Sedley Alley, a civilian married to a military person, abducted nineteen-year old Lance Corporal Suzanne Marie Collins while she was jogging near Millington Naval Base in Millington, Tennessee late in the evening of July 11, 1985. He attacked and murdered her and left her body in a field. Two marines jogging near where Suzanne was abducted heard her scream and ran toward the sound. However, before they reached the scene, they saw Alley's car drive off. They reported to base security and accompanied officers on a tour of the base, looking for the car they had seen. Unsuccessful, they returned to their barracks. Soon after returning to their quarters, however, the marines were called back to the security office, where they identified Alley's car, which had been stopped by officers. Alley and his wife gave statements to the base security personnel accounting for their whereabouts. The security personnel were satisfied with Alley's story, and Alley and his wife returned to their on-base housing. Suzanne's body was found a few hours later, and Alley was immediately arrested by military police. He voluntarily gave a statement to the police, admitting to having killed Collins but giving a substantially false - and considerably more humane - account of the circumstances of the killing. Sedley Alley's wife left him after getting in a fight. He drank two six-packs and a bottle of wine. He told authorities that he had gone out for more liquor when his car accidentally hit 19-year-old Suzanne Collins as she jogged near the Millington Naval Base. Alley's story is that he accidentally killed the young woman -- who was due to graduate from aviation school the next day. However, an autopsy revealed that her skull had been fractured with a screwdriver. After she died, a tree limb was rammed into her vagina so hard that it entered her abdomen and lacerated one of her lungs. Alley tried to convince a jury that he had multiple personality disorder. Alley was convicted on March 18, 1987 of murder in the first degree and was sentenced to death. He was also convicted of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated rape, for which he received consecutive forty-year sentences. He was scheduled to die by electrocution May 2, 1990, but was reprieved indefinitely by the state Court of Criminal Appeals. Judge Penny White made that decision, and she paid for it with her career. She was ousted from the bench during a fierce political campaign that portrayed her as soft on crime. UPDATE: A federal judge halted the June 3 execution of a convicted murderer to await a ruling from a federal appeals court in the case of another Tennessee death row inmate. Sedley Alley, 48, received the stay from the U.S. District Court in Memphis late Wednesday. "We're very pleased," state post conviction defender Don Dawson said. "The course of procedure now is whether the state will appeal that order to the 6th Circuit." The order by Judge Bernice Donald said the court needs guidance from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to rule in the case of convicted murderer Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman whether new evidence can be introduced in federal court after state appeals have been exhausted. Sharon Curtis-Flair, spokeswoman for state Attorney General Paul Summers, declined to comment on the order. "We've still got to study it and decide from there what action to take," she said. Alley was sentenced to die for the 1985 brutal rape and murder of 19-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Suzanne M. Collins at the Millington Naval Air Station outside Memphis. Dawson said he is unsure whether appeals filed earlier this week in state court will continue to receive expedited status. Those motions asked the state Supreme Court to order tests of DNA evidence taken from the crime scene 19 years ago. A Shelby County judge denied Alley's initial request for state-funded DNA testing of 11 samples of physical evidence, saying he hadn't shown "reasonable probability" that he wouldn't have been prosecuted or convicted if the tests were in his favor. Alley faced an execution date before in 1990, but won a reprieve from the state Court of Criminal Appeals. The appeals opinion was written by Judge Penny White, who later was appointed to Tennessee Supreme Court but was ousted by voters in 1996 following a campaign by death penalty advocates, including Collins' parents, that portrayed her as soft on violent crime. Donald lifted Alley's stay of execution in 1999 and declined to hear an appeal of his conviction and death sentence. Collins was kidnapped while jogging, beaten, stabbed in the head with a screwdriver and sexually assaulted with a tree limb. Alley gave police a confession but now says his statement was coerced.

David Paul Hammer was sentenced to die for killing his cellmate, Andrew Hunt Marti. Hammer, 45, is scheduled to die by lethal injection June 8 at the federal prison in Terre Haute. The date was set after he waived pending appeals for the 1996 death of a cellmate in a federal prison in Pennsylvania. Hammer is awaiting execution for the 1996 murder of his cellmate, Andrew Marti, at the Allenwood Federal Penitentiary outside Williamsport, Pa. Hammer was in Allenwood serving a sentence for escaping from an Oklahoma state prison in the early 1980s. He still had 1,223 years remaining on a sentence in that state for crimes including kidnapping and attempted murder.

Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were 14 and 16 years old, respectively. They were friends who attended the same high school in Houston, Texas, Waltrip High School. On June 24, 1993, the girls spent the day together and then died together. They were last seen by friends about 11:15 at night, when they left a friend's apartment to head home, to beat summer curfew at 11:30. They knew they would be late if they took the normal path home, down W. 34th Street to T.C. Jester, both busy streets. They also knew they would have to pass a sexually-oriented business on that route and so decided to take a well-known shortcut down a railroad track and through a city park to Elizabeth's neighborhood. The next morning, the girls parents began to frantically look for them, paging them on their pagers, calling their friends to see if they knew where they were, to no avail. The families filed missing persons reports with the Houston Police Department and continued to look for the girls on their own. The Ertmans and Penas gathered friends and neighbors to help them pass out a huge stack of fliers with the girls' pictures all over the Houston area, even giving them to newspaper vendors on the roadside. Four days after the girls disappeared, a person identifying himself as 'Gonzalez' called the Crimestoppers Tips number. He told the call taker that the missing girls' bodies could be found near T.C. Jester Park at White Oak bayou. The police were sent to the scene and searched the park without finding anything. The police helicopter was flying over the park and this apparently prompted Mr. 'Gonzalez' to make a 911 call, directing the search to move to the other side of the bayou. When the police followed this suggestion, they found the badly decaying bodies of Jenny and Elizabeth. Jennifer Ertman's dad, Randy Ertman, was about to give an interview regarding the missing girls to a local television reporter when the call came over a cameraman's police scanner that two bodies had been found. Randy commandeered the news van and went to the scene that was now bustling with police activity. Randy Ertman appeared on the local news that evening, screaming at the police officers who were struggling to hold him back, "Does she have blond hair?Does she have blond hair?!!?" Fortunately, they did manage to keep Randy from entering the woods and seeing his daughter's brutalized body and that of her friend Elizabeth. The bodies were very badly decomposed, even for four days in Houston's brutal summer heat and humidity, particularly in the head, neck and genital areas. The medical examiner later testified that this is how she could be sure as to the horrible brutality of the rapes, beatings and murders. The break in solving the case came from, of course, the 911 call. It was traced to the home of the brother of one of the men later sentenced to death for these murders. When the police questioned 'Gonzalez', he said that he had made the original call at his 16 year-old wife's urging. She felt sorry for the families and wanted them to be able to put their daughters' bodies to rest. 'Gonzalez' said that his brother was one of the six people involved in killing the girls, and gave police the names of all but one, the new recruit, whom he did not know. His knowledge of the crimes came from the killers themselves, most of whom came to his home after the murders, bragging and swapping the jewelry they had stolen from the girls. While Jenny and Elizabeth were living the last few hours of their lives, Peter Cantu, Efrain Perez, Derrick Sean O'Brien, Joe Medellin and Joe's 14 year old brother were initiating a new member, Raul Villareal, into their gang, known as the Black and Whites. Raul was an acquaintance of Efrain and was not known to the other gang members. They had spent the evening drinking beer and then "jumping in" Raul. This means that the new member was required to fight every member of the gang until he passed out and then he would be accepted as a member. Testimony showed that Raul lasted through three of the members before briefly losing consciousness.  The gang continued drinking and 'shooting the breeze' for some time and then decided to leave. Two brothers who had been with them but testified that they were not in the gang left first and passed Jenny and Elizabeth, who were unknowingly walking towards their deaths. When Peter Cantu saw Jenny and Elizabeth, he thought it was a man and a woman and told the other gang members that he wanted to jump him and beat him up. He was frustrated that he had been the one who was unable to fight Raul. The gang members ran and grabbed Elizabeth and pulled her down the incline, off of the tracks. Testimony showed that Jenny had gotten free and could have run away but returned to Elizabeth when she cried out for Jenny to help her. For the next hour or so, these beautiful, innocent young girls were subjected to the most brutal gang rapes that most of the investigating officers had ever encountered. The confessions of the gang members that were used at trial indicated that there was never less than 2 men on each of the girls at any one time and that the girls were repeatedly raped orally, anally and vaginally for the entire hour. One of the gang members later said during the brag session that by the time he got to one of the girls, "she was loose and sloppy." One of the boys boasted of having 'virgin blood' on him. The 14-year-old juvenile later testified that he had gone back and forth between his brother and Peter Cantu since they were the only ones there that he really knew and kept urging them to leave. He said he was told repeatedly by Peter Cantu to "get