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Three killers were executed
in July 2002. They had murdered at least
4 people.
Three
killers were given a stay in July 2002.
They have murdered at least 3 people.
| Date of scheduled execution |
State |
Victim name |
Inmate name |
Status |
| July 10, 2002 |
Florida |
Natalie Brady, 68 |
Amos King |
stayed |
|
Amos King, was sentenced to be executed for the murder of Natalie Brady, 68, who
was raped, stabbed and beaten in her Tarpon Springs home in 1977.
In March of 1977, Amos King was an
inmate at Tarpon Springs Community Correctional Center, a minimum security
work-release facility, where he was serving a sentence for larceny of a firearm.
On March 17 he worked at a Clearwater restaurant from 5:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m.
the following morning. An inmate van picked him up at around 1:30 a.m., and he
checked back into the facility at approximately 2:35 a.m. At about 3:40 a.m.,
the prison counselor, James McDonough, discovered King missing during a routine
bed check. McDonough found King outside the building with blood on his pants.
After McDonough escorted King back into the facility, a fight broke out between
the two in which King repeatedly stabbed McDonough with a knife. King then fled
the facility. A
few minutes later, police and fire units arrived at Natalie's house, which was
ablaze, and found her body. Natalie's home was just 1,500 feet away from the
work release facility. |
| Date of scheduled execution |
State |
Victim name |
Inmate name |
Status |
| July 10, 2002 |
Texas |
Ben "Doc" Murray |
Jose Briseno |
stayed |
| In late 1990, Ben Murray, the Sheriff
of Dimmit County, was investigating a burglary case. The Sheriff met with
Briseno to enlist his help in solving the burglaries. Several weeks later, on
Sunday, January 6, 1991, the Sheriff was found dead in his home, with numerous
stab wounds and a bullet wound to the head. At trial, testimony revealed that
over five hundred dollars in cash had been taken from the Sheriff. Additionally,
two of his pistols were missing. When Briseno was arrested, he had bandages on
both hands. He told police that he had received the cuts in a fight on the
previous Friday. While being held, he attempted to escape with several other
inmates. After their capture, one of the other inmates
told authorities statements Briseno made about the Sheriff's murder.
He testified that on the night of the Sheriff's
murder, Briseno and another defendant, Alberto Gonzales, appeared at the
Sheriff's home offering to sell some rings. Briseno and Gonzales did not have
any rings for sale, but used the ring story to gain entry to the Sheriff's home.
A struggle began, and they stabbed the Sheriff. When Briseno and Gonzales could
not take the Sheriff down, Briseno grabbed the Sheriff's gun off a table and
shot the Sheriff. Afterwards, Briseno and Gonzales stole some money from the
Sheriff's home and hid it. Basaldua also testified that during the escape
Briseno showed him the spot where Briseno had buried the gun used to kill the
Sheriff. Briseno dug up the gun but soon disposed of it in the same general area
before the police caught the escapees. Upon being recaptured, Basaldua led the
officers to the location where Briseno had hidden the gun, and the gun was
recovered. At trial, the state introduced evidence demonstrating that blood
taken from the Sheriff's carpet compared positively with that of Briseno. The
state's serologist testified that the enzyme markers found in the blood are
shared by Briseno and a little more than one percent of the Hispanic population
in the United States. Additional evidence submitted at trial included bloody
clothing that was found behind a sofa in a shed in which Briseno had been
staying. That clothing contained enzyme markers consistent with Briseno's and
the Sheriff's. Furthermore, a bullet of the same caliber and brand as that used
in the stolen pistol utilized to kill the Sheriff was discovered at the shed.
Moreover, a bloodhound tracked a lighter found near the Sheriff's residence to
the shed where Briseno had been staying. A jury
convicted Briseno of Sheriff Murray's murder and sentenced him to death.
UPDATE: Briseno was granted a stay of execution based on his claim that he is
mentally retarded. |
| Date of scheduled execution |
State |
Victim name |
Inmate name |
Status |
| July 17, 2002 |
Mississippi |
Bruce Ladner
|
Tracy Hansen
|
executed |
| Cop killer Tracy Alan Hansen is
scheduled to be put to death July 17, which would make
him the 1st inmate executed in the state since 1989.
