Tennessee executed its third inmate in the electric chair since November on August 14, 2019 for stabbing a mother and her 15-year-old daughter to death in 1986, reported the Associated Press.
State officials pronounced 56-year-old Stephen West dead at
7:27 p.m. at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
This week, West decided he preferred to die in the electric
chair after previously voicing no preference, which would have defaulted him to
lethal injection. His attorney in a court filing wrote that the electric chair
is “also unconstitutional, yet still less painful” compared with the state’s
preference of a three-drug lethal injection.
Attorneys for inmates David Miller and Edmund Zagorski made
the same arguments before they chose to die by the electric chair in 2018. Both
unsuccessfully argued to courts that Tennessee’s procedure, which uses the drug
midazolam, results in a prolonged and torturous death.
Tennessee has put three inmates to death by lethal injection
since August 2018.
In Tennessee, condemned inmates whose crimes occurred before
1999 can opt for the electric chair.
West’s attorney has argued that some “feasible and readily
implemented alternative methods of execution exist that significantly reduce
the substantial risk of severe pain and suffering” compared with the state’s
three-drug protocol or electrocution: a single bullet to the back of the head,
a firing squad, a “euthanasia oral cocktail” or one-drug pentobarbital,
according to a February court filing.
West was one of four death row inmates who sued last year,
asking a federal court’s permission to use a firing squad as an execution
method. Currently, just three states — Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah —
continue to allow the use of firing squads. However, the last time that method
was used was in 2010.
The last state other than Tennessee to carry out an
execution by electrocution was Virginia in 2013, according to Death Penalty
Information Center data.
West was found guilty of the kidnapping and stabbing deaths
of 51-year-old Wanda Romines and her 15-year-old daughter, Sheila Romines. He
also was convicted of the teenager’s rape.
In a clemency plea to Gov. Bill Lee, attorneys for West
wrote that his then-17-year-old accomplice Ronnie Martin actually killed both
Union County victims. West was 23 at the time. Their cases were separated, and
while West was sentenced to death, Martin pleaded guilty as a juvenile and
received a life sentence with the possibility of parole in 2030.
In a court filing, the state said West brutally stabbed the
victims to death. An expert at West’s trial concluded two people were involved
in stabbing the teen.
Regardless of the arguments about who killed the women,
Tennessee is one of 27 states that allow executions of “non-triggermen”
convicted of involvement in a felony resulting in a victim’s death, even if
they didn’t kill anyone themselves, according to the American Civil Liberties
Union.
West’s clemency filing says the jury never heard a jail
recording from Martin saying he carried out the killings, not West. But a 1989
state Supreme Court opinion rejected the recording as uncorroborated hearsay
that wouldn’t have exonerated West.
West’s attorney opted against playing the tape at sentencing
because the judge would have allowed other recordings in which Martin
incriminated West, court records show.
The governor denied West’s clemency application, which also
said West had been taking powerful medication in prison to treat mental
illness.
West’s attorneys also said the jury didn’t hear about his
abusive upbringing because his parents paid for his lead lawyer. They wrote
that the abuse created conditions that made West freeze in response to
traumatic events.
Another Tennessee execution is scheduled in December.
Charles Walton Wright had been scheduled to be put to death
in October, but died in prison in May.
No comments:
Post a Comment