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Thread: Ronald Adrin Gray - US Military Death Row

  1. #21
    Senior Member Frequent Poster joe_con's Avatar
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    So this guy was born August 14, 1965, and sentenced to death in 1988. What are the odds he dies of natural causes before execution?

  2. #22
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    Judicial ruling: Plans to execute convicted killer Ronald Gray can move forward

    More than eight years after he originally was scheduled to die, the U.S. government is moving forward with plans to execute Ronald Gray.

    Gray, a former soldier who was convicted in a series of rapes and murders in Fayetteville and Fort Bragg more than 25 years ago, lost a court battle to keep in effect a stay of execution first granted by a U.S. District Court in Kansas in November 2008.

    Earlier this week, Judge J. Thomas Marten ruled the stay was no longer in effect and denied Gray's request to further block the military from moving forward with the death sentence.

    Gray, who was convicted and sentenced in 1988, is being held at the U.S. Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

    His crimes were committed in 1986 and 1987 on Fort Bragg and near Fairlane Acres Mobile Home Park off Santa Fe Drive.

    Gray killed cab driver Kimberly Ann Ruggles, Army Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery-Clay, Campbell University student Linda Jean Coats and Fairlane Acres resident and soldier's wife Tammy Wilson and raped several other women.

    In addition to the death sentence handed down by a military court, he also received eight life sentences from civilian courts, including three to be served consecutively.

    According to a notice filed by an assistant U.S. attorney on behalf of Col. Dawn Hilton, commandant of the disciplinary barracks, officials intend to set a new date and time for Gray's execution no earlier than 30 days from the date of their notice, which was filed on Nov. 21.

    A spokesman with the disciplinary barracks could not be reached Thursday afternoon.

    Lawyers for Gray had attempted to stop the military from moving forward with the execution, arguing in court filings that they intend to seek relief in the military judicial system.

    The lawyers argued that the stay of execution should remain, even though a judge dismissed Gray's federal petition for relief in late October.

    The government successfully argued the court no longer had cause to keep the stay.

    In a reply to a court filing that Gray's lawyers titled "Response to Government's Notice of Intent to Execute Petition," the government's lawyers said there is no legal authority for an indefinite stay of execution with no pending court proceedings.

    "Petition, of course, is free to petition the military court for a stay of execution while he pursues any remedies available in that court," the government lawyers said.

    If Gray is executed, his would be the first for the U.S. military since 1961.

    In military courts, only the president can give final approval to a military death sentence. Gray is the only killer on the military's death row whose execution has received that approval.

    George W. Bush approved the death sentence for Gray in 2008, following a Department of Justice investigation, but the case had been entangled in court appeals ever since.

    Those appeals were based on Gray's claims that the military courts lacked jurisdiction to prosecute him.

    In earlier court orders, Marten, who has overseen the case since 2014, said the lawyers failed to establish evidence of error or injustice.

    Gray was a former Army cook who held the rank of specialist at the time he was arrested in connection to the rape of a woman near Fairlane Acres in January 1987.

    A military court later convicted Gray in the killing of Ruggles and Vickery-Clay, whose bodies - raped and murdered - were later found and linked to him.

    Gray also pleaded guilty to 22 felonies in Cumberland County Superior Court, including the murders of Coats and Wilson, and five other rapes.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/military/...c9f703c7c.html

  3. #23
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Murdered woman's sister supports executing ex-soldier in potentially historic move

    The sister of a woman murdered more than 30 years ago in North Carolina says she and her family fully support the military's planned execution of the woman's killer, a former soldier.

    The execution would be the first by the U.S. military in more than a half-century. A Kansas federal judge earlier this month lifted the stay of execution for the former Fort Bragg soldier Ronald A. Gray, who is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

    Gray was convicted in military and civilian courts of raping several women and killing four, including 18-year-old Tammy Cofer Wilson. He was sentenced to death in a Fort Bragg court-martial in 1988.

    Wilson's sister, Honey Rosalie Schlehuber of Chickasha, Oklahoma, told The Fayetteville Observer she would like to witness Gray's execution and that her entire family has struggled since the murder.

    U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten last week sided with the U.S. government in denying Gray's bid to block the military from pressing ahead with the execution by lethal injection.