On Monday, the state Supreme Court set the execution date. The date was
set one week after the U.S. Supreme Court denied Hansen's appeal.
"No legal impediment exists to deter the resetting of an execution date,"
the state's highest court said in its order Monday, signed by Justice
George C. Carlson Jr. Hansen has exhausted his
court appeals, said Assistant Attorney General Marvin
'Sonny' White, who handles capital murder appeals for the state.
The chances of Hansen's execution being carried out July 17 are "highly
likely now," White said. The execution is set
for 6 p.m., Department of Corrections spokeswoman
Jennifer Griffin said. Previous executions in the state occurred after
midnight. After the U.S. Supreme Court rejected
Hansen's appeal, the state attorney general's office
requested an execution date from the state Supreme
Court. Hansen is sentenced to die for the April 10,
1987, shooting death of Mississippi Highway Patrolman
Bruce Ladner. Ladner died from gunshot wounds in the neck and
back after he pulled over Hansen's car on April 10, 1987, for speeding in
Harrison County. The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi has
said Hansen shouldn't be executed because he was
represented by an unqualified and unprepared lawyer.
Hansen would become the 1st person in the state to die by lethal
injection. On July 1, 1998, state law made lethal injection the form of
execution for death row inmates. Hansen has been on
Mississippi's death row for almost 15 years for the April 10, 1987, shooting
death of Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol Officer Bruce Ladner. Mississippi's
last execution was in 1989, when Leo Edwards, 36, was put to death in the gas
chamber for killing a convenience store clerk during a robbery in Jackson.
Brandon Ladner, who lost his father when he was 11 years old, hopes justice is
near. "We have been told so many times that it would be this year, then the
next year but it would drag on," said Ladner, 26, a deputy with the Harrison
County Sheriff's Department. "Our family is all pro-death penalty, of course,
and we are excited that there may be closure." Brandon Ladner said the family
has been afraid Hansen would escape before he was ever executed. Family members
were told Hansen had planned to escape from Unit 32 at the State Penitentiary on
May 28, 2000, with Roy Harper and John Woolard. Harper and Woolard got away but
were later recaptured. Hansen never escaped. Ladner was killed after he pulled
over Hansen and his ex-girlfriend Anita Krecic during a routine traffic stop on
I-10 in Harrison County. Hansen and Krecic were wanted in connection with a
robbery in Florida. After Hansen shot Ladner, he and Krecic stole the officer's
gun and left the scene in Ladner's patrol car. They were captured a short time
later in Hancock County. Both were convicted of murder in Harrison County, but
Krecic did not receive the death penalty and remains in prison. Hansen had an
appeal denied by the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans in November 2001.
At the time, Hansen claimed he was denied effective legal assistance during the
penalty phase of his case and had key testimony in his defense excluded.
|
| Date of scheduled execution |
State |
Victim name |
Inmate name |
Status |
| July
19, 2002 |
Georgia |
Keith Patrick Young, 17 |
Timothy Carr |
stayed |
|
The state set a July 19 execution date for Timothy Don Carr, a Monroe County man
convicted of fatally stabbing and beating a 17-year-old Warner Robins youth in
1992. Carr, 32, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 9 a.m. at the Georgia
Diagnostic and Classification Prison near Jackson, the Department of Corrections
announced Wednesday. Carr was convicted and sentenced to death in 1994 for the
murder of 17-year-old Keith Patrick Young. Prosecutors said Carr cut Young's
throat, stabbed him numerous times and bludgeoned him with a baseball bat. He
also stole Young's wallet and car after they left a party with Carr's
girlfriend, Melissa Leslie Burgeson. Burgeson, who allegedly goaded Carr into
killing Young, also was convicted of murder. A judge in Butts County, where Carr
had been on death row since his conviction, had overturned Carr's death sentence
on grounds that his trial attorney was ineffective. But the Georgia Supreme
Court reinstated the death penalty in a unanimous ruling in March 2001, saying
Carr did not show that his lawyer's actions affected the outcome of the trial.
