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Thread: David Neal Cox, Sr. - Mississippi Execution - November 17, 2021

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    David Neal Cox, Sr. - Mississippi Execution - November 17, 2021


    Kim Kirk was a young mother with her firstborn child in this photo, years before she met David Cox.




    David Neal Cox Sr. faces life in prison or the death penalty in the capital murder of his estranged wife.

    Jury selection to decide Cox’s punishment began Monday at the Union County Courthouse.

    Cox, 41, of Pontotoc County pleaded guilty Aug. 15 to the May 14, 2010, shooting death of Kim Kirk Cox, 40, at her sister’s home in Sherman.

    He also pleaded guilty to two counts of kidnapping, burglary, firing into a dwelling and three counts of sexual assault during a hostage situation over two minor children.

    Capital murder is charged when a death occurs during the commission of another felony crime.

    His sentence was deferred until Sept. 17 while a pre-sentence report was conducted to help guide penalty decisions.

    District Attorney Ben Creekmore will lead the state’s case against Cox.

    Although the shooting occurred on the Union County side of Sherman, the Coxes reportedly lived apart in Pontotoc County.

    In October 2010, Cox was indicted on eight counts – capital murder, two kidnapping, burglary, firing into a dwelling and three of sexual battery.

    Other charges Cox pleaded guilty to Aug. 15 – listed and explained within a three -count information – were jail escape, burglary and burglary of a dwelling.

    An information is a legal charge that doesn’t come from a grand jury as an indictment does.

    More than two years ago, the fatal standoff lasted across a Friday night and early into Saturday morning, when law enforcement officers entered the home and arrested David Cox without incident.

    Soon after his arrest, Cox heard formal charges against him in Tippah County because the judge was in session there, even though Kim Cox’s death and the hostage-taking occurred in Union County.

    Held without bond since 2010, he and another Union County Jail inmate broke out of the Union County Jail on May 13 of this year.

    They were arrested a few hours later in different locations.
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    Jury seated, set to hear evidence in Cox capital case

    Twelve jurors and three alternates take their seats today to decide if admitted murderer David Neal Cox Sr. dies or spends the rest of his life in prison.

    The 41-year-old Pontotoc County man pleaded guilty Aug. 15 to the May 14, 2010, shooting death of his estranged wife, Kimberly Kirk Cox, 40, at her sister's home in Sherman.

    This jury of five men and 10 women will decide only what sentence he gets. Circuit Judge John A. Gregory will not make that decision because Cox's attorneys did not give up the jury's role.

    Gregory told the new jurors the trial could run into Saturday.

    "You're going to hear some bad things, some very bad things, some involving children," defense attorney Kelsey Rushing told some 149 prospective jurors late Tuesday, the second day in the jury selection process which started with 450 called to the Union County Courthouse.

    The two days of jury selection, at $40 per person per day, comes to about $20,000 - a cost Union County must bear.

    District Attorney Ben Creekmore said it's not unusual to take two days to pick a criminal case jury.

    Today, various witnesses are expected for each side. Some will be family members to testify about the overnight hostage situation in Sherman where Kim Cox died and the kidnapping and other crimes associated with the standoff with police. Others are expected to speak for Cox's mental state and other mitigating factors.

    Cox also pleaded guilty to two counts of kidnapping, burglary, firing into a dwelling and three counts of sexual assault involving at least one of two minor children.

    Capital murder is charged when a death occurs during the commission of another felony, in this case, kidnapping.

    Earlier Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Kelly Luther painstakingly questioned potential jurors about their ability to be "fair and impartial," especially in their openness to the death penalty.

    Dozens in the jury pool proclaimed their support for the death penalty or their opposition to it. Others, dozens, asked to speak to Gregory in private about their personal issues relating to the sentence trial.

    Other defense attorneys are T.R. Trout of New Albany and Andre de Gruy of Jackson. De Gruy and Rushing work for the state Office of Capital Defense.

    Until they reach a sentence verdict, the jury and alternates will spend each night in a local motel.

    http://djournal.com/view/full_story/...ome_news_right
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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    Update: Judge adds 185 years to Cox's death-penalty sentence for wife's murder

    "Kim got justice," her mother said after a Union County jury sentenced David Neal Cox Sr. to death for her 2010 murder.

    Cox stood ramrod straight in the courtroom as Judge John Gregory set his execution date for Nov. 26, 2012.

