Smallest violin - with tears....
He would have only have been in his late 30s if they didn’t wait so long.
36 plus years, really?
Can’t lawyers work any faster than that?
Boy, that billing by the hour really pays off doesn’t it?
Good riddance to this oxygen wasting murderer.
Should have been gone a long time ago.
may God have mercy on your soul.
Going on 37 years. Probably millions of dollars, countless thousands of hours spent on pushing through appeals, tricks and ploys to keep the man alive. Was the convenience store clerk he murdered even 37 years old? Probably not.
Here in CA Death Row is where they send you to be executed by natural causes.
tax dollar savings begin at 12:01.
The murder took place around 37 years ago so the 72 year old perp would have been a sprightly 35 when he committed the crime. Can’t get too tore up about this.
This makes a mockery of the sentence. 37 years later? Really?
What is criminal is the length of time he was on death row; if it was to be an abortion the demand would have been just weeks and no more than a few months.
He was convicted and sentenced in 1979
and has been appealing the conviction since then
but his options have run out.
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http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ga-supreme-court/1084910.html
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The victim, Roger Tackett, was the manager of a Tenneco convenience store.
On June 16, 1979, he arrived at the store at 11:20 p.m. to close it for the night.
After the other employees left, Tackett remained at the store to complete some paperwork.
At approximately 1:45 a.m., Officer Kendall of the Cobb County police department
drove a stranded motorist to the Tenneco parking lot so she could use a pay phone.
Officer Kendall observed a car (Tackett’s) parked in front of the store
with the driver’s-side door open;
the lights were also still on inside the store.
Since the Tenneco store was in his regular patrol area,
Brandon Jones stick his head out of the storeroom door at the back of the store,
look around (apparently without seeing the officer),
and then close the storeroom door.
Officer Kendall entered through the unlocked front door
and heard three shots, a pause, and then a fourth shot.
He drew his weapon and after shouting ‘police, come on out’
without a response, approached the storeroom door and opened it.
Jones and his co-defendant, Van Roosevelt Solomon, were standing just inside the door.
Officer Kendall ordered them into the main store area,
where he searched them and handcuffed Jones.
He placed Solomon in his patrol car since he only had one set of handcuffs,
and called for assistance on the radio.
He also informed both defendants of their rights under Miranda v. Arizona.
A private security officer, Alex Woolyard, heard Officer Kendall’s request for assistance
on a police scanner and arrived first.
He loaned Officer Kendall a set of handcuffs to restrain Solomon
and watched the defendants while Officer Kendall investigated a van parked nearby.
During this time, Woolyard spoke with Jones and determined that
the car parked in front of the store did not belong to them;
they had arrived in the van. Upon continued questioning by Woolyard,
Jones stated that they had come to burglarize the store
and found a man who was ‘bad hurt’ in the back of the store.
After handcuffing Jones to a metal pole, Woolyard and Officer Kendall
entered the store and discovered that the storeroom door
had locked when it shut as the defendants exited.
They used a crowbar to break open the door and they found Tackett’s body
lying face-down at one end of the narrow storeroom
(Officer Kendall had not seen the victim when he first encountered the defendants
in the storeroom since he did not enter the storeroom at that time).
Tackett had been shot five times from behind, once in the jaw,
once behind the left ear, once in the thumb, and twice in the right hip.
The medical examiner determined that the fatal shot was the ‘loose contact’ shot
behind the left ear since that bullet penetrated the brain;
this shot was probably the final shot and was fired while the victim was lying on the ground.
Two .38 caliber revolvers were found in an open box
next to where Officer Kendall had first encountered the defendants.
A large Smith and Wesson contained two spent shells;
a smaller Colt contained four spent shells.
Four .38 caliber bullets were recovered at the scene or in the victim’s body;
the ballistics expert determined that all were probably fired by the Colt.
35 years of free room and board.
Smallest violin - with tears....
States really, truly need to enact a firing squad alternative to lethal injection, along with a judicial requirement to include it as an “alternative” means of execution in case the primary means is disallowed.
A firing squad setup is cheap, easy, quick to set up, can use any LEO as a rifleman, uses a wooden platform to hold the rifles, and is impossible to block by denying equipment or skill. As a means of execution, it is extremely difficult to challenge.
So after all the effort to block lethal injection, including denial of the drugs used, refusal of a medical expert to administer it, etc. The state can immediately say, “Fine. Shoot him.”