Posted on 06/16/2011 7:54:12 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The murder of Mattie Lee Wesson in 1995 was one of the most brutal killings in Tuscaloosa County history.
Eddie Duval Powell, 25 at the time, broke into the home of his 70-year-old neighbor in Holt during the early morning hours of March 25, 1995.
He raped her. He sodomized her. He beat her in the head so hard that her scalp split open, her skull was cracked and she was likely knocked unconscious. After he left, Wesson was able to regain consciousness and free herself from the restraints with which he had tied her up. She escaped from the house and had made it across the street to a neighbor's yard, where he shot her five times at arm's length with the revolver he had stolen from her house.
For the past 16 years, Wesson's three sons have relived the pain of knowing what the last few hours of their mother's life was like in two court trials and dozens of appeals and other hearings. That ends tonight.
Powell, 41, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. at Holman Prison in Atmore.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday turned down Powell's plea to stop his execution. His attorneys argued that he should not be executed because the state of Alabama recently began using pentobarbital in executions, which they said might cause him pain and suffering.
Wesson, whose friends called her Polly, raised her sons, Andy, Jerry and Wayne, at the house on 19th Street Northeast in Holt. They were in their 20s and early 30s when their mother was killed. All three plan to attend tonight's scheduled execution.
“As individuals, we are responsible for what we do. His crime was a brutal one. I believe the punishment should be equally severe,” said Andy Wesson, an investigator in the Tuscaloosa Police Department's Criminal Investigations Division. “Mr. Powell is in a unique situation because he knows when he is going to die. I hope he has made his peace with God.”
Andy Wesson was a young patrol officer working the midnight shift at the Police Department's front desk on the night his mother was killed. He rushed to the neighbor's home where his mother had been shot and rode in the ambulance with her to DCH Regional Medical Center, where she died. He often stopped by his mother's house to visit on breaks from late-night patrolling, but didn't that night because he was planning to mow her grass the next day, in exchange for some home-cooked stuffed peppers.
Powell was arrested less than 24 hours after killing Polly Wesson. According to police, he cut the screen of a front window, but was unable to open it because it had been painted shut. He left an implicating palm print on the window before circling to the back of the house and seeing a bathroom window open and a light on. The house is on a downward-sloping lot, making it one story in front and two-storied in the back.
Powell then broke into the unfinished basement and found a couch that he dragged outside and propped on the side of a storage shed so he could reach the window, about 14 feet off the ground.
Andy Wesson said he believes Powell thought his mother was wealthy because she drove an older-model Cadillac. She wasn't.
Polly Wesson had retired from Bryce, where she worked as a cook and an attendant for many years. In the 1950s, she served in the U.S. Army in Europe, where cooking was one of her duties. Her husband died in 1982, when her boys were teenagers.
“She was a wonderful mother, she was always there for us,” Andy Wesson said. “We miss her a lot.”
Powell is a native of Zion, Ill. His mother told a Tuscaloosa News reporter in 1998 that he had been addicted to drugs and alcohol. She said that she had sent him to live with relatives in Hale County to get him away from “the wrong crowd.” He had been convicted of four residential burglaries in Illinois, and was out of jail on $10,000 bail for a robbery in Tuscaloosa when he attacked and killed Polly Wesson, according to newspaper archives.
After he attacked Polly Wesson, Powell pulled the phones out of the walls and stole some items, including the gun he would later shoot her with, and a box of nickels and dimes that she used when playing bridge with friends. He left the house and visited a prostitute, who turned him down. He then went to a gas station, where the clerk thought it was unusual for a customer to buy two bottles of cheap wine with nickels and dimes.
Powell had been staying with the family that lived across the street from Polly Wesson, in the house where Wesson had gone after the attack to try to get help. The woman who lived there noticed scratches on the back of Powell's neck and told police. Investigators found that the clothes he was wearing were still bloody. Forensic testing would later identify the blood as Polly Wesson's and DNA collected at the crime scene as Powell's.
Andy Wesson and his brothers, who both work in construction in Tuscaloosa, released a statement from their families. They noted that their mother was never able to know four of her grandchildren or four great-grandchildren.
“These children will never be able to hear her sweet voice and her infectious laugh. They will never be able to know about her gentle spirit or her wonderful sense of humor. She'll never be able teach them about her loves in life — fishing, playing cards with friends for nickels and dimes, and cooking. While nothing can ever replace our mother, mother-in-law, grandmother or aunt, or replace the times we've missed, we take comfort in knowing that justice will soon be served.”
Stop the world and let him off. Hopefully
Happens every night in American cities
Some good news for a change.
I remember this case.
The constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. It does not guarantee a painless execution.
What took them so long to execute?
He should have been executed ten or fifteen years ago.
Can we torture him first. Please.
The barbituates might cause him pain. Very well, have him sodomized. Then, beat his head hard enough to split open his scalp and fracture his skull. Finally, shoot him five times at close range.
Will this make him happy?
I hope it is painful. These murderers kill & have no feelings for the pain their victims suffer. I see no reason why their deaths should be pain free.
... well that's too long.
LMAO!! Cry me a freaking river.
UPDATE! Eddie Powell executed
I am thrilled that this animal has finally been put down and the victim's family got the closure and justice it demanded and deserved.
May his Drip Trip to Hell be sloooooooow and painful!
It’s too bad he can’t take a few other punks with him.
Wish for the good old days when an oak limb could hold six or so.
It may cause him pain but it won’t cause him suffering. Suffering takes time. For him the pain (if any) will be over all too quickly.
The putrid individual caused suffering. The article does not mention how much time elapsed while this human excrement beat, raped and murdered a woman who never did him any harm but I would estimate an hour at minimum. His pain will be fleeting and all too minimal.
It is high time that the courts in this land realize that the constitution does not prohibit the death penalty, it does not prohibit discomfort from being imposed on those being executed.
The constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
Cruel and unusual punishment might mean drawing and quartering, disembowelment or keel hauling but it certainly would never mean a slight burning sensation in the arm of a executed prisoner as drugs are injected in to a vein, especially the vein of a habitual drug user.
Pentobarbitol absolutely does NOT cause any pain.
They use this to euthanize animals at shelters or doctors’ offices. They use it precisely because it doesn’t cause pain.
If it did ecofreaks would have burnt down shelters and animal clinics a long time ago.
And still now.
And still now.
And still now...
Execution by the state, in every case I can remember, is far less painful than how these murdering scum treated their victims.
If it were equally severe, they would die the exact same way they murdered their victim. It never is, so their deaths are ALWAYS FAR MORE PAINLESS and traumatic than their victims. Far more care is extended to make it as painless as possible.
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