    But it's not likely to happen then because automatic appeals begin.

    After the 12-member jury exited the room, Gregory sentenced Cox to 185 years on seven other charges from kidnappings and sexual assaults to shooting into an occupied building. The time will run consecutively.

    In effect, even if Cox somehow beats the death penalty sentence, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

    Kim's mother, Melody Kirk, also said she wasn't quite sure how she felt as her family's personal nightmare closed in court.

    District Attorney Ben Creekmore said he was satisfied with the only correct sentence the jury could reach.

    Cox's sister wept as she embraced Kim's mother and father. "I'm so sorry," she said as tears streamed down her face.

    http://djournal.com/view/full_story/...to-jury-today?
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    Determined to kill

    Kim Kirk Cox was a dead woman walking – an ill-fated target for her hell-bent husband.

    He shot her twice on May 14, 2010, at her sister’s trailer in Sherman, and for seven hours he held potentially life-saving help at bay until she bled to death.

    Now, 42-year-old David Neal Cox Sr. waits to die on Mississippi State Penitentiary’s death row.

    Could her death have been prevented?

    What does her death say about the value of protection orders?

    And finally, did anything good come from this Northeast Mississippi family tragedy?

    • • •

    Kim Evette Kirk Cox was a 40-year-old mother of two young daughters when she met David Cox through a friend at work.

    The tall, soft-spoken man aggressively courted her, and they married not too long after.

    They had two sons about 10 months apart.

    But, as witnesses in his recent Union County punishment trial said, something happened to the old David Cox they knew. He abused pain killers for a nagging back injury. And he began to take methamphetamine.

    Their marriage fell off the proverbial cliff in early 2009 when Kim told authorities he’d sexually abused her 12-year-old daughter. When Pontotoc County deputies came to arrest him, they found precursors, or ingredients to make meth. They charged him with their possession, as well as child endangerment, sexual battery and statutory rape.

    Justice Court Judge Phil Weeks, now deceased, set David Cox’s bond at $200,000.

    From the very start of his stay in the Pontotoc County Jail on Aug. 6, 2009, cellmates told the court that he repeatedly promised to kill Kim.

    On Feb. 3, 2010, a Pontotoc County grand jury indicted him on the precursors and child endangerment charges, but the District Attorney’s Office couldn’t get additional formal charges on the allegations he’d sexually abused the minor girl.

    Judge Thomas J. Gardner III set his bond at $13,000, but with Weeks’ bond still in effect, David Cox could not make bail.

    Months later, things changed.

    On April 8, 2010, Cox’s attorney, James Johnstone of Pontotoc, formally asked the circuit court to lower his client’s bond, saying the situation was “tantamount to no bond at all,” because of Cox’s limited income and resources.

    The bond-reduction document told the court that Weeks would not have set bond at all, if the proof had been greater or if Cox posed “a special danger to anyone in the community.”

    Larry Baker, now with the state attorney general’s office, was the assistant district attorney assigned to the Cox case.

    Baker said recently he couldn’t talk about it because the Pontotoc charges are still pending.

    And so, on April 9, 2010, Judge Jim Seth Pounds ordered Cox’s bond reduced on the remaining charges from $200,000 to $50,000.

    Pontotoc County Jail notes show Cox got the news that day, although there’s no indication of his reaction.

    Three days later, his sister, Linda Carpenter, co-signed the All-Pro Bonding papers, and put up $6,300 as surety for his total $63,000 bond.

    David Cox was a free man with instructions to return to court May 27 to answer to all cases against him.

    That would never happen.

    • • •

    Kim’s parents, Bennie and Melody Kirk, say Kim called them in horror to report that David Cox was out of jail.

    “I told her I didn’t believe it,” Bennie Kirk recalls.

    Kim began to call the sheriff’s office, under different leadership then, to report what she perceived as threats.

    Bennie Kirk says David stalked his daughter, and at one point at a traffic stop, “pointed his finger at Kim like a gun and fired three times.”

    “She was terrified of him,” her sister, Christy Kirk Salmon, said in the Union County court.

    Eleven days after David’s release on bond, Kim petitioned the Pontotoc County Chancery Court for a restraining order against her husband. Two days later, it was granted temporarily.

    David Cox was ordered not to come near his wife and children, not to communicate with them in any way.

