Alabama to execute inmate tonight: He was scheduled to die six other times

Alabama Death Row inmate Tommy Arthur on is set to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. on today.

This is the seventh time Arthur's execution has been scheduled. Six other times, within days or hours of the appointed time, his execution was stopped. And other than a month on the lam after shooting a jailer in a 1986 escape, the second oldest inmate on death row has spent the better part of his last 33 years in a small cell on death row.

Arthur denies he was paid to kill a sleeping Muscle Shoals man, Troy Wicker, in 1982.

"I didn't no more kill Troy Wicker than you did," Arthur told AL.com in a recent telephone interview from his cell.  

Three different juries in trials in 1983, 1987 and 1991, however, thought otherwise and found him guilty.  The victim's wife, Judy Wicker, was also convicted of the murder and spent a decade in prison. She testified at one trial she paid Arthur $10,000 of the insurance money for the killing. Judy Wicker and Arthur, who was on work release at the time, were in a romantic relationship, court records show.

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