Georgia carries out yet another execution, the 9th this year

The 19th Execution of 2016
A six-man “strap down” team eased William Sallie onto the gurney in the death chamber at 9:38 p.m. Tuesday. Each kept his hands on the condemned man until both legs, both arms and both shoulders were secured to the bed, reported the Atlanta Journal Constitution..

Four nurses then prepared him for IVs.

Sallie, 50, had eaten all of the pizza he’d requested as his last meal. Now he winced as the needles pierced his skin.

Ten minutes later, witnesses filed into the chamber. Some were relatives of the man Sallie killed in 1990. The inmate raised his head, and spoke:

“I am very, very sorry for my crime. I really am sorry,” he said. “Man is going to take my life tonight, but God saved my soul. I’ve prayed about this. I do ask for forgiveness.”

Then he asked for a prayer.

As the lethal drug pentobarbital flowed into his veins, Sallie’s shoulders twitched four or five times, but his eyes remained closed. Then he was still.

Time of death was 10:05 p.m.

Georgia had just executed its ninth murderer in 2016, more than any other state this year and the most in Georgia since capital punishment was reinstated more than 40 years ago.

It was a quiet end to the life of a man who went on a rampage one night in 1990, destroying the family of which he had been a part for years. Sallie, in the midst of a breakup with his wife and having just l0st custody of his son, shot his father-in-law six times, killing him, shot his mother-in-law four times (she survived) and then abducted his wife and her sister, sexually assaulting both of them over a period of several hours.

Tuesday, nine protesters stood vigil in the chilly night air at an area just inside the entrance to the prison grounds in Jackson.

Sallie’s execution had been scheduled for 7 p.m., but Georgia does not act until all courts have weighed in, which usually puts the actual time of death well into the night and sometimes into the early hours of the next day.

Tuesday afternoon, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously denied Sallie’s request for a stay of execution. His lawyers then petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court.

As he waited, Sallie ate his pizza and visited with six family members, four friends, three members of the clergy and four paralegals.

He had repeatedly failed to get any court to consider his claim of juror bias, and on Monday the State Board of Pardons and Paroles also rejected that argument and refused to grant a stay of execution.

Sallie was convicted of murdering his father-in-law John Moore in 1990, shooting and wounding his mother-in-law Linda Moore, and kidnapping his estranged wife and her sister.

Sallie broke into his in-laws’ home in Bacon County — where his wife, Robin, and their 2-year-old son, Ryan, were sleeping — after he lost a custody battle and his wife filed for divorce.

In court filings and a clemency petition, Sallie’s lawyers wrote that the domestic turmoil in William and Robin Sallie’s lives was much like that lived by a juror who denied ever being embroiled in a volatile marriage, a custody dispute or domestic violence.

When the woman was questioned during jury selection for the Sallie murder trial, she said her marriages — four of them — had ended amicably.

Sallie’s lawyers said that was false, contending in their clemency petition that the juror fought with soon-to-be ex-husbands over child custody and support payments and lived with domestic abuse.

That juror also told an investigator for Sallie’s lawyers that she pushed six fellow jurors to change their votes from life in prison to death, making the jury’s decision unanimous.
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