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Executions


There were no executions in the past week.




Scheduled Executions




Warren Lee Hill - Georgia Execution - February 19, 2013

On Friday a lawyer for a man set to be executed asked a state court judge to reconsider his client's case.

Warren Lee Hill is set to be executed Tuesday. In a court filing Friday, Hill's lawyer asks a Butts County Superior Court judge to grant a writ of habeas corpus.

The court denied a similar request in July before Hill's original execution date. The state Supreme Court temporarily stayed the execution then.

As part of the filing Friday, Hill's lawyer submitted statements from the three doctors who originally examined him and testified for the state. All three doctors write that they've changed their opinion and believe Hill is mentally disabled.

Georgia law prohibits the execution of the mentally disabled.

Hill's lawyer is also seeking a new clemency hearing.In a separate appeal on Friday, Hill's attorney asked a federal judge in Washington to direct the Drug Enforcement Administration to prevent the use of pentobarbital in lethal injection,. arguing the Georgia Department of Corrections’ use of the drug without a doctor’s prescription violates the federal Controlled Substances Act.




Carl Henry Blue - Texas Execution - February 21, 2013

On Monday the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Blue's subsequent application for a writ of habeas corpus.

Carl Blue was convicted of the August 19, 1994 murder of Carmen Richards-Sanders. Blue, who once dated Richards-Sanders, went to her apartment with a cup of gasoline. When she opened the door he doused her in gasoline and ignited her clothing with a lighter. He then threw the remaining gasoline on a second person in the apartment, Larence Williams, when he attempted to come to the aid of Richards-Sanders. Blue also ignited Williams' clothing. Richards-Sanders died of her injuries. Williams survived. Blue turned himself into police, saying the incident was a prank and the victim's death was an accident.

Blue's execution date is set for Thursday.





Andrew Allen Cook - Georgia Execution - February 21 2013

On Wednesday representatives for condemned inmate Andrew Allen Cook were invited to appear before the State Board of Pardons and Paroles.

A clemency appointment is scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday, according to a news release from the parole board.

Cook was convicted of the 1995 ambush slayings of Mercer University students Grant Patrick Hendrickson and Michele Lee Cartagena near Lake Juliette in Monroe County.

His execution by lethal injection has been set for 7 p.m. on Feb. 21 at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

Cook was linked to the slayings through one of the weapons involved in the shooting.

After confessing to his FBI agent father, Cook was arrested in the double murder and convicted on March 19, 1998.

The jury recommended death for Cook after concluding Cartagena’s murder was committed during the commission of another felony, the murder of Hendrickson, the release stated.

Cook was sentenced to life in the murder of Hendrickson.

The Georgia Supreme Court upheld the conviction and affirmed the jury verdict.

He has concluded his state and federal habeas corpus proceedings, the release stated.

Cook also has an appeal pending in federal court concerning Georgia's lethal injection drug switch.




New Execution Dates





Robert Lynn Pruett - Texas Execution - February 21, 2013

On Monday Senior District Judge Ronald Yeager set Pruett's execution date for May 21, 2013.

On December 17, 1999, Pruett physically assaulted a male correctional officer, Daniel Nagle, at the McConnell Unit in Bee County, resulting in his death. Nagle had been discovered, lying in his own blood, near a multipurpose room in the William G. McConnell maximum security unit in Bee County. He had been stabbed repeatedly with an inmate-made “shank,” a steel bar sharpened on one end and wrapped with cloth on the other end.

Nagle was the first, and only, correctional officer to be murdered inside one of the three TDCJ prisons in Bee County.

Pruett was sentenced to death in April 2002.






Robert Van Hook - Ohio Execution - March 12, 2015

On Friday, an execution date was set for a condemned inmate who killed a Cincinnati man in 1985.

Robert Van Hook murdered David Self in Self's apartment.

The two met each other in a gay bar downtown. Van Hook strangled and then stabbed Self several times in the head and neck.

Van Hook never denied killing Self, but at one time claimed temporary insanity.

The Ohio Supreme Court set Van Hook's execution for March 12th, 2015.




New Death Sentences






Dawud Spalding - Ohio Death Row

A 30-year-old Akron man was sentenced to death for the fatal shootings of two people and a related shooting that left a man paralyzed.