UPDATE: In an order issued Thursday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
reversed course and granted Carr a hearing on his federal appeal that he be
spared the death penalty. Last month, the 11th Circuit had refused to hear any
issue of Carr's appeal -- the 1st time the appeals court had declined to even
hear a death penalty appeal. |
| Date of scheduled execution |
State |
Victim name |
Inmate name |
Status |
| July 23, 2002 |
Oklahoma |
Addie Hawley, 84 |
Randall Cannon |
executed |
| The Oklahoma
state Court of Criminal Appeals set a July 23 execution
date for a man convicted of beating an 84-year-old woman to death in
1985. Randall Eugene Cannon, 42, was convicted of
first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the
slaying of Addie Hawley, 84, in June 1985. The woman
was taken from her northwest Oklahoma City home.
Cannon and a co-defendant locked her in the trunk of her car and took
her to a remote area and then beat her and set her and the car on fire,
the attorney general's office said. Cannon's
co-defendant, Lloyd LaFevers, was executed Jan. 30, 2001, for
the crime. On the night of June 24, 1985, the lives of
Loyd LaFevers and Randall Cannon became entwined forever with that of Colorado
state Sen. Ken Chlouber. Prior to LaFevers execution, Chlouber declared his
plans to watch LaFevers' execution in McAlester, Okla. Addie Hawley was the aunt
of Colorado state Sen. Ken Chlouber. "This guy committed the most horrible
murder you could ever imagine," Chlouber said of the man convicted of killing
his aunt. "It was almost 16 years ago. And this guy has continued to live - and
live very well - at taxpayers' expense. I mean, this guy should have been
exterminated that very next day. I would have been glad to do it for them,
without hesitation." LaFevers and Cannon murdered the matriarch of Chlouber's
extended Oklahoma family, 84-year-old Addie Hawley. They did it in such a
vicious manner that even today, years after the crime, the officers who
investigated it remember it for its cruelty. "I think this trip should be
dedicated to seeing this vicious murderer fly through the gates of hell, and I
want to be there when he does," said Chlouber. LaFevers and Cannon broke into
Hawley's Oklahoma City home shortly after she returned from church. The men went
to Hawley's house because they wanted to steal her car, according to trial
testimony. After breaking into the home, they severely beat Hawley and stuffed
her into the trunk of her car. They eventually drove her to a vacant lot, set
her on fire and torched the car. When firefighters responded to the report of a
grass fire, they found a nude and barely alive Hawley in the middle of a burned
vacant lot. Based on a jailhouse confession, Oklahoma investigators are
convinced Hawley also was repeatedly raped by LaFevers. He was acquitted of a
rape charge. Hawley was still conscious when firefighters found her. They poured
bottle after bottle of saline solution on the burns that covered 60% of her
body. Her words were incomprehensible. By the time Chlouber's mother and brother
arrived at Baptist Hospital, she was near death and couldn't speak at all.
"There were no last words. That kind of always bothered my mom. You always want
to say goodbye," Chlouber said. "I guess what bothered me more - or as much -
was the effect it had on my mom." His mother went from being an "outgoing
country gal" to a virtual recluse. After her sister's murder, his mother had new
locks installed on her doors and windows. "It virtually made her a prisoner in
her own home," Chlouber said. His mother, while still a teenager, had moved from
the Texas Panhandle to
Oklahoma City to live with her sister after Hawley married. While she attended
high school in Oklahoma City, Chlouber's mother lived with Hawley. The 2 became
"incredibly close. My aunt Addie was the oldest of all my momma's brothers and
sisters. So she was kind of the head of the family," said Chlouber. "Everything
happened at Aunt Addie's, everything happened there. This was the woman (Hawley)
who in her whole life I don't think she ever did anything wrong. We have so many
gray areas in society anymore. Right and wrong was very clear to her." Chlouber
says he has never wanted to sit down with the killers. "I have no desire to talk
to him," said Chlouber. "I'd like to kill him. I'd like to kill him in the same
manner he executed my aunt. I know my
momma wouldn't be proud of me for saying that. I'm probably not proud of myself
for saying that. But that is just the way it is. There is no way around that.
