Posted on 03/20/2004 7:21:33 PM PST by Slings and Arrows
Final appeals to high courts fail
The Sun News
COLUMBIA - David Clayton Hill neither apologized nor confessed before he was put to death at 6:17 p.m. Friday for the 1994 murder of Georgetown police Maj. Spencer Guerry.
Hill, 39, glanced briefly at the witnesses, including Sally Guerry, Spencer Guerry's widow, and smiled.
"He just smiled; I don't know who he was smiling at," Sally Guerry said.
Last-ditch appeals to the state Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Mark Sanford on grounds that the state's lethal injection methods could be cruel and unusual punishment all failed Friday, and the execution was carried out as scheduled.
Hill was sentenced to die for shooting Guerry, who had stopped him for an expired tag. The officer died two days after he was shot, never having regained consciousness.
Torn about whether she wanted to see her husband's killer executed, Sally Guerry did not decide to watch it until she walked into the witness room, thinking she would go that far and could leave if she wished.
"I know I made the right decision, I do," she said. She had to watch on behalf of her husband, she said.
Her sons, Ryan, who will be 21 next week, and James, 18, chose not to attend and were in Columbia with friends.
Sally Guerry said she thought about her husband while watching the lethal chemicals being pumped into Hill's veins.
"I thought about my husband, I really did. I looked at the medication going into him, and I thought about how peaceful it was for him and how violent it was for Spencer," she said.
They had been together 19 years, half their lifetimes, when he died, she said, and her sons have grown up without a father.
Asked whether Hill's execution gave her final comfort, she said no. She was not surprised Hill did not apologize or confess, she also said.
15th Circuit Solicitor Greg Hembree also witnessed the execution. He commended former Solicitor Ralph Wilson, who prosecuted the case.
"This was clearly a case that warranted the death penalty," Hembree said.
He also said he was not surprised Hill did not use his last words to apologize.
"It would be appropriate to express some form of remorse," Hembree said. "He chose not to do that, and I think that is a comment on his nature."
Georgetown Police Chief Dan Furr, who was a captain on the force when Guerry was killed, said justice had been done.
"I was struck today by the very humane action in which Mr. Hill died," Furr said. "I was on the scene when Spencer was killed, it was very different."
Guerry hired him, and they were close, Furr said.
"I miss him tremendously today. I think of him often," he said.
Hill, who worked in restaurants up and down the beach for years and knew good food and wine, asked only for a bottle of Dom Perignon, an expensive champagne, as his last meal.
The state denied that request, said prisons spokesman John Barkley. So Hill's last meal was whatever prisoners had for supper, he said.
Hill's witnesses were his brother, Jeff Scott, and a minister, identified only as Father Andrew. Both left without speaking to reporters.
Before the execution, a small group of death penalty opponents picketed in front of Corrections Department headquarters on Broad River Road on Columbia's northwest edge.
Bucky Bruce said he has demonstrated at every execution except one since 1977. He said executions are old-fashioned vengeance.
"Lock them up, and throw away the key," he said.
Lieselotte Prigge was at her first death penalty demonstration. She also favors life in prison without parole.
"They suffer more if you leave them in there," she said.
Sally Guerry, a devout Catholic whose denomination generally opposes the death penalty, wrestled with the issue.
In the end, she took the approach that "it's not me versus David Hill." It was the state of South Carolina that found him guilty and sentenced him, she said.
I really feel bad that they denied his request.I guess it would make everything appear better if the prison capitulated. Rot in hell you bastard!!
Victims never do!!
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020404/content/truth_detector_3.guest.html
John F-ing Flip-Flop on Death Penalty
February 4, 2004
In the audio link below, I rolled you John Kerry on Larry King Alive. Guest host Jeff Greenfield asked Kerry if his positions on issues such as opposing the death penalty for terrorists mean "he's not going to make any inroads into the traditional blue-collar, more conservative Democratic base." Kerry responded, "I am supportive of the death penalty for terrorists," then claimed that the Bush people "know it, and they'll try to distort it, but it is a fact."
Note his words: "I am supportive of the death penalty." The Weekly Standard reports that the senator's stand on the death penalty has "evolved." Quote: "For years, Kerry opposed capital punishment in all cases. In 1996, during a debate with Massachusetts governor William Weld, who was challenging Kerry for his Senate seat, Kerry said Weld's support of capital punishment for terrorists 'would amount to a terrorist protection policy.' Kerry's position, on the other hand, 'would put them in jail.'"
In 2002, Kerry flipped again, telling Tim Russert: "I am for the death penalty for terrorists because terrorists have declared war on your country," but cautioned he opposed it "in the criminal justice system because I think it's applied unfairly." Time magazine reports: "'John Kerry never met a side of an issue he didn't like,' says Dean spokesman Jay Carson. And it is true that some positions have changed...." Expect Kerry to keep changing his positions, and then say, "They know I'm for this." That's what he's going to have to do, because he cannot stand on his voting record.
Kerry's going to have to come up with a slithery way to explain some of those votes, and he'll do so by saying he's "changed his mind." He'll probably say, "Well, since I'm now running for president, I'm not just a senator, and I have to look at these things a little differently. They know what I'm thinking out there. They know what I'm going to do. They're going to try to distort this." This is going to be his typical modus operandi. You wait and see.
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