Summit County Common Pleas Judge Paul Gallagher imposed the death penalty Friday morning for Dawud El Spaulding in an hourlong court hearing.

Gallagher set the execution date for March 3, 2014, but under Ohio law such sentences carry automatic appeals.

Spaulding previously was convicted of two counts of aggravated murder, one count of felonious assault and other crimes in the December 2011 slayings of Ernest “Ernie” Thomas and Erica Singleton, the mother of Spaulding’s 7-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter.

Patrick Griffin was the first victim. He was shot hours earlier that same day at a Grant Street home. The 2 a.m. shooting left him paralyzed.

Some six hours later, after Spaulding fled, he returned to the home and fatally shot Singleton and Thomas just moments after they left the steps of Thomas’ front porch.

In court Friday, Spaulding, who was clad in red-striped jail clothes and guarded by nine sheriff’s deputies and courthouse security commanders, showed no emotion as he sat between his two attorneys at the defense table.

He made no statements or comments to the many family members and friends of the victims, who were seated in the public gallery.

“I just want to get this over with,” he told the judge.

When Gallagher asked him again if he wished to address the court, Spaulding shook his head back and forth, saying nothing.

Gallagher followed a previous recommendation by the jury in imposing the capital sentence.




Current Death Row Inmates




Anthony Ray Hinton - Alabama Death Row

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upheld a capital murder case from Jefferson County.

In a ruling Friday, the court rejected for the second time an argument by Anthony Ray Hinton that his trial attorney was ineffective for not hiring a qualified firearms identification expert. Hinton was sentenced to death for the fatal shootings of John Davidson and Thomas Wayne Vason during fast-food restaurant robberies in Birmingham in 1985.




Anthony Lee Stanley - Alabama Death Row

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upheld a death sentence in a Colbert County murder case.

The ruling just came out in the case of Anthony Lee Stanley.

The ruling found a judge had sufficient reasons to sentence Stanley to death despite a jury's recommendation of life without parole.

Stanley is on death row for killing Henry Earl Smith during a 2005 robbery.

This was the third time the court has reviewed Stanley's case.




Karl Roberts - Arkansas Death Row

The Arkansas Supreme Court said the case of a death-row inmate convicted of killing his 12-year-old niece ought to be reopened.

The high court Thursday granted Karl Roberts’ request to reopen his case.

Roberts was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1999 slaying of 12-year-old Andria Nichole Brewer in Hatfield.

He initially waived his rights to appeal, but changed his mind hours before he was to be put to death during a planned double execution in 2004.

The high court said Thursday that it previously failed to ensure that Roberts was competent to waive his rights to appeal.




Marcus Wellons - Georgia Death Row

Three death row inmates in Georgia are seeking a court order that would prevent the state from using a drug to execute them without a doctor’s prescription.

The inmates, two of whom are to be executed next week, asked a federal judge in Washington on Friday to direct the Drug Enforcement Administration to prevent the use of pentobarbital in lethal injections.

The inmates, Warren Lee Hill, Andrew Allen Cook and Marcus Wellons, argue that the Georgia Department of Corrections’ use of the drug without a doctor’s prescription violates the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Hill and Cook are scheduled to be executed next week. Wellons’ execution date has not been set.

Hill and Cook were each sentenced to death for killings. Wellons was sentenced for raping and killing a teenager.




Joseph Corcora - Indiana Death Row

The attorneys representing death-row inmate Joseph Corcoran are appealing his case to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals again.

In paperwork filed in U.S. District Court this month, Corcoran’s attorneys sought to be allowed to have the higher court review a January decision by U.S. District Judge Jon DeGuilio that denied Corcoran relief from his 1999 death sentence.

In January, DeGuilo found that Corcoran failed to show that Indiana’s decisions to uphold the death penalty in his case were contrary to decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

If accepted by the court, this new appeal would make the fourth time the case has been heard by the 7th Circuit.





Jason Lee Keller - Mississippi Death Row

On Friday, the Mississippi Supreme Court has ordered a hearing to determine if the rights of death-row inmate Jason Lee Keller were violated by a statement he made to police while he was recovering from gunshot wounds in a hospital.

Keller was convicted in the 2007 capital murder of Hat Nguyen, a 41-year-old single mother of four who worked at a convenience store in Biloxi.

