July 2010 Executions

Four killers were executed in July 2010. They had murdered at least 11 people.
One killer was given a stay in July 2010. He has murdered at least 1 person.

Date of scheduled execution	State	Victim name	Inmate name	Status
July 1, 2010	Texas	Sandra Stotler, 50 Adam Stotler, 16 Jeremy Richardson, 18	Michael Perry	executed
Michael James Perry was convicted of capital murder for brutally murdering Sandra Stotler in the course of burglarizing her house. According to Perry's confession, he and his friend Jason Burkett decided to steal two cars. They identified two cars, a Camaro and Isuzu Rodeo, that belonged to the parents of another friend, Adam Stotler. Perry and Burkett made a plan to spend the night at the Stotler house and steal a car in the middle of the night. On October 24, 2001, Perry and Burkett drove to the Stotler house with a 12-gauge shotgun in a blue Chevy truck belonging to Burkett's girlfriend, Kristin Willis. Sandra Stotler, Adam's mother, told Perry and Burkett that Adam would not be home until 9 pm. They returned to their truck and drove several blocks before deciding that it would be easier to steal the car when only one person was home. When they arrived back at the house, Burkett knocked on the front door and asked to use the phone. Perry then went into the house through the back door in the garage with the shotgun and hid in the laundry room. Perry knocked on the back door. When Sandra Stotler went to the back door, Perry came out of the laundry room and shot her in her side. Sandra Stotler fell, then tried to get up, and Perry shot her again. At this point, Perry and Burkett wrapped her in bedsheets and blankets and loaded her into the back of the truck. As they could not find the keys to the Camaro, both Perry and Burkett left in Willis's truck. Burkett drove the car to nearby Crater Lake. At first, Burkett and Perry opened the tailgate and tried backing up to the lake, hoping that Sandra Stotler's body would slide out. When that did not work, they grabbed her body and rolled her into the water. They covered her body with the sheets, sticks, and brush. Burkett and Perry drove to pick up Willis from work and returned to the Stotler house. When Adam Stotler arrived back at his house with his friend Jeremy Richardson, Burkett and Perry convinced them that a friend had been shot in the woods and needed their help. Adam and Jeremy followed Willis's truck in Adam's Isuzu. When they arrived in the woods, Perry and Burkett led Adam and Jeremy into the woods. According to Perry, Burkett shot Jeremy and then Adam. Perry removed the car keys and wallet from Adam's pocket. Burkett and Perry returned to the truck. Willis asked what had happened, became upset, and left in her truck. Burkett and Perry stole the Camaro and Isuzu. Perry ended his confession by stating that they returned home, cleaned up, and went to a bar. Two days later, Perry attempted to evade police who had tried to stop him for traffic violations. The high speed chase ended when Perry wrecked the Camaro and fled on foot. He was eventually apprehended with Adam Stotler's wallet. He was booked and released on bond as Adam Stotler. The next day, Sandra Stotler's body was found in Crater Lake. Several days later, while in the stolen Isuzu, Perry and Burkett ran into a deputy sheriff's vehicle while trying to escape arrest. The vehicle crashed into a nearby store. Burkett and Perry were arrested hiding in a neighboring apartment complex; the shotgun used to kill Sandra Stotler was also found there. Forensic evidence found near Crater Lake, in the woods, and at the Stotler residence matched Perry's confession. Perry was tried for Sandra Stotler's murder. During his trial, Perry took the stand in his defense and claimed that his confession had been untrue. Perry, however, had made several subsequent statements that implicated him in the murder. At the sentencing phase, the defense presented extensive evidence about Perry's family history and upbringing. An adopted child, Perry had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder ("ADD") at 8 years old. He was later diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder. A year after that, he was diagnosed with conduct disorder. Perry twice tested negative for bipolar disorder after being admitted to a mental hospital. He never qualified for special education classes in elementary school, had an IQ of 97, and was by all accounts an average student. Perry often ran away from home. He stopped going to school in junior high. He stole his mother's jewelry and the family car. He broke into a neighbor's home and destroyed the moldings. Perry's parents filed charges and had him committed to a long-term facility for mental health care. He was sent to Boys Town in Nebraska, but after threatening his house parents, he was moved to a locked facility within the program. Perry's problems did not qualify him for any mental health care provided by the facility. When he was expelled from Boys Town, his parents moved him to a secured high school campus in Mexico called Casa by the Sea. After high school, Perry was essentially homeless and jobless. He had a brief stint in the Job Corps, laying tile, and at Wal-Mart. Perry also stole and sold prescription pills to support his indulgence in alcohol and pills. The defense presented testimony from Perry's biological mother who testified that she used drugs and alcohol until a month or two before Perry was born. Despite this, Perry was full weight and healthy when born. Although no biological relatives had committed murder, Perry's mother testified to a family history of depression, alcoholism, drug use, and thievery. Dr. Gilda Kessner, a clinical psychologist with a forensics background, interviewed Perry and testified that Perry's youthfulness was his greatest risk factor for recidivism. After serving time in prison, Dr. Kessner testified, the likelihood of Perry's becoming violent would drop to zero. The jury found Perry guilty of capital murder. During the sentencing phase, the jury found that Perry posed a continuing threat to society and that there were not sufficient mitigating circumstances to warrant a life sentence. The trial court sentenced Perry to death.