    The military carried out its last execution at Fort Leavenworth in 1961 when it hanged Army Pvt. John Bennett for raping and trying to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl.

    No known execution date has been set for Gray. Though Gray's attorneys have said in recent court filings that they planned to ask military courts to intervene, that status of those appeals was unclear. A message left by The Associated Press with Gray's capital public defender, Tim Kane, was not immediately returned.

    Gray was convicted and ordered condemned in military court in 1988 for two murders and three rapes in the Fayetteville, North Carolina, area while stationed at Fort Bragg, where he reached the rank of specialist and was a cook. He pleaded guilty in civilian courts to two other killings and five rapes and was sentenced to eight life terms, three of them consecutive.

    Gray, 51, is among six people on the U.S. military's death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit research group that opposes capital punishment. Those inmates, whose appeals are pending, include Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in a 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas.

    The president has the power to commute a military death sentence, and no service member can be put to death unless the president signs off on it, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

    The commandant of Fort Leavenworth's disciplinary barracks where Gray is held is the one who would schedule the date and time of the execution, according to the federal government's court filings.

    The federal appeal was filed in 2008 for Gray, whose attorneys claimed he had an ineffective lawyer in his earlier case and lacked the mental capacity to stand trial. Gray's appellate attorneys also have questioned the military's jurisdiction over the case.

    In November 2008, another Kansas federal judge, Richard Rogers, issued a stay for Gray two weeks before his scheduled execution.

    In successfully pressing for Marten to lift the stay, federal prosecutors argued in a court filing Dec. 9 that Gray "seems to believe that he is entitled to an indefinite federal stay of execution while he exhausts his remedies in the military courts. This is not the law."

    Various factors help explain the absence of military executions in recent decades. Condemned inmates may appeal their death sentences to military and civilian courts, potentially delaying an execution for decades, as in Gray's case.

    In 1983, the armed services' highest court ruled that the military death penalty law was constitutionally flawed because it did not include "aggravating" factors to help jurors decide which cases deserve capital punishment. That ruling resulted in a number of death sentences being converted to life terms.

    But the next year, President Ronald Reagan reinstated the military's capital punishment, defining who is subject to the death penalty in the armed forces through an executive order. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1996 upheld Reagan's action as constitutional.

    In 1997, the Uniform Code of Military Justice -- the military's modern-day legal system -- was amended to add a life sentence without the possibility of parole as an alternative to the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

    In October, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would not hear a challenge to the death penalty for military members, rejecting an appeal from a former soldier sentenced to death for killing two fellow soldiers and injuring 14 others in an attack in Kuwait in 2003.

    http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/12/29...oric-move.html
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  4. #24
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    Sounds like he could be executed very soon. I doubt Obama would intervene.

  5. #25
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Obama has been intervening for 8 years. Its no coincidence that the military lifted after Trump won.
    "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

  6. #26
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    Federal, military courts proceed cautiously in Ronald Gray death penalty case

    The longest-serving prisoner on the military’s death row was facing an imminent execution date in 2008. Two decades after a horrific rape and murder spree on and around Ft. Bragg, N.C., that left four young women dead and several more injured, former Spc. Ronald Gray’s military appeals appeared to have been exhausted.

    President George W. Bush had approved Gray’s execution — to be the first in the military in more than 50 years — and the Army had selected a December day to kill him by lethal injection.

    But Gray, 51, still on death row at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., is unlikely to be executed any time soon. His case, after languishing in federal court for eight years, now is headed back to the military courts.

    “I think that process could take some time,” said James Cross, a spokesman for the Kansas U.S. Attorney’s Office, which was prosecuting the case at the federal level.

    The long-delayed development reflects the confusion among the courts over jurisdiction and procedures in what is essentially the first military death-penalty case “in the modern era,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

    “What made it more complicated here is that nobody knew what the process was because it hasn’t happened before,” Dunham said. “The courts were having a problem determining who had to decide what, when.”

    In 2008, after Gray received his execution date, the U.S. District Court for Kansas accepted his habeas corpus petition — usually the final stage of the appeals process — and stayed his execution while it reviewed the case.

    In the meantime, judges and lawyers retired or moved on; the case moved at a glacial pace.

