship with Mr. Richardson. The girl was killed by a pipe bomb left on the porch of her home. The bomb detonated when the girl picked it up.

    The execution was carried out after the Supreme Court refused Mr. Richardson's request for a stay on Thursday, as had the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta and Federal District Judge Robert Varner in Montgomery. Gov. Guy Hunt had refused to grant clemency.

    Mr. Richardson was the sixth person executed in Alabama and the 116th in the nation since the Supreme Court allowed states to restore the death penalty in 1976.

    Mr. Richardson, blindfolded, was strapped in the electric chair at Holman Prison as Warden Charlie Jones read the death warrant. 'I Have No Ill Feeling'

    In a final statement, Mr. Richardson said, ''I have no ill feeling and hold nothing against anyone.'' Soon afterward, he received a surge of 1,800 volts of electricity.

    In a news conference after the execution, the Alabama Prison Commissioner, Morris Thigpen, said Mr. Richardson had requested that he be blindfolded from the time he left the holding cell adjacent to the execution room at 11:57 P.M. ''He never saw the execution chamber,'' Mr. Thigpen said.

    Mr. Richardson's wife, Katie, along with some of her family and a minister visited the condemned man Thursday until about 10:30 P.M. The Richardsons were married in the prison's visiting room Aug. 9. Mr. Richardson met his wife, a member of the El Bethel Primitive Baptist Church, three years ago after he wrote the church saying that he listened to its radio broadcasts, Mr. Richardson was described by Lucia Penland, director of a group opposed to the death penalty, as an ''all-around American boy'' who was left emotionally disturbed by his Vietnam War experience. His lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, said Mr. Richardson served three years in Vietnam as a technican ''in a forward area.''

    Mr. Richardson said the pipe bomb was not meant to explode, only to scare the girl's family.

    Judge Varner, in rejecting a stay of the execution, said Thursday that it is ''beyond the bounds of reason to believe that a device which maimed and killed an 11-year-old child by exploding in her hands could be thought of as not presenting a serious risk of harm.''

    Margie Callins, the mother of the victim, had said she could not rest ''until he gets the chair.''

    http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/19/us...xecuted&st=nyt

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    A Death Row Inmate's Haunting Observation Hours Before Execution

    As a death row attorney whom Desmond Tutu has called "America's Nelson Mandela," Bryan Stevenson has worked with people who most of society has already cast aside. For many of these condemned convicts, however, that happened long before they entered prison walls.

    Take Herbert Richardson, for example. Richardson, Stevenson says, had returned from the Vietnam War emotionally disturbed and without the support and resources to overcome the trauma. Then, in 1977, Richardson became upset by the end of a relationship and left a homemade bomb on the porch of his ex-girlfriend's home. The woman's 11-year-old niece picked up the bomb, and it exploded. She died instantly.

    A year later, Richardson was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. A series of appeals was each time denied, and just one month before his execution date, Richardson called upon Stevenson to help in the eleventh hour. The lawyer filed for an emergency stay of execution, but, in his words, it was too late. The stay was rejected, and Richardson was scheduled to die at midnight on August 18, 1989.

    Stevenson went to the prison on the day of the execution and, as he tells Oprah during an interview for "SuperSoul Sunday," what his client said that day has always haunted him.

    "I was back there with him right before the execution, and he was saying to me, 'All day long, people have been saying, What can I do to help you? Can we get you water? Can we get you coffee? Can we get you stamps to mail your last letter?'" Stevenson says. "And I never will forget him saying to me... 'Bryan, it's been so strange. More people have said, What can I do to help you? in the last 14 hours of my life than they ever did in the first 19 years of my life.'"

    Stevenson found the observation both profound and tragic.

    "I was holding his hands, standing there with him and thinking, 'Yeah, where were they when you were 3 when your mom died? Where were they when you were 7 and you were experimenting with drugs? Where were they when you were a young teenager returning from Vietnam traumatized and drug-addicted?" Stevenson says.

    As those questions swirled through Stevenson's mind, his client was pulled away. Richardson was strapped into the electric chair and executed; he died at 12:14 a.m. The experience changed Stevenson forever.

    "The shame of that was, for me, what I couldn't let go," he says. "They had the guards come in and shave the hair off [Richardson's] body to prepare him for execution, and I watched those men do that. I don't think I'd ever seen human beings more pained by something they had to do."

    Though Stevenson certainly believes that people who commit horrific crimes deserve to face consequences, he does not believe the consequence should be death.

    "The pain and shame of that made me believe that we can do better," Stevenson says.

    "SuperSoul Sunday" airs Sundays at 7 p.m. ET on OWN.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0411d30722236
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