some". He raped Jennifer and was later sentenced to 40 years for aggravated sexual assault, which was the maximum sentence for a juvenile. When the rapes finally ended, the horror was not over. The gang members took Jenny and Elizabeth from the clearing into a wooded area, leaving the juvenile behind, saying he was "too little to watch". Jenny was strangled with the belt of Sean O'Brien, with two murderers pulling, one on each side, until the belt broke. Part of the belt was left at the murder scene, the rest was found in O'Brien's home. After the belt broke, the killers used her own shoelaces to finish their job. Medellin later complained that "the bitch wouldn't die" and that it would have been "easier with a gun". Elizabeth was also strangled with her shoelaces, after crying and begging the gang members not to kill them; bargaining, offering to give them her phone number so they could get together again. The medical examiner testified that Elizabeth's two front teeth were knocked out of her brutalized mouth before she died and that two of Jennifer's ribs were broken after she had died. Testimony showed that the girls' bodies were kicked and their necks were stomped on after the strangulations in order to "make sure that they were really dead." The juvenile, Venancio Medellin, pled guilty to his charge and his sentence was reviewed when he turned 18, at which time he was sent to serve the remainder of the sentence in prison. The five killers were tried for capital murder in Harris County, Texas, convicted and sentenced to death.

Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were 14 and 16 years old, respectively. They were friends who attended the same high school in Houston, Texas, Waltrip High School. On June 24, 1993, the girls spent the day together and then died together. They were last seen by friends about 11:15 at night, when they left a friend's apartment to head home, to beat summer curfew at 11:30. They knew they would be late if they took the normal path home, down W. 34th Street to T.C. Jester, both busy streets. They also knew they would have to pass a sexually-oriented business on that route and so decided to take a well-known shortcut down a railroad track and through a city park to Elizabeth's neighborhood. The next morning, the girls parents began to frantically look for them, paging them on their pagers, calling their friends to see if they knew where they were, to no avail. The families filed missing persons reports with the Houston Police Department and continued to look for the girls on their own. The Ertmans and Penas gathered friends and neighbors to help them pass out a huge stack of fliers with the girls' pictures all over the Houston area, even giving them to newspaper vendors on the roadside. Four days after the girls disappeared, a person identifying himself as 'Gonzalez' called the Crimestoppers Tips number. He told the call taker that the missing girls' bodies could be found near T.C. Jester Park at White Oak bayou. The police were sent to the scene and searched the park without finding anything. The police helicopter was flying over the park and this apparently prompted Mr. 'Gonzalez' to make a 911 call, directing the search to move to the other side of the bayou. When the police followed this suggestion, they found the badly decaying bodies of Jenny and Elizabeth. Jennifer Ertman's dad, Randy Ertman, was about to give an interview regarding the missing girls to a local television reporter when the call came over a cameraman's police scanner that two bodies had been found. Randy commandeered the news van and went to the scene that was now bustling with police activity. Randy Ertman appeared on the local news that evening, screaming at the police officers who were struggling to hold him back, "Does she have blond hair? Does she have blond hair?!!?" Fortunately, they did manage to keep Randy from entering the woods and seeing his daughter's brutalized body and that of her friend Elizabeth. The bodies were very badly decomposed, even for four days in Houston's brutal summer heat and humidity, particularly in the head, neck and genital areas. The medical examiner later testified that this is how she could be sure as to the horrible brutality of the rapes, beatings and murders. The break in solving the case came from, of course, the 911 call. It was traced to the home of the brother of one of the men later sentenced to death for these murders. When the police questioned 'Gonzalez', he said that he had made the original call at his 16 year-old wife's urging. She felt sorry for the families and wanted them to be able to put their daughters' bodies to rest. 'Gonzalez' said that his brother was one of the six people involved in killing the girls, and gave police the names of all but one, the new recruit, whom he did not know. His knowledge of the crimes came from the killers themselves, most of whom came to his home after the murders, bragging and swapping the jewelry they had stolen from the girls. While Jenny and Elizabeth were living the last few hours of their lives, Peter Cantu, Efrain Perez, Derrick Sean O'Brien, Joe Medellin and Joe's 14 year old brother were initiating a new member, Raul Villareal, into their gang, known as the Black and Whites. Raul was an acquaintance of Efrain and was not known to the other gang members. They had spent the evening drinking beer and then "jumping in" Raul. This means that the new member was required to fight every member of the gang until he passed out and then he would be accepted as a member. Testimony showed that Raul lasted through three of the members before briefly losing consciousness.  