It's real life, real people." Chlouber said he's felt a little guilty being in
Colorado, removed from what happened in Oklahoma. "It was always so devastating
to my mom and to everybody down there that was still there," Chlouber said. "And
of course, I was the one when growing up who couldn't wait to get out of that
dirt. I wanted Oklahoma in that rear view mirror. "So now I'm determined to see
this through to conclusion. I just want to be there for the end. I want to see
that period at the end of his sentence." UPDATE:
Randall E. Cannon, 42, was pronounced dead at 6:05 p.m. Tuesday after
receiving an injection. Asked if he had any last words, Cannon said, "No," then
looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath. The Supreme Court earlier Tuesday
rejected his final appeal. Cannon had argued that the court's June decision
requiring that juries - not judges - hand down death sentences indirectly
affected his case. |
| Date of scheduled execution |
State |
Victim name |
Inmate name |
Status |
| July 30, 2002 |
Oklahoma |
Bradford Lee Beck,
41
Shirley C. Fox |
Earl Frederick |
executed |
A man who was charged in a Texas
Panhandle slaying has been found guilty of murder in
an Oklahoma case. Earl Alexander Frederick Sr., who
says he has multiple personalities, was convicted in
the beating death of Bradford Beck. Prosecutors said they
believe Beck was robbed and then died of a blow to the head.
Frederick was arrested in Dallas County on Nov.
19, 1989, and was accused of killing an elderly man.
Frederick, formerly from Dallas, was charged with
capital murder in the death of Shirley C. Fox in Texline.
Fox died after receiving a shotgun blast to his face and numerous hammer
blows to the head during an apparent robbery attempt,
authorities said. Texas officials chose not to
prosecute him since Oklahoma was seeking the death
penalty. Beck's body was found in
a field in January 1990. He had been killed Nov. 11,
1989. Authorities linked Fox's murder and the Oklahoma
killing after officers learned that a pickup found at
the site of Fox's death belonged to Beck, officials
said. Court records showed Frederick confessed to
Beck's death. Frederick gave
police four names and told them one of his personalities, known as Jeff,
made him do bad things.
Prosecutors say Frederick is faking the multiple personality disorder.
Frederick was found guilty in 1992, but the
state Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the
conviction and ordered a new trial. UPDATE: The
Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has set July 30 as the execution
date for Oklahoma County death row inmate Earl Alexander Frederick, Sr.
Attorney General Drew Edmondson requested the date June 7.
Frederick, 51, was convicted of the November 1989 murder of 41-year-old
Bradford Lee Beck. Beck's partially decomposed body was discovered Jan.
15, 1990, in a field in the 8700 block of N.E. 23rd
Street. The medical examiner listed the cause of death
as undetermined head trauma and classified the manner
of death as homicide. UPDATE: Earl Frederick was executed for
the 1989 beating death of a Spencer man. Frederick, 51, who said he wanted his
sentence carried out, was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. after receiving a lethal
injection of drugs. He was convicted twice for killing Bradford Lee Beck.
Frederick had told the Oklahoma Attorney General's office he wanted to waive any
appeals to his sentence. "Mere words cannot begin to express the sorrow I feel
over my actions," Frederick said in a February 2001 letter to Assistant Attorney
General Sandy Howard. "I am guilty of the crime, let there be no doubt of that."
Beck's mother Beatrice and his cousin Mark Smith were expected to witness the
execution. "I never thought I would live to see the execution carried out,"
Beck's family said in a statement. "I am relieved to know that justice will be
served this evening." Frederick was first convicted in 1992 and sentenced to
death for killing Beck. Beck's body had started to decompose when it was found
in a field in Midwest City on Jan. 15, 1990. The medical examiner listed the
cause of death as undetermined head trauma.
Prosecutors said the 41-year-old Beck, a partially paralyzed Vietnam War
veteran, befriended Frederick in November of 1989. Beck let Frederick stay with
him and told his family that Frederick was an old war buddy. Beck said the two
had stayed together at a veterans hospital. The second trial came in 1998 after
a judge ruled Frederick, a former Noble assistant police chief, was competent to
stand trial again. At the time of his arrest, Frederick told authorities one of
his personalities, named Jeff, made him do bad things. Prosecutors argued
Frederick was faking multiple personality disorder. He was convicted and again
sentenced to death. "I certainly feel the conviction and sentence I received the
first time was justified," Frederick said. "Just as it was (the second) time
also." |
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