    In her petition for the “domestic abuse protective order,” Kim told the court that on July 30, 2009, David threatened to kill her with a gun he’d borrowed from a neighbor.

    During Cox’s punishment trial, former neighbor Raymond Smith admitted he’d taken a gun away from him.

    Kim’s plea to the court also said he’d called her while he was jail and threatened to kill her when she refused to bring his young sons to visit him.

    She also told the court he’d been sexually abusing her daughter since about 2005.

    Chancellor Jacqueline Mask signed the protective order on May 6, 2010, with the warning to David that if he violated it, he could be subject to arrest and prosecution for a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or six months in jail, or both. He also might lose his ability to possess or purchase a firearm, it said.

    • • •

    National crime statistics show that nearly two out of five female murder victims are killed by what’s termed “an intimate,” a husband or boyfriend. Two-thirds of them are killed with a gun.

    Every day in the U.S., three women are killed by their husbands or boyfriends. Mississippi ranks fifth in the nation for domestic violence homicides.

    For the year through Sept. 30, the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office identified 17 separate incidents of alleged homicide involving “domestic” relationships resulting in the deaths of 23 people. Four died in the same incident.

    Ironically, Attorney General Jim Hood says the danger level may increase if the victim reports the abuse or tries to end the relationship.

    “For a domestic abuser seeking power and control by violence, an attempt by the victim to break free may be seen as threatening to the abuser,” Hood notes.

    “It is extremely important for victims to be aware of acts signaling potential for increased violence – but it is equally important for law enforcement officers and courts to which victims turn for assistance to understand these factors as well, recognize them and take these situations seriously.”

    In Mississippi, police or deputies do not need a warrant to arrest someone within 24 hours of an abusive act.

    The 2011, Legislature passed two new tools to boost the fight against domestic violence:

    • A judge can require alleged offenders to wear a tracking device as part of their bond conditions, which could allow victims to monitor their movements.

    • It is illegal for anyone to stop a victim from calling for help.

    These days, Mississippi law enforcement and judges get training about domestic violence.

    S.A.F.E. Inc. in Tupelo provides temporary shelter, other help and advice for women and their children in Alcorn, Benton, Itawamba, Lee, Pontotoc, Prentiss, Union, Tippah and Tishomingo counties.

    • • •

    At her brother-in-law’s punishment trial, Christy Salmon told the court her sister was so afraid of David that their brother stayed at her Ecru home for a while and then Kim and the children moved into Christy’s trailer home in Sherman.

    That’s where David shot his way in on May 14, 2010, and shot Kim twice.

    It’s no secret, law enforcement officers say, that if someone is bound and determined to kill you, they can – protective orders or not.

    District Attorney Ben Creekmore of New Albany, who prosecuted David Cox because Kim’s murder occurred in part of his district, says that if his office had handled the earlier cases against Cox, he hopes more could have been done.

    “Frankly, he would have gotten out of jail eventually,” Creekmore admits, looking at a relatively short prison sentence if Cox were convicted on the precursors and child endangerment charges.

    The Pontotoc County legal process delayed Kim’s murder for a time and Raymond Smith delayed it a little longer, when he took David’s gun. Whatever was done, it merely postponed the inevitable.

    “He was not going to be deterred,” Creekmore notes with regret in his voice.

    Nowadays, when families break apart, emotions can be high. But when a break-up combines with criminal behavior and drugs – as in the Cox case – it’s a very dangerous situation, the district attorney observes.

    “Something more needs to be done,” he adds, about protecting potential victims.

    New steps are being taken, Creekmore says, to require someone like David Cox to undergo a psychological evaluation after he’s charged and to specify certain behavior – like threats – as part of a condition on his bond. If threats are made, the defendant’s bond is revoked and he’s back in jail.

    Coming more than a year too late for Kim Cox, new state laws require court clerks to enter all domestic abuse protection orders into the Mississippi Domestic Abuse Protection Order Registry.

    The registry maintained by the Attorney General’s Office is available to law enforcement officers and court officials only for official purposes. Judges also must check it to see if offenders are under domestic abuse protection orders to determine appropriate bail.

    “This amendment was in direct response to the Cox case,” Hood said.

    • • •

    At 12:20 p.m. Sept. 22, 2012, David Neal Cox Sr. heard Judge John Gregory pronounce the jury’s verdict: a death sentence for the murder of his wife, Kim.

