Posted on 01/24/2006 5:21:09 PM PST by doug from upland
Update 5: High Court Steps In, Blocks Fla. Execution By GINA HOLLAND , 01.24.2006, 07:56 PM
Florida death row inmate Clarence Hill won a last-minute Supreme Court stay Tuesday night about an hour after he was scheduled to be executed for killing a police officer.
It was not clear if the court's intervention would only briefly delay Hill's execution, which had been scheduled for 6 p.m. EST, to give justices additional time to review three separate stay requests.
Witnesses had gathered at the Florida State Prison for the execution, which was put off for more than an hour before word came from the court.
The witnesses were sent home after Justice Anthony M. Kennedy filed paperwork that said Hill's death sentence would "be stayed pending further order" of the justices.
"The court will not rule until tomorrow," said Robby Cunningham, spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections.
Earlier, Hill had lost appeals at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. He was scheduled to die for the Oct. 19, 1982, slaying of a Pensacola police officer and the wounding of his partner.
Hill was to be the 61st inmate executed in Florida since 1976, when executions resumed after a 12-year moratorium, and the 257th since 1924, when the state took that duty from individual counties.
Hill first asked the court for a stay last week. In one of his appeals, Hill asked for a delay to give him time to contest the chemicals that will be used. Kennedy cited that case in granting the stay.
Hill's lawyers argue that the three chemicals used in Florida's lethal injection method of execution cause pain, making his execution cruel and unusual punishment. He also contends that he is mentally retarded.
I wonder if anyone has ever claimed needlephobia?
Am I missing something here. A last minute reprieve an hour after he was to be executed.
Pensacola Police Chief John Mathis says whatever deterrent effect the death penalty may serve is long since gone in Hill's case. But he says that's not the point.
It's the right punishment for a man who ran from an attempted robbery of the Freedom Savings & Loan in downtown Pensacola on the afternoon of Oct. 19, 1982, then circled back to the scene where he shot and killed Taylor and wounded officer Larry Bailly, Mathis said.
Mathis was on the force then, in investigations.
"It's still been a lingering question all along, as to why? Only Mr. Hill can answer," Mathis said, adding that Hill's execution makes sense. "In very rare circumstances I think it is an appropriate penalty."
Maybe it was a mistake like calling the 2000 election in Florida while the panhandle still had an hour to vote (keeping thousands of Republicans from voting).
He obviously was not retarded enough to not know that shooting someone with a gun kills them.
It too rare in my opinion. Cop killers shouldn't be the only ones getting executed.
LOL,,, good one
It's
It was a botched bank job and the perps circled back to kill the officer and wounded another.
April 2005 was the last execution, the only one in 2005.
All murders should get the death penalty and appeals should run out after 5 years.
so why didn't he block the one in April 2005?
From the link .......
The executioner:
Is a private citizen who is paid $150 per execution. State law allows for his or her identity to remain anonymous.
Boy, do I remember that night. Channel 13, in Tampa, called the state for Gore at 5:30 in the evening, a full hour and a half before the polls closed in most of the state. That kind of reporting, in fact, kept voters in the Panhandle from turning out. My mother, who lives out west, was extremely upset about the early pronouncement by the media, that Gore had won. Thank God for us Florida voters, save the idiots in the southern counties who didn't know how to vote.
I was in Germany at the time (but I had voted absentee). I was watching CNN at the time and went to sleep sick to my stomach thinking Gore had won. I tossed and turned all night. It was a great trip. I had the opportunity to drive several of the DaimlerChrysler fuel cell vehicles on the test track at Stuttgart.
To heck with the fuel cells, give me a Hemi!.....in my Caravan. LOL
Terri Schiavo, March 31, 2005
I hear that dying from dehydration and starvation is euphoric. Maybe he would prefer that method.
Cold, cold reference there... and exactly accurate in meaning. I do respect that.
'The compassion that is proper to a headsman is a sharp axe.'
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