Posted on 01/10/2006 2:14:42 PM PST by hoosierboy
MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. (AP) — A former death row inmate who had repeatedly asked to be executed was found dead in his cell of an apparent suicide Tuesday, a prison official said.
Guards found Charles E. Roche, Jr., 42, of Hammond, dead during a security check, Indiana State Prison Superintendent Ed Buss said. He used a sheet braided into a rope to hang himself, the Indiana Department of Correction said.
Roche was convicted of two murders in 1990, but a federal judge reduced his death sentence to life in prison in 2001.
Roche was sentenced to death for the May 11, 1990, shooting deaths of two men.
Ernest Graves, 22, of Calumet City, Ill., and Daniel Brown of Louisville, Ky., were killed in Roche's Hammond residence, and their bullet-riddled bodies were dumped in Gary. Roche later bragged to friends about the killings.
Two other men, including Roche's father, were also convicted in the killings.
In February 2001, a federal judge vacated Roche's death sentence, ruling that he had received ineffective legal counsel.
While on death row, Roche had asked repeatedly to die, saying he does not like living under state prison's rules. His execution was delayed because of concerns about his mental competency.
Roche was being retried in Lake County Superior Court when he died, prison officials said.
In 2001, Roche and another death row inmate, Gerald Bivins, allegedly attacked a guard, officials said. In 1994, Roche fired three shots from a homemade gun at guards in an aborted escape attempt.
Cool, we can save that needle for the next one.
Now, if only all the other trash and scum in our prison system would go do the same....
Bullet-riddled bodies found in Gary Indiana?!
Nah, it's just not possible.
(sarcasm off)
This will serve as evidence for the next effort to define life imprisonment as "cruel and unusual" punishment. This is reason enough to maintain the death penalty.
That made a morbid question pop into my mind. Do they use sterile needles when giving lethal injections? Do they use an alcohol swab? Just wondering.
This could be the start of a trend. Standard prison issue should now be a length of rope in every cell...
He shouldn't have to be asked to do the state's job.
" Do they use sterile needles when giving lethal injections? Do they use an alcohol swab?"
Of course!
We wouldn't want him to get a nasty infection before the drugs take effect,would we? /sarc
:)
If he was that anxious to go, at least he took only himself. He could have provoked a guard to attack and kill him.
Anyone advocating life in prison over the death penalty is cruel and heartless.
Finally, a worthy act.
Yes they actually do. The reason stated is the prisoner is elegible for a reprieve until he is dead.
So...a reprieve is out of the question once they are dead?
Wrong! If the SOB POS wants to die, really really wants to die, don't let him! If life is torture, so let it be.
Just like the old joke: a sadist married a masochist. On their wedding night the masochist begged,
"Beat me! Beat me!"
But the sadist replied, "No"
Not necessarily. I hear that the Governor of South Carolina ordered a forensic investigation of DNA evidence on a prisoner after his execution.
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