The gang continued drinking and 'shooting the breeze' for some time and then decided to leave. Two brothers who had been with them but testified that they were not in the gang left first and passed Jenny and Elizabeth, who were unknowingly walking towards their deaths. When Peter Cantu saw Jenny and Elizabeth, he thought it was a man and a woman and told the other gang members that he wanted to jump him and beat him up. He was frustrated that he had been the one who was unable to fight Raul. The gang members ran and grabbed Elizabeth and pulled her down the incline, off of the tracks. Testimony showed that Jenny had gotten free and could have run away but returned to Elizabeth when she cried out for Jenny to help her. For the next hour or so, these beautiful, innocent young girls were subjected to the most brutal gang rapes that most of the investigating officers had ever encountered. The confessions of the gang members that were used at trial indicated that there was never less than 2 men on each of the girls at any one time and that the girls were repeatedly raped orally, anally and vaginally for the entire hour. One of the gang members later said during the brag session that by the time he got to one of the girls, "she was loose and sloppy." One of the boys boasted of having 'virgin blood' on him. The 14-year-old juvenile later testified that he had gone back and forth between his brother and Peter Cantu since they were the only ones there that he really knew and kept urging them to leave. He said he was told repeatedly by Peter Cantu to "get some". He raped Jennifer and was later sentenced to 40 years for aggravated sexual assault, which was the maximum sentence for a juvenile. When the rapes finally ended, the horror was not over. The gang members took Jenny and Elizabeth from the clearing into a wooded area, leaving the juvenile behind, saying he was "too little to watch". Jenny was strangled with the belt of Sean O'Brien, with two murderers pulling, one on each side, until the belt broke. Part of the belt was left at the murder scene, the rest was found in O'Brien's home. After the belt broke, the killers used her own shoelaces to finish their job. Medellin later complained that "the bitch wouldn't die" and that it would have been "easier with a gun". Elizabeth was also strangled with her shoelaces, after crying and begging the gang members not to kill them; bargaining, offering to give them her phone number so they could get together again. The medical examiner testified that Elizabeth's two front teeth were knocked out of her brutalized mouth before she died and that two of Jennifer's ribs were broken after she had died. Testimony showed that the girls' bodies were kicked and their necks were stomped on after the strangulations in order to "make sure that they were really dead." The juvenile, Venancio Medellin, pled guilty to his charge and his sentence was reviewed when he turned 18, at which time he was sent to serve the remainder of the sentence in prison. The five killers were tried for capital murder in Harris County, Texas, convicted and sentenced to death.

Donald Ketterer was given a death sentence after pleading guilty to several charges as his trial in the slaying of Lawrence Sanders was about to start.  Ketterer told authorities he robbed the 85-year-old man and beat him to death. Ketterer pled guilty to aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, burglary and theft of a motor vehicle, and waived his right to a jury trial. Authorities said Sanders was found dead in his Hamilton home last February. He had been robbed, beaten with a skillet, and tortured with scissors and a knife.

On 6/26/96, Bethel murdered 18-year-old James Reynolds and 14-year-old Shannon K. Hawk in a field in Franklin County. Bethel, a southside gang member, lured Reynolds and Hawk to the field by telling them that they were going to shoot off guns for fun. When they arrived at the field, Bethel shot Hawk four times and Reynolds 10 times. Bethel thought Reynolds was going to testify against a fellow gang member in an earlier murder.

The family hoped they could get through to their daughter's killer by showing him a memorial pictorial of her 18-year-long life, but Dale Wayne Eaton, staring at the defense table, appeared unmoved. "We don't know if it got to him or not. It may have, or it may take a while," said Ron Kimmell, the father of Lisa Marie Kimmell, who was kidnapped, robbed, raped and murdered by Eaton 16 years ago. A June 25 execution date was set for Eaton, 59, at a sentencing hearing Thursday in Casper's 7th District Court. Judge David Park signed Eaton's death warrant and dealt with additional charges connected to the 1988 killing. On all charges, Eaton got death and a life sentence plus 50 years in prison. Because of appeals, Blonigen said that execution date will almost certainly be stayed. "Certainly, we don't expect anything to happen for the next several years," he said, adding that the Attorney General's Office will act on behalf of the state for appeals. In March, a 7th District Court jury found Eaton guilty of 1st-degree premeditated murder for which he received the death sentence and aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery and 1st-degree sexual assault. Eaton was also convicted on 3 counts of 1st-degree felony murder, each committed during the course of separate crimes of sexual assault, robbery and kidnapping. The felony murder charges were lumped in with the death sentence; the other charges were dealt with separately. The courtroom was standing-room-only Thursday. Several jurors who sentenced Eaton to die had apparently returned to see the case through.