Date of scheduled execution	State	Victim name	Inmate name	Status
July 13, 2010	Ohio	Richard Gaines Myka Mack Denitra Satterwhite Markeca Mason Deondra Freeman	William Garner	executed
In Cincinnati, Ohio, on the night of January 25, 1992, Addie Mack slipped and fell on the icy sidewalk, injuring herself. Addie Mack woke up her oldest son, Rod, and told him she was going to the emergency room to get checked out. Rod went back to sleep in the apartment where his three sisters were sleeping along with a cousin and a neighbor boy who were both spending the night. At the hospital, 19-year-old William Garner snatched Addie's purse from near a pay telephone in the emergency room area. Inside the purse, Garner found food stamps, keys, and the identification information of Addie F. Mack. Garner called a cab and directed the driver to take him to the address that he found inside the purse, an apartment at 1969 Knob Court in Cincinnati that was Addie's home, intending to steal whatever he found inside the apartment. Garner went inside Addie's apartment while the cab driver, Thomas J. Tolliver, waited outside. Garner went through each room of the apartment, including two bedrooms in which he noticed four girls and two boys sleeping. While Garner was inside, one of the girls woke up and asked Garner for a glass of water, which he gave her, and then he let the child watch television for a few minutes before sending her back to bed. He explained his presence in the apartment by telling her that he ran into her mother at the hospital and she had sent him to check on the children. Garner removed a number of items from the apartment, including a television set, a VCR, a portable telephone, and a Sony "boom box." Garner put these items in the cab, telling the driver that he and his girlfriend had a fight and that he was moving out his belongings. Realizing the child could identify him, Garner went back inside the apartment and set three fires. Two of the fires, set in the mother's unoccupied bedroom and another unoccupied bedroom, smoldered but went out. The third fire was set on the living room couch. That fire quickly consumed the living room and filled the entire apartment with heavy smoke. Addie's oldest son, Rod, was awakened by the smoke, heard his sisters screaming in their room and saw fire in the hallway outside his bedroom. Rod tried to get the other children out through a bedroom window. He went first, out his bedroom window and sliding onto a dormer over the front down, then down, but the other five children, ranging in age from 8 - 12, did not follow him and died inside. Garner left in the cab and directed Tolliver to take him to a convenience store, where Tolliver waited while Garner purchased several items. Garner then had Tolliver take him home to 3250 Burnet Avenue. Tolliver helped Garner unload the cab and carry everything into Garner's home. Garner did not have enough cash to pay the cab fare, but Tolliver accepted a television set as payment. Based on information provided by two police officers in the area, the police located Tolliver and interviewed him on the morning of January 26. Tolliver told the police that he had driven a man from the hospital emergency room to 1969 Knob Court, waited while the man went inside and returned with several items, driven the man to the convenience store, and driven him to 3250 Burnet Avenue. The police showed Tolliver still photographs from the convenience store's surveillance tape, and Tolliver identified his previous night's fare based on the man's clothing. The police also showed Tolliver three photo arrays, two of which contained photographs of Garner, and Tolliver identified Garner as his passenger from the night before. Based on the information provided by Tolliver, police obtained a search warrant and searched the house at 3250 Burnet Avenue. Police recovered, among other things, a VCR, a Sony "boom box," a portable telephone, a pair of gloves, a set of keys later identified as Mack's, and copies of Mack's children's birth certificates. During the search, the police arrested Garner and advised him of his Miranda rights. Garner was taken to police headquarters, where he was interviewed and where he, after telling police that he would waive his Miranda rights, provided a taped statement describing the events of the previous night. When asked why he had set the couch on fire, Garner told the police that he was attempting to cover fingerprints that he had left on the couch. Garner