In a soft voice and chilling detail, Laurie Bridges told a jury how she tried to leave her husband, how he tracked her down, and how her new lover tried to protect her. He was shot to death for his effort, his body dragged to a shallow desert grave dug by his assassin. Acting as his own attorney and railing against prosecutors he called "crooked," Sebastian Bridges tried to convince the jury that Hunter Blatchford's death was an accident. But, after brief deliberations, the jury convicted Bridges of 1st-degree murder and kidnapping for the Oct. 27 death of 27-year-old Blatchford. Laurie Bridges, 47, and Sebastian Bridges, 34, met while she was a California prison nurse and he was incarcerated for grand theft, police said. They wed in 1993. In 1997 she left him in California and returned to Las Vegas, where she worked as a nurse and where she met Blatchford, also a nurse, on the job, she told jurors during the trial. 6 months later, her husband tracked her down, she said. He told her he had been watching her home. He showed her he had a key that could open and turn on her car. He told her he had been watching her lover and that she would "never get away." Blatchford called Sebastian Bridges and asked to meet "to talk so everyone would know where everyone else stood and there would be no more waiting for something bad to happen," Laurie Bridges testified. First her husband promised Blatchford his truck in return for the return of his wife, she testified. When that failed, they all met at an apartment and got in the car because Sebastian Bridges promised to show his wife were he had stored all their belongings. Farther and farther from town they drove until finally, in the middle of nowhere near some empty trailers, Sebastian Bridges stopped the car and pulled out a gun. "You're gonna kill me now aren't you," Blatchford asked seeing the gun. "I trusted you. I trusted you," he said to his killer, Laurie Bridges testified. "I'm sorry and I love you with all my heart," she said she told her lover as he died, shot once in the torso. Sebastian Bridges covered the body in plastic bags, pistol whipped then handcuffed his wife, and drove to the desert near Nipton, Calif., where he took out what she described as a "brand new shovel" from the trunk of the car and began digging a grave. She said she considered running but thought she wouldn't make it far, cuffed at the arms and legs, badly bruised and in the middle of nowhere, on a night lighted only "by the last sliver of the moon." So she stayed and listened as her husband dug the grave and told her repeatedly, "it's all your fault." On the way back to Las Vegas they pulled over on the side of the road. A rookie state trooper checked to see if everything was OK, found that it wasn't, and called police. Sebastian Bridges led them to the body. Sebastian Bridges did not take the stand in his own defense. Instead, he begged the jury in closing arguments to look at photographs of the body and find, as he had, that the shooting was an accident caused by a sharp movement and pressure on the gun. He cried each time he mentioned his wife, hardest when he spoke of her being pistol-whipped. "This is malicious prosecution," he told the panel. "If you find with any reasons, with an intent, I killed this man, you should kill me." District Judge Jeffrey Sobel tried to talk Sebastian Bridges in to accepting the help of an attorney. After a hearing, mental health professionals found him narcissistic, intelligent and competent to serve as his own lawyer, if he chose.

In 1984, David Goff was sentenced to 15 years in prison for two counts of attempted capital murder with a deadly weapon. He served less than 5 years due to the mandatory release law which awarded him a day and a half of "good time" for every day he served and was paroled in July of 1989. Just over one year later, on September 1, 1990, he murdered Michael N. McGuire, 34, during an attempted robbery. Michael was kidnapped, handcuffed, drugged and shot to death. 