 A man convicted of murder when he was 17 won a reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court about four hours before his scheduled execution Tuesday. Lawyers for Mauro Barraza, 32, had argued his death should be delayed because the nation's high court is expected to review the issue of executing teenage killers later this year. Barraza already had been moved from death row to the unit where lethal injections are carried out. "Man, that's good news," he said of the reprieve. "I was hopeful. We already knew they'd given other people stays." Barraza was condemned for the beating death of a 73-year-old Tarrant County woman, Vilorie Nelson of Haltom City, whose house be broke into in June 1989. He had turned 17 the previous month. In January, the Supreme Court said it would look at the constitutionality of executing those who were under 18 at the time of their crimes. Arguments are likely in the court term beginning this fall. Texas is among five states allowing the death penalty for 17-year-olds; a dozen such inmates have been put to death since Texas resumed capital punishment in 1982. Fourteen states allow the death penalty for 16-year-olds. In a separate case, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that blocks Texas prison officials from using a combination of three drugs in an execution Wednesday. The inmate's lawyers argued the drugs could "cause an excruciatingly painful death" and violate his rights against cruel and unusual punishment. The state was appealing.

On Wednesday, David Ray Harris, 43, faced execution for breaking into a Beaumont apartment in 1985 and killing a man after trying to abduct the victim's girlfriend. His punishment, while not stopped, was thrown into uncertainty by a temporary restraining order from U.S. District Court Judge Vanessa Gilmore. The order barred Texas prison authorities from using a "chemical cocktail" the inmate's attorneys argued would "likely cause an excruciatingly painful death" and violate Harris' constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment. Tom Kelley, a spokesman for the Texas attorney general's office, said state lawyers were appealing to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to lift the order. It was uncertain what effect the order would have on Wednesday night's execution. Harris' lawyers, in their arguments, said the combination of sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, used in succession, would "likely cause Mr. Harris consciously to suffer excruciating pain and an agonizing death, while appearing to die peacefully." "At this point, we don't know how we're going to proceed," Texas prison spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said. "We're going to continue to consult with the attorney general's office ... and see what would be the appropriate action." Harris, who also had an appeal pending that sought a reprieve, gained notoriety for his testimony about the November 1976 slaying of a Dallas police officer that put Randall Dale Adams on death row. Adams' case was the subject of a 1988 film documentary, "The Thin Blue Line," that argued he had been unfairly convicted. Adams was freed from prison in 1989. UPDATE: David Ray Harris, whose false testimony put a man on death row for more than a decade in a case featured in the documentary "The Thin Blue Line," was executed in Texas on Wednesday for a 1985 murder. Harris, 43, quoted the last words of a passenger on one of the jets hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, in his final statement. "Sir, in honor of a true American hero, 'let's roll,"' he said before receiving a lethal injection. "Lord Jesus receive my spirit." He was put to death for killing Mark Mays, 30, in a Sept. 1, 1985, shootout while trying to abduct Mays' girlfriend from his Vidor, Texas, apartment. Harris was the key witness against Randall Dale Adams, who came close to being executed for the 1976 murder of Dallas police officer Robert Wood. Harris testified he picked up Adams while hitchhiking and that Adams shot Wood when he pulled over their car, which was stolen.  Previously, Harris bragged to friends he killed the lawman, but told investigators he had lied to make himself look tough. Later, Harris, who was convicted of Mays' murder in 1986, recanted his testimony and said Adams was not guilty. In 1988, director Errol Morris made the "The Thin Blue Line," making the case that Harris, not Adams, was guilty. Adams was released from prison in 1989. Harris received a temporary stay of execution on Tuesday from U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore, who ordered a hearing on his attorneys' motion a lethal injection caused great pain and therefore was cruel and unusual punishment forbidden under the Constitution. State attorneys quickly appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which threw the stay out on Wednesday.