08/23/2007 - Luther Williams - Alabama « Thread Started on May 23, 2007, 7:08am »
Aug. 23 execution set in Tuscaloosa County slaying
The Alabama Supreme Court has set an Aug. 23 execution date for Luther Jerome Williams, who was sent to death row for a 1988 killing in Tuscaloosa County and is the 2nd inmate scheduled to die this summer at Holman Prison in Atmore.
In an order Monday, the state's highest court granted a request by the state attorney general's office to schedule the execution of Williams because he has been through 3 rounds of appeals of his conviction.
The last death row inmate executed in Alabama was Aaron Lee Jones on May 3 for the 1978 slaying of a Blount County couple.
Darrell Grayson, who is on death row for the 1980 rape and killing of an elderly woman in her Montevallo home, is scheduled for execution July 26.
Grayson had asked U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins to delay the execution so Grayson's lawyers can pursue a challenge of Alabama's lethal injection procedures. But the judge, who had indicated a hearing might be held June 26 on the challenge, rejected the delay and the challenge in an order Thursday.
Grayson's attorney, Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, said Monday he will appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.
In Williams' case, court papers filed by the attorney general's office say he stole a car from a motel parking lot in Birmingham on Jan. 22, 1988. The car had a .22-caliber pistol in the trunk. The next morning, John Robert Kirk was on his way home from work when he stopped his pickup truck on the side of Interstate 59 near the West Blocton exit in Tuscaloosa County.
Williams and 2 other men stopped to rob Kirk. Williams led Kirk into a nearby wooded area and shot him "execution style" in the head with the stolen .22-caliber pistol, and then the trio took Kirk's money and truck, leaving Kirk's body in the woods.
Williams' attorneys, Christopher Little of Providence, R.I., and Joel Sogol, did not immediately return telephone messages seeking comment.
Williams filed a legal challenge of Alabama's lethal injection procedure in April, claiming it can cause "excruciating pain" if the 1st drug, sodium pentothal, does not depress the central nervous system before the inmate receives pancuronium bromide to paralyze the diaphragm and potassium chloride to stop the heart.
In a court filing, Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw described Williams' case as a "cookie cutter pleading" like Grayson's and said it should be dismissed because Williams has already been on a "19-year odyssey through the state and federal court system where his sentence and conviction were affirmed at every turn."
U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller is considering the request to dismiss.
<<I hope that there no longer be recourse to capital punishment, given that states today have the means to efficaciously control crime, without definitively taking away an offender's possibility to redeem himself.>> Pope John Paul II
<<Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.>> Albert Einstein
Re: 08/23/2007 - Luther Williams - Alabama « Reply #1 on Aug 16, 2007, 1:57pm »
State opposes delay in Williams' Aug. 23 execution
State attorneys asked a federal appeals court Wednesday to reject an attempt to block next week's scheduled execution of Luther Jerome Williams, who has been on death row for 17 years for killing a man on an interstate in Tuscaloosa County.
Williams, 47, of Birmingham, is scheduled for lethal injection Aug. 23 at Holman prison near Atmore for the Jan. 23, 1988 robbery and shooting death of John Robert Kirk.
Kirk was on his way home from work when he stopped his pickup truck near the West Blocton exit on Interstate 59 in Tuscaloosa County and was assaulted.
According to the court record, Kirk was shot once in the left side of the head, "execution style." His money and truck were stolen.
Williams, who had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, according to trial testimony, was sentenced to death on Feb. 12, 1990. A Tuscaloosa County jury voted 10-2 for a death penalty over a possible sentence of life in prison without parole.
His attorneys asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to block the execution, claiming lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. Williams raised that claim in a suit filed April 10 and dismissed by a federal judge on July 30.
The 11th Circuit denied a stay of execution on Friday, but has not yet issued its final ruling on Williams' appeal.
The Alabama attorney general's office says Williams already had exhausted his appeal on March 26, when the U.S. Supreme Court denied his petition for relief.
Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw contends Williams came up with a lethal injection challenge only in a bid to stall the execution.
Tuscaloosa attorney Joel Sogol, who represented Williams, described the condemned inmate's case as "another example of how little the state affords people charged with capital offenses at their trial and how hard the state fights to make that all right."
Among other issues, Williams' attorneys argued that "evolving standards of decency" have turned against lethal injection.
But state attorneys told the 11th Circuit that 37 of the 38 states that allow capital punishment use lethal injection as the method of execution, and Alabama is not aware of a single state legislature that has recently moved to another method.
The "evolving standards of decency," whatever their stage of evolution, do not give Williams an excuse for waiting to file his lethal-injection challenge until April 2007, the state's court filing says.