The Alabama Supreme Court set an April 27, 2001 execution date for a man who asked to be sentenced to death knowing he would get an automatic appeal and better accommodations in prison. Convicted murderer Tommy Arthur was sentenced to die in Alabama's electric chair for killing Troy Wicker in a 1982 murder for-hire scheme in Muscle Shoals. The decision to set the execution date was unusual because Arthur's appeal has yet to be heard in federal court, as is routine in capital murder cases. Arthur recently filed papers in state court that include a claim that new evidence will prove him innocent. Clay Crenshaw, an assistant attorney general who asked the Supreme Court to set the execution date, said Arthur has not filed appeals when he was supposed to. "It is our position that he has waived his appeals," Crenshaw said. Crenshaw, who heads the capital litigation section in the attorney general's office, said his office, and apparently the Supreme Court, agree that Arthur has run out of legal appeals. "This is an oddball case because he technically does have appeals left, but it's our position he does not because he has not timely filed petitions," Crenshaw said. "Anything he has left is beyond the statute of limitations." A defense lawyer who specializes in death penalty appeals said Arthur didn't appeal because he couldn't find a lawyer. Alabama does not provide attorneys for condemned inmates. "It's somewhat unprecedented to schedule an execution without federal review," said Bryan Stevenson, who heads the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery. Arthur has been convicted and sentenced to death three times for shooting Wicker, a riverboat engineer, to death on Feb. 1, 1982. Wicker's wife, Judy Wicker, testified she had sex with Arthur before the killing and paid him $10,000 from her husband's life insurance policy for the slaying. Mrs. Wicker was convicted as an accomplice and was sentenced to life in prison. During sentencing, Arthur asked jurors to recommend death. He told them a capital sentence would mean automatic appeals, better accommodations in prison and liberal access to the prison law library. Crenshaw said Arthur "knows how to work the system." Arthur's appellate court record shows why it's taken nearly 19 years to send him to the electric chair: "After 3 trials, 4 appellate reviews, approximately 10 different attorneys and numerous delays and continuances, Arthur raises over 40 issues before this court," the Supreme Court said Nov. 21, 1997, when it last upheld his conviction. Arthur has not exhausted all of his federal appeals, but officials in the Alabama attorney general's office say he failed to meet filing deadlines on the appeals. Tuscumbia attorney William Hovater, who represented Arthur during his 2nd trial and later had the conviction successfully appealed, said Arthur called him Friday after learning that an execution date had been scheduled. "He said he called me because I was the only one he could trust," Hovater said. "He wanted me to check to make sure if he had any appeals available. I told him I would. "He was pretty upbeat and didn't sound like someone who had just been told the day he was going to be executed. He was confident there will be some appellate measure to help him avoid this." Hovater said Arthur told him that he hopes to draw attention to the fact that people who have exhausted their appeals on the state level no longer have an attorney appointed to represent them. He said Arthur continues to maintain his innocence. Arthur recently filed documents in state court claiming that he has new evidence proving he is innocent. The papers do not elaborate on the new evidence. Crenshaw said this is further evidence of Arthur "working the system." His request to the jury that he receive the death penalty is an example of the way he used the system. He told jurors that a death sentence would mean an automatic appeal and access to the prison law library among other accommodations. Arthur faces the death penalty because he already had been convicted of killing someone before the Wicker slaying. He was convicted in 1977 of killing the sister of his common-law wife. Arthur was sentenced to life in prison in that case. The victim in that case was shot in the right eye, just as Wicker was killed. A person convicted of 2 murders within five years can be tried for capital murder. Arthur was convicted 1st in 1985, but that conviction was overturned by the Alabama Supreme Court because details of the 1977 murder conviction were improperly admitted at the trial. Arthur was serving time in a Decatur work-release center for that killing when Wicker was murdered. Arthur escaped from the Colbert County jail in 1986 while awaiting the start of his second trial. Jailer James Conley was shot during the escape. Arthur was captured less than 2 months later in Knoxville, where he was accused of bank robbery. His 2nd conviction was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeals because of improper evidence, Hovater said. Judy Wicker testified in the 2nd trial after declining to do so in the 1st trial. 

A Charlotte man who was convicted of killing two people in 1979 has been scheduled for execution in North Carolina April 27. Larry Darnell Williams has exhausted his appeals after 21 years on death row. Williams was convicted in the shotgun killing of a Gaston County gas station attendant, Eric Ross Joines, on June3, 1979, and in the killing later that night of Concord convenience store clerk Susan Verle Pierce, during a robbery that netted him and an accomplice $67.27. Williams and 3 others were arrested in connection with the crimes, but 1 defendant was acquitted and the other 2 received lighter sentences after testifying against Williams. Juries ordered Williams to die for both crimes, but the Cabarrus County death sentence was later reversed because of errors at trial. He hasn't been re-sentenced in that case. Williams' IQ measured 69 at the time of the crime - just below the score of 70 generally considered mildly mentally retarded. The issue of Williams' low IQ hasn't been debated during his appeals because N.C. law allows for the execution of mentally retarded convicts. Prosecutors say Williams' jury knew about his low IQ but didn't believe it offset the atrocity of his crimes. "I wasn't around at the time, but the way the murder has been described, it is certainly one that deserves the death penalty," said Gaston District Attorney Michael Lands. Williams exhausted his appeals in 1999 but won a stay in his previously scheduled execution.