He has appealed his conviction, but the order handed down Friday does not grant him a new trial. An evidentiary hearing on a statement offered into evidence at his trial will be reviewed before the state's high court makes a decision.

Keller gave police three different statements, but two of them were excluded from his trial. The statement that was allowed to be presented in court is the statement in question.

Keller claims his statements were coerced and were used to gain more information from him.




Terry Pitchford - Mississippi Death Row

The Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a circuit court judge to hold a competency hearing for a man serving on Death Row.

Terry Pitchford, 27, of Grenada was sentenced to die for the 2004 shooting death of Ruben Britt at the Crossroads Grocery in Grenada County.

Authorities say Britt was shot several times with his own gun.

Pitchford and another man were later arrested after authorities found the firearm in Pitchford's car.

On Thursday, the state's highest court ordered the case back to Grenada County Circuit Court to determine if Pitchford is confident to stand trial.




Christa Pike - Tennessee Death Row

Convicted killer Christa Gail Pike is asked a federal court to bar the state from killing her.

Having exhausted — for now, at least — state court appeals, Pike is now turning to U.S. District Court in what is proving an 18-year battle to escape death row for the 1995 slaying of romantic rival Colleen Slemmer at the now-defunct Job Corps training program for troubled youth, then in Fort Sanders.

In a 123-page petition filed on Pike's behalf, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen A. Ferrell lists a host of reasons why Pike's constitutional rights were violated in both the 1996 trial in Knox County Criminal Court and penalty phase and those violations ignored by Tennessee's appellate courts

Ferrell's petition contains all the claims previously raised in Pike's appeals but with a new twist, arguing state courts trampled on her constitutional rights. The state Attorney General's Office, in a 90-page response, repeatedly asserts state court rulings were legally correct.



Jury Recommended Death Sentences




Khalid Pasha - Florida

On Tuesday a jury recommended that Khalid Ali Pasha should be executed for stabbing and bludgeoning his wife and stepdaughter to death in 2002.

Jurors voted 11-1 for the death penalty after deliberating for about 80 minutes.

Pasha, 69, was found guilty during a retrial last month of killing Robin Canaday, 43, and her daughter, Ranesha Singleton, 20.

The Florida Supreme Court in 2010 overturned Pasha’s 2007 convictions in the case. The high court said Pasha should have been allowed to serve as his own attorney at his original trial.

Pasha represented himself at his retrial. For the sentencing phase of the second trial, Pasha obtained a lawyer, J. Jervis Wise, who urged jurors in closing arguments Monday not to recommend a death sentence.




Reversed/New Trials/Resentenced/Released/Commuted



Raymondeze Rivera - South Carolina

South Carolina’s highest court overturned the death sentence of a man convicted of strangling an Anderson woman in 2006.

The State Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a trial judge should have let Raymondeze Rivera take the stand during his trial, even if defense attorneys thought the testimony might harm their case.

The court also overturned Rivera’s conviction and ordered that he be retried.

Rivera was sentenced to death in 2010 in the killing of Kwana Burns. Prosecutors said Rivera strangled the woman two days after he killed another woman, Asha Wiley.

Rivera is serving a life sentence in Wiley’s death. He testified at his first trial that he was sent to Anderson to kill Burns, and then killed Wiley because she knew too much.




Inmates Who Died On Death Row




Thomas Anthony Wyatt - Florida

One of Indian River County's most notorious murderers, Tommy Wyatt, 49, died in state prison of undisclosed causes while on Death Row, officials said Tuesday.

In 1988 he and his companion's cross-state crime spree — that attracted national attention — ended in the deaths of four people, including three during a robbery-rape in a downtown Domino's Pizza. The three, including a husband and wife, were from Fort Pierce.

At the time of his death on Friday, Wyatt's attorneys were still appealing his case to the federal courts, the last resort in a lengthy appeal that has extended from circuit court to the Florida Supreme Court.

The death — that the state Department of Corrections listed on its website — "saves taxpayers a lot of money," said his former prosecutor, Assistant State Attorney Ryan Butler.

On Monday, Butler learned of the death from the Florida Attorney General's office. He said they didn't have any details.

Because of federal health privacy laws, the DOC doesn't release Wyatt's medical records. Usually an autopsy is performed — as was the case in the last Indian River County convicted murderer to die in state custody before finishing his sentence.