Williams' attorneys could have raised that claim in 2002 when Alabama began using lethal injection, the state argued.
<<I hope that there no longer be recourse to capital punishment, given that states today have the means to efficaciously control crime, without definitively taking away an offender's possibility to redeem himself.>> Pope John Paul II
<<Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.>> Albert Einstein
Re: 08/23/2007 - Luther Williams - Alabama « Reply #2 on Aug 22, 2007, 2:37pm »
Alabama is getting as bad as Texas, they only gave this guy THREE rounds of appeals! Wake up Alabama! How many of your children could have gone to college on that money, or maybe the elderly fed? Oh excuse me, I forgot, ANOTHER innocent man on death row! My bad.
"Indeed, the decision that capital punishment may be the appropriate sanction in extreme cases is an expression of the community's belief that certain crimes are themselves so grievous an affront to humanity that the only adequate response may be the penalty of death." ~Supreme Court of the United States of America
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Re: 08/23/2007 - Luther Williams - Alabama « Reply #3 on Aug 22, 2007, 6:36pm »
Attorneys ask U.S. Supreme Court to block Alabama execution
On the eve of Luther Jerome Williams' scheduled execution, his attorneys sought an order Wednesday from the U.S. Supreme Court to block it and give him time to pursue a constitutional challenge of Alabama's use of lethal injection.
The high court appeal follows a 2-1 ruling Tuesday by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals not to delay the Birmingham man's execution for a 1988 murder on an interstate in Tuscaloosa County. State's attorneys contend Williams has exhausted his appeals and the execution should proceed without delay.
It's unclear when the Supreme Court will decide whether to grant a stay of execution.
In a response filed Wednesday afternoon, Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw asked the high court to deny a stay, citing prior court rulings that favored the state in this and similar "imminent execution" cases.
Williams, 47, is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Thursday at Holman prison in Atmore. He was sentenced to death for the robbery and shooting death of John Robert Kirk on Jan. 23, 1988.
Kirk of Gordo was led into the woods and shot in the head and robbed when he stopped his truck along Interstate 59 while driving home from work in Helena.
In the Supreme Court appeal, Williams' attorneys said the inmate filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of Alabama's lethal injection protocols 5 months ago. State's attorneys claim he waited too late to raise the issue.
Williams contends the execution procedures lack the "medically necessary safeguards to ensure that he will remain fully anaesthetized throughout the execution."
As a result of that, he claims in his Supreme Court action that he will suffer "excruciating pain" during the injection, which would violate his constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
State's attorneys defend the execution procedure, pointing out that two emergency medical technicians are present to prepare the inmate for the injection. The state's attorneys say the procedure does not create "a significant and unnecessary risk" that an inmate will suffer pain.
Crenshaw said Williams never filed any evidence to support his claims on lethal injection.
U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller in Montgomery earlier dismissed Williams' claim and the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit agreed with the dismissal. The 11th Circuit's majority decision said Williams didn't sue until five years after Alabama began using lethal injection.
"Both the State and the victim's family have a strong interest in the timely enforcement of Williams' death sentence," Judge Joel Dubina wrote in the majority decision.
In dissent, Judge Rosemary Barkett said Williams filed his suit 16 days after the attorney general sought an execution date and that should be considered filing promptly. She said Williams' claim about the state's death penalty procedures should be heard in court.
"A civilized and just society would surely want to assure itself that it does not administer executions in a manner that is needlessly painful and unconstitutionally torturous, especially when the solution to provide sufficient anesthetic to safeguard against painful death would appear so simple and easy to accommodate," she wrote.
In the U.S. Supreme Court appeal, Williams' attorneys said the 11th Circuit "appears to have erected an absolute bar against any method-of-execution claim that is brought `less than a year' before execution, regardless of whether an execution date has even been set at the time suit is commenced."
<<I hope that there no longer be recourse to capital punishment, given that states today have the means to efficaciously control crime, without definitively taking away an offender's possibility to redeem himself.>> Pope John Paul II
<<Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.>> Albert Einstein
Re: 08/23/2007 - Luther Williams - Alabama « Reply #4 on Aug 22, 2007, 6:37pm »
Alabama inmate due to die Thursday loses federal appeal
A death row inmate trying to halt his scheduled execution Thursday lost a critical decision in a federal appeals court Tuesday.
In a 2-1 ruling, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision that said Luther Jerome Williams waited too late to file a lawsuit challenging Alabama's lethal injection procedures. The 11th Circuit said Williams' real goal is to delay his execution for "many months, if not years."
Williams, 47, of Birmingham, is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Thursday at Holman Prison in Atmore. He was sentenced to death for the robbery and shooting dealt of John Robert Kirk on Jan. 23, 1988, in Tuscaloosa County. Kirk was killed when he stopped his truck along Interstate 59 while driving home from work.