    Eventually, in 2015, Judge J. Thomas Marten denied most of Gray’s appeal, according to court documents. He also dismissed new or “unexhausted” claims included in Gray’s petition “without prejudice,” meaning Gray could refile those claims later.

    But the 10th Circuit Court concluded that that process was incorrect. Marten vacated his judgment.

    Federal prosecutors argued for Marten to instead rule entirely against Gray, including against the new claims, which they said were either without merit or procedurally barred.

    They pointed out that in 2012 the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces had declined to review Gray’s new claims.

    But that court’s ruling, also “without prejudice,” appeared to have “left open the door for (Gray) to present these claims to the military courts again upon learning what this court would do,” Marten wrote.

    As a result, Marten dismissed Gray’s entire habeas corpus petition without prejudice two months ago.

    The additional delay was “regrettable,” he wrote, but would “avoid injecting unnecessary procedural error that would only further delay final disposition.”

    Gray has previously argued in appellate filings that his trial lawyer was ineffective, that he lacked the mental capacity to stand trial and that the military did not have jurisdiction over him. It’s not clear what the petition his lawyers are filing to the Army court will claim.

    Last month, Marten lifted Gray’s stay of execution and denied Gray’s request for a new stay, saying that with the case dismissal he no longer had jurisdiction.

    Army officials could not be reached for comment on whether they planned to set a new execution date.

    Before Gray’s, no military death sentences had been presidentially approved, as the law requires, since 1957, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower affirmed a condemned soldier’s death.

    Pvt. John Bennett, who had raped an 11-year-old girl then tried to drown her, was hanged at Ft. Leavenworth in 1961.

    Since then, statutes, procedures and conventions regarding the death penalty have undergone numerous, significant changes. Bennett, for example, would almost certainly not be executed today: In 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty for the rape of a child violated the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

    Since 1984, 11 men sentenced to death at courts-martial have had their death sentences overturned because of problems with their trials, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

    Most recently, in 2012, the death sentence of former Marine Lance Cpl. Kenneth Parker was set aside by the Navy-Marine Corps appellate court nearly two decades after he was sentenced for two murders in North Carolina.

    The court found “numerous and substantive procedural and legal failures at trial.” The Navy hasn’t executed anyone since 1849.

    Five men besides Gray remain on the military’s death row.

    The Armed Forces appeals court recently overturned an Air Force appellate court decision upholding airman Andrew Witt’s death sentence for the murders of a fellow airman and his wife in 2004. Witt is scheduled to have a new sentencing hearing.

    http://www.stripes.com/news/federal-...-case-1.447291
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  7. #27
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Army court rejects latest appeal by convicted murderer Ronald Gray

    By Drew Brookes
    The Fayetteville Observer

    Convicted serial rapist and murderer Ronald Gray moved a step closer to death earlier this month when an Army court dismissed the latest attempt to stave off his execution.

    A nine-judge panel in the Army Court of Criminal Appeals on May 9 unanimously denied Gray’s petition to have his convictions and death sentence vacated.

    Gray, who has made numerous appeals through his lawyers since his conviction during a Fort Bragg court-martial in 1988, filed the petition in the Army court earlier this year, after a federal judge in another court ruled that a stay of execution first granted in November 2008 was no longer in effect and denied Gray’s request to further block the military from moving forward with the death sentence.

    Gray has been confined at the U.S. Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since he was sentenced to death.

    A former resident of Fairlane Acres near Bonnie Doone in Fayetteville, he served as an Army cook before he was convicted in a series of rapes and murders in Fayetteville and Fort Bragg more than 25 years ago.

    His crimes were committed in 1986 and 1987 on Fort Bragg and near Fairlane Acres Mobile Home Park off Santa Fe Drive.

    Gray killed cab driver Kimberly Ann Ruggles, Army Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery-Clay, Campbell University student Linda Jean Coats and Fairlane Acres resident and soldier’s wife Tammy Wilson and raped several other women.

    In addition to the death sentence handed down by a military court, he also received eight life sentences from civilian courts, including three to be served consecutively.

    The case has lingered in the courts for more than eight years since President George W. Bush approved Gray’s execution in 2008. All military executions must be approved by the president.

    But late last year, a federal U.S. District Court judge in Kansas removed the stay, months after the same court dismissed a petition for relief filed by Gray.