told the police that he believed the children would smell the smoke and get out of the apartment, especially because at least one child was awake and all of the children were old enough to escape. B. Procedural History On February 3, 1992, Garner was charged with five counts of aggravated murder, each with three death-penalty specifications, one count of aggravated burglary, two counts of aggravated arson, one count of theft, and one count of receiving stolen property. On September 25, 1992, Garner pleaded no contest to the charges of theft and receiving stolen property. The case proceeded to trial on the remaining charges, and on October 1, 1992, a jury convicted Garner on all counts and specifications. On October 16, after a mitigation hearing, the jury found that the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating factors and recommended that Garner be sentenced to death. On November 5, 1992, the state trial court accepted the jury's recommendation and sentenced Garner to death on each of the five counts of aggravated murder. The trial court also sentenced Garner to ten to twenty-five years in prison for aggravated burglary and aggravated arson and two years in prison for theft and receiving stolen property, to be served consecutively.

Date of scheduled execution	State	Victim name	Inmate name	Status
July 21, 2010	Mississippi	Floyd Melvin "Mike" McBride	Daniel Burns	executed
During the day of November 9, 1994, Joseph Daniel Burns and Phillip Hale went to the Town House Motel on Gloster Street in Tupelo, Mississippi where Mike McBride was the hotel manager. Phillip Hale testified that he and McBride were friends, and that he introduced Burns to McBride on November 9, 1994. Phillip Hale testified that he went in and asked McBride if they could stay there three or four days. McBride said sure, and Phillip went out to the truck, got his bag and asked Burns to come inside. Phillip Hale testified that they then "hung out for awhile" with McBride. Burns and Phillip Hale then went to get something to eat and watched a movie before returning to the motel office. McBride asked Burns and Phillip Hale if they wanted to help him count $30,000. They agreed and while they were counting the money, the two decided to rob McBride. Burns and Phillip Hale agreed that Hale would hit McBride and Burns would take the money. Phillip Hale further testified that he hit McBride and knocked him down and left the room to make sure nobody was coming. When he returned to the room, Burns was stabbing McBride in the back of the neck with a knife, a fork, and a Phillip's head screwdriver. When Hale asked Burns what he was doing, Burns stabbed Hale in the foot. Hale testified that McBride was repeating "why me" while he was being stabbed to death. After the stabbing, Burns and Hale wiped fingerprints, got the money and left. The record reflects that $3,000 was taken from a tin safe in McBride's office. Burns broke the lock off of the safe with a pair of pliers. After the stabbing, Burns and Phillip Hale returned to the trailer in Verona where they were living with Janie Taylor and Brandi Sides. Burns went into Janie Taylor's room, whom he was dating at the time, woke her up, told her what they had done, counted the money, and divided the money between himself and Hale ($1,500 each). Phillip Hale then went to his brother, Jeff's, shop. His brother was out of town. Burns showed up later and informed Phillip Hale that he had thrown the "stuff" behind the trailer park where they lived. The testimony of State's witness, Carrie Cryder, revealed that on December 24, 1994 he and Burns were riding around, and Burns retrieved the weapons from behind the trailer and threw them off of the bridge on Brewer Road. Later that day, on November 10, 1994, Phillip Hale parked the truck the two had driven to the Town House Motel behind Jeff's house because he was fearful that someone had seen the truck and could identify Burns and Hale by the truck. Jeff Hale had loaned his brother the truck several weeks before McBride was killed. When Jeff Hale returned to town, he was suspicious about why Phillip had parked the truck behind the house. Also, Phillip paid his brother, Jeff, $600 he owed him, and this too made Jeff suspicious about where Phillip got the money. When Jeff first asked Phillip where the money came from, Phillip lied to him. Phillip testified that he ultimately told his brother that he and Burns killed McBride, although there is some question