    Gregory then sentenced him to another 185 years for his guilty pleas to two kidnappings, shooting into Christy Salmon’s house and the three sexual assaults on the girl in front of her dying mother, as well as jail escape and assorted crimes associated with it.

    Union County law enforcement made immediate arrangements for his transport to the state penitentiary.

    Kim’s mother says the new certainty of David Cox’s incarceration, far from his children and Kim’s children, has brought them some peace.

    “They feel a lot safer, they’re sleeping much better,” she said last week.

    An ex-lawman, Bennie Kirk still chafes from knowing law enforcement let his family down when they needed it most. He blames then-District Attorney John Young and Assistant District Attorney Larry Baker for not doing all they could.

    Young could not be reached for comment.

    Kirk insists, though, that they don’t blame the judge for reducing their son-in-law’s bond, which allowed him out of jail. He didn’t know about the threats from David, Kirk notes.

    Creekmore tries to look on the bright side for both sides of the families.

    “Even though this was a great tragedy, these children and Kim’s other daughter,” he says, “... they’re now safe with the hope for a stable life.”

    http://djournal.com/view/full_story/...ome_news_right
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Mississippi inmate wants death sentence thrown out

    A Mississippi death row inmate convicted in the slaying of his estranged wife is asking the state Supreme Court to throw out his guilty plea because a fair jury could not be seated in Union County.

    The Mississippi Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on Tuesday in Jackson.

    In 2012, David Neal Cox Sr. was sentenced to death after pleading guilty to shooting and killing his wife Kim at a home in Sherman.

    The trial court seated a jury to determine Cox's sentence.

    Cox, now 44, argues news coverage of the case was heighted because his wife came from a well-known family of present and former law enforcement officers.

    Prosecutors say Cox was exaggerating the extent of familiarity between prospective jurors and his wife's family.

    http://www.sunherald.com/2015/02/03/...#storylink=cpy
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Death row inmate seeks execution; judge to decide competency

    By JEFF AMY
    The Associated Press

    A Mississippi judge will decide whether a death row inmate who says he wants to be executed is mentally competent to waive all his appeals.

    The state Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the examination in the case of David Cox.

    Cox wrote to Mississippi Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr. in August saying he wanted to fire his lawyers, give up all his appeals and have the state Supreme Court set his execution date.

    "I seek in earnest to (waive) all my appeals immediately, I seek to be executed as I do here, this day, stand on MS death row a guilty man worthy of death — please grant me this plea," Cox wrote in an Aug. 16 letter .

    Cox pleaded guilty to shooting his wife Kim in 2010 in the Union County town of Shannon, raping her daughter in front of her, and watching Kim Cox die as police negotiators and relatives pleaded for her life. He also pleaded guilty to seven other crimes without making a bargain with prosecutors that precluded the death penalty. A jury sentenced him to death.

    In another letter in July to Union County District Attorney Ben Creekmore, Cox wrote that "if I had my perfect way and will about it I'd ever so gladly dig my dead (sarcastic) wife up whom I very happily and premeditatedly slaughtered on 5-21-2010 and with eager pleasure kill" her again.

    Cox's lawyers argue that he is mentally ill and isn't competent to waive his appeals, and that it's unconstitutional for the state to execute him.

    "There is no reliable evidence that Mr. Cox has a free or unrestrained will necessary to lodge a permanent, voluntary waiver of his right to continue pursuing post-conviction remedies," wrote Benjamin H. McGee III of the state Office of Post-Conviction Counsel.

    In support of that, he cited Cox himself. In a Nov. 7 letter to McGee, Cox wrote that he's divided between "skin 1" which wants to continue appeals and "skin 2" which wants to be executed.

    "Skin 1 is not willing, while Skin 2 is willing to surrender all counsel & all appeals — still. David Cox as a whole is not a single unit, but two — David Cox within David Cox is a living division of separated matter within the same vessel of life," Cox wrote in the Nov. 7 letter .

    McGee has filed a fresh petition with Mississippi's justices seeking a new sentencing hearing.

    The lawyer says Cox's trial lawyers didn't adequately lay out the history of abuse that Cox endured as a child, including poverty, neglect, parental abandonment, chronic exposure to pornography and witnessing his father sexually abuse his sister.

    Cox's sister, in a sworn statement, said he dropped out of school and huffed gasoline "all day," later becoming addicted to methamphetamine.