    At the time, Army Disciplinary Barracks officials said they intended to set a date for Gray’s execution no earlier than 30 days from the date of their notice, which was filed Nov. 21.

    But earlier this year, Army officials said no execution date had been set due to pending legal actions in the Army Court of Criminal Appeals.

    On Wednesday, an Army spokeswoman said Gray has 30 days following the May 9 opinion to file for a reconsideration with the court or, alternatively, 20 days to petition for review with the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. As of Wednesday, the case had not been listed in that court’s daily journal.

    In their latest petition, Gray’s lawyers asked the court to grant relief in the form of a writ of coram nobis, a legal order that allows a court to correct a judgment based on the discovery of a fundamental error which did not appear in the records of the original trial.

    Specifically, lawyers argued that Gray was tried while incompetent to stand trial; that he was denied due process when military authorities failed to disclose evidence about his competency during appeal; that he was denied his rights to due process, fair sentencing and a public trial because President Bush used a confidential report in making his decision to approve Gray’s death sentence; that he was denied his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel at his capital sentencing; that his appellate counsel rendered ineffective assistance; that his sentence was the result of racial discrimination; and that the military death penalty violates evolving standards of decency under the Eighth Amendment.

    The Army appeals court denied six of the claims outright, dismissed the claim involving President Bush as being outside its jurisdiction and denied Gray’s motion for an oral argument in the case.

    Gray is the longest-serving inmate on the military’s death row. If he is executed, officials said he likely would be put to death at the United States Penitentiary in Terre, Haute, Indiana — the same facility where, in 2001, terrorist Timothy McVeigh was executed for the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

    If Gray is executed, it would be the first for the U.S. military since 1961.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/news/2017...er-ronald-gray
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  8. #28
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    If Gray is given an execution date after exhausting all State and Federal appeals, he would be transferred to Terre Haute, Indiana where he would be set for execution and NOT Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where he currently resides on Military Death Row.

  9. #29
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    Appeals continue in case of serial killer facing death sentence

    Lawyers for the Army and convicted serial killer Ronald A. Gray are still battling over whether the military can carry out the death sentence Gray received nearly 30 years ago.

    The legal fight is in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, where lawyers have traded arguments in recent weeks.

    It’s the latest legal battle in the long-running saga of Gray’s conviction and subsequent appeal, which was renewed in the courts late last year after a federal judge ruled the stay of execution first granted to Gray in November 2008 was no longer in effect.

    The appeals court is reviewing the decision of another military court, the Army Court of Criminal Appeals, which on May 9 denied a petition by Gray to have his convictions and death sentence vacated. That same court declined to reconsider its decision in a decision made June 20.

    Gray, a former Army private, was convicted of committing a series of rapes and murders in Fayetteville and Fort Bragg in the mid-1980s.

    A Fort Bragg court sentenced him to death in 1988, after convicting him for the rape and murder of two women and the rape and attempted murder of a third woman, among other offenses.

    A civilian court in 1987 sentenced him to eight life sentences, including three to be served consecutively, after convictions on charges of two counts of second-degree murder, five counts of rape and a number of other offenses all related to different victims.

    Gray has been confined at the U.S. Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since he was sentenced to death.

    In 2008, President George W. Bush approved the sentence, making Gray the only current military death row prisoner whose execution has been approved by a president – a requirement before a death sentence can be carried out.

    If Gray’s sentence is carried out, it would be the first execution for the U.S. military since 1961.

    In the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, Gray’s lawyers are fighting to prevent that.

    In a petition filed last month, lawyers argued it was a mistake for the lower court to deny Gray’s petition for relief in the form of a writ of coram nobis, a legal order that allows a court to correct a judgment based on the discovery of a fundamental error which did not appear in the records of the original trial.

    Gray’s legal team repeated much of the case it made to the lower court, arguing that Gray was tried while incompetent to stand trial; that he was denied due process when military authorities failed to disclose evidence about his competency during appeal; that his appellate counsel rendered ineffective assistance; that his sentence was the result of racial discrimination; and that the military death penalty violates evolving standards of decency under the Eighth Amendment.

    Army lawyers have argued the court should uphold the decision of the lower appeals court. In an answer to Gray’s petition dated Aug. 4, they argue that he is ineligible for a writ of coram nobis because he has not served his sentence and that Gray should instead seek other forms of relief.