about when he told him. Burns also told Jeff Hale what happened. The following weekend, on November 12, 1994, Burns, Phillip Hale and his brother, Jeff went to Tunica to the casinos and spent the money they had stolen from the Town House Motel returning to Tupelo with $100 or $200. A guest of the Town House Motel the night of November 9, 1994 testified for the State. He testified that he remembered seeing two men arrive at the motel in a tan truck that fit the description of the truck belonging to Jeff Hale that Phillip Hale was driving on the day of the murder. The guest testified that they arrived about 8:00 p.m. and left around 10:00 or 10:30 p.m. McBride's body was found by another employee of the motel around 7:00 a.m. the next morning. Phillip Hale and Burns were not arrested until August of 1995 concerning this crime. The Tupelo Police Department arrested them pursuant to an investigation that ensued after two anonymous phone calls were received by the Crime Stoppers. McBride's body was found in his living quarters at the Town House Motel. McBride died from a combination of blunt force injuries to the head and neck caused by numerous blows to the head and back of the neck and exsanguination from the injuries to his face and neck. While Burns was in jail in Lee County, he began corresponding with a female prisoner, Contina Kohlheim. In the letters Burns sent Kohlheim, he talks about killing a man. "Look about the guy I killed, me and Phillip were dealing with a lot of dope and Phillip was giving our dope to this guy. He owed us $58,000. I told Phillip to ask him one more time to pay us but he never did. So that night we went to the town house and I killed his ass." In the other letter Burns sent Kohlheim, he wrote, "I took a man's life now I'm looking at the Death Penalty." Testimony at trial revealed that Burns was not charged with any other murder, and there had been no other murders at the Town House Motel. The letters were signed from "JoJo," or "Love JoJo." Burns gave the letters to a male trustee who in turn gave them to the jailer who then gave them to a female trustee to deliver since the male prisoners were not allowed to go to the female side of the jail. Kohlheim turned the letters over to the police after being asked to do so. Following a request by the district attorney's office, Officer Buddy Bell obtained a handwriting sample from Burns under the pretense of having him write down who would be allowed to visit him in jail. A comparison was then made between the letters written to Kohlheim and the known writing sample of Burns. The state's expert determined that there was a strong probability that the signatures on both letters were Burns'. He further determined that the content of both letters was probably written by Burns. There was also a fingerprint analysis done on the letters. Burns' fingerprints were found on both letters obtained from Tina Kohlheim. UPDATE: Joseph Daniel Burns apologized to Mike McBride's family members for the "evil" he brought upon them 16 years ago. "I pray you will one day forgive me, not for myself but for yourself," he said. Minutes later, Burns, 42, nicknamed "JoJo," was executed for the Tupelo motel manager's murder. Greg Gordon, McBride's brother-in-law, said Burns' death brought some closure to their family. "For nearly 16 years the wheels of justice have had our family on a nightmare of a roller coaster ride," he said. "Today, justice was served for that senseless act, and the ride has finally come to an end." Phillip Hale, 39, Burns' accomplice, received a life sentence in 1997 for his part in the murder, but MDOC records show he was released on parole Dec. 1, 2008. In the viewing room with Mike McBride's sister Kay Gordon were the victim's nephew, Josh Criddle; three media witnesses; and state Sen. Merle Flowers, who represented the governor's office. Also in the room was Melinda Box Braxton, director of the Mississippi Department of Corrections Division of Victims Services. Braxton held Gordon's hand throughout the execution, which took about 10 minutes from beginning to end. Braxton previously has said, "The true reason for the execution is not for the offender but justice for the victim." Gordon, of Tupelo, said her brother grew up in Lee County but taught at schools in Mississippi, Tennessee and Georgia in the1960s and 1970s. He moved back home after their father died. McBride's family said Wednesday was not a day for victory but brought them some closure.