    Lawyers argued the substance abuse permanently injured his brain and that it would be unconstitutional to execute him, just as the Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional to execute someone with mental disabilities.

    "Mr. Cox's rage, violence and impulse control problems are product of brain dysfunction, not a reflection of choice or character. He has a severe psychopathology - that is, a severe mental disorder or mental illness - but he is not a psychopath." Forensic psychologist Robert Stanulis wrote in a report for the defense.

    Mississippi hasn't executed anyone since 2012, amid legal disputes over lethal injection procedures and difficulty procuring execution drugs.

    https://www.foxnews.com/us/death-row...ide-competency

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    Judge rules death row prisoner is sane enough to die

    By William Moore
    The Daily Journal

    A circuit court judge has ruled that a Pontotoc County man on Mississippi's death row for the last 8 years can waive all future appeals and ask the state to execute him.

    In a six-page order filed Thursday afternoon in Union County Circuit Court, Judge Kent Smith said David Neal Cox, 50, is "competent to terminate litigation and waive all appeals" and that his request was "knowingly and voluntarily given."

    It will now be up to the state to set a date for Cox's execution.

    In 2012, Cox pleaded guilty to capital murder for the May 2010 fatal shooting of his wife, Kim Kirk Cox, and was sentenced to death. Cox also received another 185 years for seven other felonies, ranging from kidnapping to sexual assault to shooting into a occupied dwelling. Circuit Court Judge John Gregory set the execution date for Nov. 26, 2012.

    But the automatic appeal process delayed that date indefinitely.

    In 2015, Cox appealed the death sentence citing a long list of reasons, including the venue should have been changed, the jury pool was tainted with people who knew the victim, the jury was improperly advised how to consider aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and whether the death penalty is constitutional.

    At some point, Cox gave up on the appeals. In a handwritten letter to the judge, the district attorney, and his lawyer dated July 2018, Cox admitted that he premeditatedly killed his wife and claimed he would do it again if given the opportunity.

    Later the same year, Cox began petitioning the Mississippi Supreme Court to allow him fire his attorneys, waive all appeals and proceed with execution. Before the state could grant his wishes, the high court said the lower court should hold a competency hearing.

    That hearing, held in February, included testimony from Cox, family and friends, as well as two mental health experts.

    "Cox addressed the court throughout the hearing," Judge Smith wrote. "He was concise, consistent and unwavering in relaying his desire to abandon his post-conviction litigation, waive all appeals and his reasons therefor."

    The judge said he studied Cox's demeanor, actions and reactions throughout the hearing. He felt that Cox understood the seriousness and consequences of his requests

    "Cox's decision to terminate litigation is based on his understanding that he is guilty of capital murder, his acceptance of the jury's findings, his acceptance of the judge's sentence, his remorse for the victim's family and his children, and his religious beliefs," Smith wrote. "Cox's decision to waive appeals does not come two months or two years after conviction: He has made this decision after 10 years of incarceration and navigating the appellate process."

    Following the competency hearing, but before the ruling Thursday, Cox renewed his efforts by filing handwritten motions to the Mississippi Supreme Court asking them to move forward with his requests.

    https://www.djournal.com/news/crime-...2f1413d7d.html

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    Execution date set for Mississippi inmate convicted of killing wife in 2010

    By Katilin Howell
    cbs42.com

    On Thursday, the Mississippi Supreme Court set an execution date for a man convicted of killing his wife in 2010.

    The execution of David Neal Cox has been scheduled for November 17, 2021, at 6:00 p.m.

    Cox pleaded guilty to shooting his wife Kim in 2010 in the Union County town of Shannon, raping her daughter in front of her, and watching Kim Cox die as police negotiators and relatives pleaded for her life. He also pleaded guilty to seven other crimes without making a bargain with prosecutors that precluded the death penalty. A jury sentenced him to death.

    Mississippi hasn’t executed anyone since 2012, amid legal disputes over lethal injection procedures and difficulty procuring execution drugs.

    https://www.cbs42.com/regional/missi...-wife-in-2010/
    Last edited by Julius; 10-21-2021 at 02:42 PM.

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    They’re still tied up in knots of their drug protocol and plus why not set dates for people like Loden? Just a lot more pandering like the other 5 states this year.

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    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Mississippi does have drugs available for a few executions.
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

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