After Attorney General Troy King asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for Williams, he filed a suit in April contending Alabama's lethal injection procedures don't adequately sedate inmates and cause them to suffer pain that is unconstitutionally cruel.
Upholding U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller's decision to dismiss Williams' suit as tardy, the 11th Circuit's majority decision said Williams didn't sue until 5 years after Alabama began using lethal injection.
"Both the State and the victim's family have a strong interest in the timely enforcement of Williams' death sentence," Judge Joel Dubina wrote in the majority decision.
In dissent, Judge Rosemary Barkett said Williams filed his suit 16 days after the attorney general sought an execution date and that should be considered filing promptly. She said Williams' claim about Alabama's death penalty procedures should be heard in court.
"A civilized and just society would surely want to assure itself that it does not administer executions in a manner that is needlessly painful and unconstitutionally torturous, especially when the solution - to provide sufficient anesthetic to safeguard against painful death - would appear so simple and easy to accommodate," she wrote.
An attorney for Williams wrote Gov. Bob Riley on Monday, asking him to delay Williams' execution until after a federal judge holds a trial in October on 2 other inmates' claims that Alabama's lethal injection procedures constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Riley's communications director, Jeff Emerson, said the governor and his legal staff were reviewing the letter Tuesday, but no decision had been announced.
Riley turned down a similar request from death row inmate Darrell Grayson before he was executed July 26 at Holman Prison in Atmore.
<<I hope that there no longer be recourse to capital punishment, given that states today have the means to efficaciously control crime, without definitively taking away an offender's possibility to redeem himself.>> Pope John Paul II
<<Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.>> Albert Einstein
Re: 08/23/2007 - Luther Williams - Alabama « Reply #5 on Aug 22, 2007, 6:37pm »
Execution set in veteran's killing ---- Williams to die Thursday after court rejects lethal injection appeal
Luther Jerome Williams, who has spent 17 years on Alabama's death row for the 1988 execution-style killing of a World War II veteran, will be executed on Thursday.
Williams, of Birmingham, was convicted of the Jan. 23, 1988, killing of John Kirk of Pickens County. Kirk had a problem with his truck and was stopped at the side of Interstate 20/59 in eastern Tuscaloosa County when Williams and 2 other men robbed him. Williams forced Kirk to kneel in the nearby woods and shot him in the back of the head, according to court documents.
Kirk, who worked for Plantation Pipe Co. in Helena, was a veteran of the World War II landing at Omaha Beach, according to a report in The Tuscaloosa News.
Williams, 47, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at Holman prison near Atmore at 6 p.m. Thursday.
The 2 men who were with Williams pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Trosky Eric Gregory, now 43, is incarcerated at Staton Correctional Facility in Elmore. Albert Carmichael Jr., now 45, was paroled in 2004.
The U.S. Supreme Court in March declined to stop Williams' execution. He had one 11th hour court appeal still pending, claiming that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment, but that was rejected Tuesday by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
The court in its ruling upheld a lower court decision that said Williams waited too late to file a lawsuit challenging Alabama's lethal injection procedures. The 11th Circuit said Williams' real goal is to delay his execution for "many months, if not years."
Williams raised that claim in a suit filed April 10 and dismissed by a federal judge on July 30.
Several other Alabama death row inmates have appealed on the same grounds, none successfully. Williams also unsuccessfully appealed to state courts, arguing that his trial lawyer didn't thoroughly review information about the time Williams spent in a mental health facility. That appeal also failed.
An attorney for Williams wrote Gov. Bob Riley on Monday, asking him to delay Williams' execution until after a federal judge holds a trial in October on 2 other inmates' claims that Alabama's lethal injection procedures constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Riley's communications director, Jeff Emerson, said the governor and his legal staff were reviewing the letter Tuesday, but no decision had been announced.
Riley turned down a similar request from death row inmate Darrell Grayson before he was executed July 26 at Holman Prison in Atmore.
<<I hope that there no longer be recourse to capital punishment, given that states today have the means to efficaciously control crime, without definitively taking away an offender's possibility to redeem himself.>> Pope John Paul II
<<Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.>> Albert Einstein
Re: 08/23/2007 - Luther Williams - Alabama « Reply #6 on Aug 23, 2007, 7:01pm »
Luther Williams Executed
Gov. Bob Riley did not delay the execution of Luther Jerome Williams and Williams was executed at 6:21 p.m. this evening. Williams, who was convicted in 1989 for the shooting death of John Robert Kirk, a 63-year-old World War II veteran and Pickens County resident, maintained his innocence until his last breath, saying that the chief of homicide and the Tuscaloosa County District Attorney pinned the crime on him. "They told the other two guys to put it on me. I think it's wrong." After the microphone was removed, Williams continued to talk before the drugs were administered. He saw Kirk's sister, Peggy Guy, and started talking to her and her son. It appeared that Williams told them, "I didn't kill him." Williams was found to be mentally competent after he was charged with murder in 1988, A jury sentenced him to death a year later.
