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Thread: Heath Lavon McCray - Alabama

  1. #1
    Administrator Michael's Avatar
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    Heath Lavon McCray - Alabama


    Brandy Bachelder, 27




    Summary of Offense:

    In 2005, McCray and his girlfriend got into an argument, so he stabbed her multiple times and strangled her. Brandy Bachelder had broken up with McCray the week before her murder.

    McCray was sentenced to death on January 4, 2007.

  2. #2
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    An Alabama appeals court has upheld the convictions of 2 death row inmates and told lower courts to review claims made by two other death row prisoners.

    In a decision rendered today, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Mark Allen Jenkins' claim of juror misconduct in his trial. Jenkins said one of the jurors should have disclosed that her nephew and his wife had been murdered 20 years earlier. The appeals court said Jenkins waited too long to raise the issue.

    Jenkins was convicted of the strangulation death of Birmingham waitress Tammy Hogeland, whose body was found in St. Clair County in April 1989.

    The appeals court also upheld the death sentence of Heath Lavon McCray. He was convicted of killing Brandy Jean Bachelder in August 2005 after she told him to move out of her mobile home in Dothan.

    The court sent the conviction of Demetrius Avery Jackson Jr. back to a Jefferson County judge to review Jackson's complaint that blacks were unfairly excluded from his jury. Jackson was convicted in 2006 of killing Fairfield police officer Mary Smith.

    The appeals court also told a Jefferson County judge to take another look at claims by Kenneth Eugene Smith that there were problems with his trial. Smith was convicted of the murder-for-hire slaying of a minister's wife, Elizabeth Sennett, in Colbert County in March 1988.

    (Source: The Associated Press)

  3. #3
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    In today's United States Supreme Court orders, McCray's petition for writ of certiorari was DENIED.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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  4. #4
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    November 12, 2021

    Dothan murderer has been taken off death row


    Prosecutors recommend his sentence be commuted because of his mental condition

    By Ken Curtis
    WTVY

    DOTHAN, Ala. - A judge has commuted a Dothan man’s death sentence he had faced for the murder of his girlfriend in 2005. Heath Lavon McCray will, instead, serve life without the possibility of parole.

    McCray sat on death row for 15 years, convicted of stabbing Brandy Bachelder. Per evidence, he used a screwdriver to pick the door lock at her home, then removed light bulbs from their sockets so it would be dark when she arrived.

    He stabbed Bachelder, a 27-year-old mother, multiple times.

    A Houston County judge ordered McCray executed but, in 2013, he filed a post appeals motion that raised several issues, including his diminished mental capacity.

    In a plea deal, state prosecutors urged Houston County Judge Kevin Moulton to commute McCray’s sentence, citing a Supreme Court ruling the death sentence is cruel and unusual punishment those who are intellectually disabled.

    McCray, who is 51, agreed not to file additional appeals.

    https://www.wtvy.com/2021/11/12/doth...off-death-row/

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