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Thread: Wallace Norrell Thomas - Alabama Execution - July 13, 1990

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Wallace Norrell Thomas - Alabama Execution - July 13, 1990


    Quenette Shehane




    Summary of Offense: Convicted for the abduction and fatal shooting of Quenette Shehane, 21, on December 20, 1976. Miss Shehane, who had graduated from Birmingham-Southern College just a few days before, was kidnapped at a convenience store near the campus. One of the two other men later charged in the case, both of whom are now serving life sentences, implicated Mr. Thomas in the actual shooting.

    Victim: Quenette Shehane

    Time of Death: Shortly after midnight

    Manner of execution: Electric Chair

    Last Meal:

    Final Statement: ''Let my death serve as an instigator that will awaken a nation to fight and adopt the philosophy of the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'''

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    July 14, 1990

    Inmate Executed in Alabama For 1976 Murder of Woman

    ATMORE, Ala. — A black man convicted of murder 12 years ago read a statement denouncing the death penalty as racist and then was strapped into Alabama's electric chair and executed early today.

    With relatives and other witnesses looking on, the 35-year-old prisoner, Wallace Norrell Thomas, quoted from the Bible and then read his statement, in which he said, ''Let my death serve as an instigator that will awaken a nation to fight and adopt the philosophy of the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' ''

    Mr. Thomas had been sentenced to death for the abduction and fatal shooting of Quenette Shehane, 21, on Dec. 20, 1976. Miss Shehane, who had graduated from Birmingham-Southern College just a few days before, was kidnapped at a convenience store near the campus. One of the two other men later charged in the case, both of whom are now serving life sentences, implicated Mr. Thomas in the actual shooting.

    Protest to the End

    Mr. Thomas was placed on death row at Holman Prison near this southern Alabama town in March 1978. His execution had been repeatedly delayed by a series of appeals.

    On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court rejected his lawyer's latest plea for a stay, which was based in part on the argument that Alabama's electric chair, at Holman, was inhumane. The lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, noted two instances - one due to a mechanical malfunction, the other to human error - over the last seven years in which condemned Holman prisoners had not been killed with the executioner's first pull of the switch.

    Shortly after midnight, Mr. Thomas, wearing a white prison uniform with a purple ribbon and a sticker saying, ''Execute justice, not people,'' gave his last statement. Then he was strapped into the electric chair and was executed. Only one pull of the switch was required.

    Rights of Inmates and Victims

    Mr. Thomas was the 133d person executed in the United States, and the eighth in Alabama, since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed states to resume use of the death penalty.

    While on death row at Holman, he helped found Project Hope, an organization for prisoners and their families that fights the death penalty, seeks to educate the public about it and tries to bring condemned prisoners and their relatives together.

    After the slaying of Miss Shehane, her mother, Miriam Shehane, has become Alabama's leading advocate for victims' rights, having helped found a group called Victims of Crime and Leniency.

    http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/14/us...xecuted&st=nyt

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Inmate denied parole in decades-old Alabama murder

    A convicted rapist and murderer has been denied parole in a decades-old kidnapping case.

    WSFA-TV reports the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles denied parole to Jerry Lee Jones on Wednesday. Jones is one of three men convicted of robbing, raping and killing 21-year-old Quenette Shehane in 1976.

    Authorities say the Birmingham-Southern College graduate went to buy salad dressing one night that December and was kidnapped, attacked and shot to death.

    Her nude and frozen body was found the next day.

    The salad dressing was in her car.

    Eddie Bernard Neal was sentenced to life without parole for the crime and Wallace Norrell Thomas was executed in 1990.

    Jones was sentenced to death for the attack, but received life upon appeal.

    This is the fourth time he’s been denied parole.

    https://yellowhammernews.com/inmate-...labama-murder/

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