“The trial judge concurred and imposed the death penalty, The conviction and sentence have been upheld by various state and federal courts, and the inmate's request to delay his execution was denied by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“I see no reason to overturn the sentence imposed by the jury and judge, and barring a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, I will not intervene in this scheduled execution because there is no justifiable reason to delay it.”
"Indeed, the decision that capital punishment may be the appropriate sanction in extreme cases is an expression of the community's belief that certain crimes are themselves so grievous an affront to humanity that the only adequate response may be the penalty of death." ~Supreme Court of the United States of America
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Re: 08/23/2007 - Luther Williams - Alabama « Reply #7 on Aug 24, 2007, 3:05pm »
Alabama Inmate Executed for 1988 Slaying
Luther Jerome Williams was executed by injection Thursday for the 1988 murder and robbery of a man who was taken into the woods and shot after he had stopped on an interstate exit ramp to check on a problem with his pickup truck.
Williams, 47, was agitated and was told by the warden to "calm down" as he prepared to read the death warrant.
In his final comments, Williams maintained his innocence, alleging his two co-defendants "put it on me" on orders from the trial prosecutor, and that he had been given "no defense" from his trial attorney. Looking at the victim's sister in the witness room he said, "I did not do it."
Prison chaplain Chris Summers held Williams' left hand and knelt in prayer as he died. He was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m. at Holman prison near Atmore.
Williams had lost appeals to state and federal courts in his final days, including one over the constitutionality of Alabama's method of execution. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, on Thursday denied an application for a stay of execution.
Gov. Bob Riley refused to intervene, saying there was no reason to delay the execution of a man convicted in a "random, cold-blooded crime" almost 20 years ago.
Williams was executed for the robbery and shooting death of 63-year-old John Robert Kirk on Jan. 23, 1988.
Kirk, of Gordo, was led into the woods, shot in the head and robbed when he stopped his truck on an Interstate 59 exit ramp to check a vehicle problem while driving home from work in Helena. His sister, Peggy Kirk Guy, and her son, Lewis Kirk Guy, witnessed the execution.
Both had no comment after the execution.
Two others convicted in the murder received life sentences. Trosky Eric Gregory, 43, was paroled in 2005, but returned to prison earlier this year after his parole was revoked. Albert Carmichael Jr., 45, was paroled in 2004.
Tuscaloosa attorney Joel L. Sogol, who helped wage Williams' appeal, said Williams steadfastly claimed he was passed out drunk in the car when Kirk was shot by 1 of his 2 companions that Saturday afternoon.
According to the court record, Williams stole a car from a motel parking lot in Birmingham and found in the vehicle a .22-caliber pistol, which became the murder weapon.
Williams contended in his Supreme Court action that the execution procedures lack the "medically necessary safeguards" to ensure that he would not suffer "excruciating pain," which would violate his constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
State's attorneys have defended the execution procedure, saying it does not create "a significant and unnecessary risk" that an inmate will suffer pain.
Williams visited with his 18-year-old son, Koreen Bush, and two cousins on Wednesday and two spiritual advisers on Thursday. Williams willed his personal belongings - a box of legal papers, a check for $38.97 and a television set - to his son.
<<I hope that there no longer be recourse to capital punishment, given that states today have the means to efficaciously control crime, without definitively taking away an offender's possibility to redeem himself.>> Pope John Paul II
<<Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.>> Albert Einstein
![[Home]](http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l259/pdpaavatars/boardskin/buttons/home.gif)
![[Help]](http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l259/pdpaavatars/boardskin/buttons/button43750896.gif)
![[Search]](http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l259/pdpaavatars/boardskin/buttons/search.gif)
![[Login]](http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l259/pdpaavatars/boardskin/buttons/login.gif)
![[Register]](http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l259/pdpaavatars/boardskin/buttons/register.gif)
![[Search This Thread]](http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l259/pdpaavatars/boardskin/buttons/search2.gif)
![[Send Topic To Friend]](http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l259/pdpaavatars/boardskin/buttons/sendtopictofriend.gif)
![[Print]](http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l259/pdpaavatars/boardskin/buttons/print.gif)
Author
![[avatar]](http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l259/pdpaavatars/avatarsmembers/av-1.gif)
![[yim]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/yim.gif)
![[aim]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/aim.gif)
Logged