    Army lawyers said Gray’s other claims were already litigated and found to be without merit.

    Gray was a former resident of Fairlane Acres near Bonnie Doone in Fayetteville. He served as an Army cook before he was convicted of the series of rapes and murders in Fayetteville and Fort Bragg that took place three decades ago. His crimes were committed in 1986 and 1987 on Fort Bragg and near Fairlane Acres Mobile Home Park off Santa Fe Drive.

    Gray killed cab driver Kimberly Ann Ruggles, Army Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery-Clay, Campbell University student Linda Jean Coats and Fairlane Acres resident and soldier’s wife Tammy Wilson and raped several other women.

    Late last year, relatives of Wilson said they hoped Gray would eventually be executed. But Army officials have said no execution date has been set due to Gray’s ongoing appeal.

    Gray is the longest-serving inmate on the military’s death row. If he is executed, officials said he likely would be put to death at the United States Penitentiary in Terre, Haute, Indiana — the same facility where, in 2001, terrorist Timothy McVeigh was executed for the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/news/2017...death-sentence
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  10. #30
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Military court dismisses appeal of serial killer on death row

    By Drew Brooks
    The Fayetteville Observer

    Ronald A. Gray has lost another court battle aimed at stopping his execution.

    A military appeals court dismissed Gray’s request for extraordinary relief last month. Gray, a convicted serial killer whose crimes were committed in Fayetteville and on Fort Bragg, had asked the court to review his case as he sought to have his convictions and death sentence vacated.

    The Nov. 13 opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces was the latest in a nearly 30-year long legal battle over Gray’s case.

    On Monday, an Army spokeswoman was not immediately able to comment on whether there are any other pending legal proceedings in the case. The spokeswoman also could not comment on whether an execution date has been scheduled or will be scheduled.

    Gray is the longest-serving inmate on the military’s death row and is the only current prisoner whose execution has been approved by a president — a requirement before the military can carry out a death sentence.

    President George W. Bush approved Gray’s execution in 2008, but a federal court issued a stay of execution to allow Gray to make an appeal.

    Late last year, a federal judge removed that stay, potentially opening the door for the Army to schedule Gray’s death.

    The military appeals court, which has heard numerous appeals as part of the Gray case, ruled last month that it did not have the jurisdiction to provide the relief Gray sought in the form of a writ of error coram nobis, a legal order that allows a court to correct a judgment based on the discovery of a fundamental error which did not appear in the records of the original trial.

    Gray’s legal team has argued he was tried while incompetent to stand trial; that he was denied due process when military authorities failed to disclose evidence about his competency during appeal; that his appellate counsel rendered ineffective assistance; that his sentence was the result of racial discrimination; and that the military death penalty violates evolving standards of decency under the Eighth Amendment.

    The latest opinion stated that if the court did have jurisdiction, Gray failed to prove those claims and show he is entitled to extraordinary relief.

    The court wrote that Gray’s case is final, after years of legal wrangling.

    “Appellant has exhausted all of his remedies in the military justice system,” according to the opinion.

    Gray has had numerous appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, the Army Court of Criminal Appeals and various civilian federal courts.

    A former resident of Fairlane Acres near Bonnie Doone in Fayetteville, Gray was an Army cook before he was convicted of a series of rapes and murders in Fayetteville and Fort Bragg. His crimes were committed in 1986 and 1987 on Fort Bragg and near Fairlane Acres Mobile Home Park off Santa Fe Drive.

    Gray killed cab driver Kimberly Ann Ruggles, Army Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery-Clay, Campbell University student Linda Jean Coats and Fairlane Acres resident and soldier’s wife Tammy Wilson and raped several other women.

    A former Army private, Gray was convicted during two trials. A Fort Bragg court sentenced him to death in 1988, after convicting him of the rape and murder of two women and the rape and attempted murder of a third woman, among other offenses.

    A civilian court in 1987 sentenced him to eight life sentences, including three to be served consecutively, after convictions on charges of two counts of second-degree murder, five counts of rape and a number of other offenses all related to different victims.

    Gray has been confined at the U.S. Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since he was sentenced to death.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/news/2017...r-on-death-row

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