Florida executes 77-year-old man for 1995 murder--the state's 16th execution of the year

The 29th Execution of 2026

A 77-year-old Florida man was put to death Tuesday for a deadly hammer attack on a woman decades ago, becoming the 16th person executed this year in the nation’s busiest death chamber, reported The Associated Press.

Curtis Wilkie Beasley was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery and grand theft auto in the 1995 killing of Carolyn Monfort at her home south of Orlando.

The death chamber curtain opened at 6 p.m. with Beasley already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm. A spiritual adviser sat at his feet, remaining there throughout the execution.

When a warden asked whether he wished to make a final statement, Beasley said, “I want to apologize for all the mistakes I made.”

The execution began immediately afterward. Beasley breathed heavily as the drugs began flowing. His labored breathing eventually subsided, and the warden checked Beasley’s eyes and shouted his name, but he did not respond.

A medic entered the chamber at 6:11 p.m. and declared Beasley dead soon afterward.

No relatives issued any public statements afterward and it was not apparent whether any of the victim’s family had witnessed the execution.

Last week, the Florida Supreme Court rejected arguments that executing a man of Beasley’s age who was suffering from cognitive decline would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene Tuesday. Beasley was the seventh Florida prisoner over 70 to be executed this year.

Beasley also was the 29th person — all of them men — executed in the U.S. this year. On Wednesday Tennessee plans to execute a woman for the first time in 200 years. Christa Pike, 50, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection for killing a classmate in a jealous rage when both were teenagers.

Arrested while working under a fake name

Court records show Beasley had been staying at Monfort’s home in Dundee in August 1995 while he was pressure-washing and painting nearby apartments owned by her son-in-law. Monfort’s daughter went to the woman’s home after being unable to reach her for two days and found her body in a blood-splattered laundry room.

Monfort had suffered multiple blunt-force injuries to the head. Investigators found a bloody hammer head wrapped in a towel nearby.

Authorities began searching for Beasley after a witness reported seeing him driving what turned out to be Monfort’s car. Investigators determined that he had traveled to Miami and later moved to Alabama, where he was arrested while working under a false name for an electrical company. In 1998, Beasley was convicted and sentenced to death.

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Florida has conducted more than half of all U.S. executions this year

Florida is approaching last year’s total of 19 executions, a record in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. In July, Florida executed two prisoners in one day, the first state in nearly a decade to do so.

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Two more executions are scheduled this year although Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who leaves office in January, has temporarily paused the next one.

William Lee Thompson, 74, is scheduled to be executed Oct. 13 for raping and fatally beating a woman at a Florida motel in 1976. After a doctor recently determined Thompson might have dementia, DeSantis ordered a panel of three psychiatrists to examine him and advise if he is competent to be executed.

DeSantis issued similar stays in 2023 and 2025 though both executions proceeded after evaluations.

William Reaves, 77, is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 20. He was convicted of fatally shooting a deputy outside a convenience store in 1986.

All Florida executions are carried out via injections of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

Book Review Champion Magazine: Death in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do about It

Roger A. Mitchell, Jr., M.D. and J. D. Aronson, PhD

Johns Hopkins University Press

Review by Matthew T. Mangino

             The criminal justice system is facing a public health emergency – thousands of people die each year while in custody of U.S. law enforcement, concludes Roger A. Mitchell, Jr., M.D. and J. D. Aronson, PhD in their book “Death in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do about It.”

            Mitchell and Aronson take a deep dive into the history of deaths while in custody. From lynchings in the late 19th and early 20th century to the 1951 report by the Civil Rights Congress “We Charge Genocide” where it was argued that there exists a “seamless transition from slavery to lynching to Jim Crow to police brutality.”

            Why did lynching take off during and after Reconstruction? The end of slavery brought an end to the value of black lives. When black men and women were chattel they had value to slave owners. After slavery, black persons had no value.

            The Association of Southern Women for Protection of Lynching and the NAACP established a definition for lynching (1) a body; (2) an illegal killing; (3) killing by a group and (4) justification of the extrajudicial killing under the banner of justice.

            Three incidents in 1999 shaped co-author Roger Mitchell’s realization that police brutality was a public health issue. In February 1999 Amadou Diallo, an unarmed man, in the Bronx, was shot 41 times by four undercover NYPD police officers.

            In April of 1999, Earl Fasion was picked up as a suspect in the killing of a New Jersey police officer. Fasion was beaten by police while handcuffed and sprayed directly in the face with pepper spray. Suffering from asthma, his breathing became strained, and he died in police custody.

            The same year “Stolen Lives” was released as an effort to humanize the victims of police brutality in custody.

            Mitchell, a medical student, was the first to write about police brutality as a public health issue for the Student National Medical Association.

            Aronson and Mitchell wrote about Reuter’s work examining 7,571 deaths of incarcerated people between 2008 and 2019 including 4,998 individuals who had not yet been convicted of a crime. Reuters found a confluence of factors that can turn a short jail stay into a death sentence -- including a dysfunctional bail system, inadequate health care including mental health treatment.  

The authors did not ignore the major incidents of excessive force by police. In 1991, a video of Rodney King, an African American motorist, being brutally beaten by Los Angeles Police officers sparking a national outrage over police brutality. After the officers were acquitted at trial, L.A. erupted into a massive riot.

In 2014, Eric Garner, an African American man, was killed by New York City police after being placed in a banned chokehold while arresting him for selling untaxed cigarettes. Garner repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe,” before dying. Garner’s homicide fueled the Black Lives Matter movement.

George Floyd, also an African American, was killed by Minneapolis police in 2020, when officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for over nine minutes during an arrest, for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill. The killing sparking global protests with a familiar reframe -- his dying words, "I can't breathe."

Aronson and Mitchell also offered a glimpse into a little known, but principled stand by a well-known person who challenged one of America’s most influential institutions. Dr. Bennett Omalu took on the NFL over Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE. His efforts were memorialized in the major motion picture, “Concussion.”

After exposing the NFL’s secret, Omalu landed at the San Joaquin County Sheriff-Corners Office in California. Omalu lead a crusade, with help of one of the co-authors Mitchell, to expose the dangerously inadequate coroner system in the United States.

Aronson and Mitchell concluded by making a few common-sense suggestions for dealing with deaths in custody -- none more important than the collection of data. The Center for Disease Control is responsible for capturing, compiling, and reporting the national mortality rate. 

The lack of data on deaths in custody begs the question, why haven’t the CDC and related agencies taken the lead on ensuring that accurate data are collected on deaths in custody?

(Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino)

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Fourth Circuit: Police need warrant to use tracking device that mimics cellphone tower

Police wanting to use a device mimicking a cellphone tower to locate people must first get a warrant, a Fourth Circuit panel ruled, reported Courthouse News Service.

Kerron Andrews was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department in May 2014, after the police secured a court order allowing them to use a cell-site simulator to obtain his real-time location information. Andrews’ cellphone provider had allowed the police to determine his location within a few blocks, before the police used a simulator to determine he was in a specific townhouse.

Andrews told the Fourth Circuit panel this past January that the court order did not satisfy the Fourth Circuit’s warrant requirement. The panel disagreed Thursday, while recognizing that cellphones pose a unique threat to individual privacy.

The precision of the technology used by the police is invasive, U.S. Circuit Judge Nicole Berner wrote for the majority, and people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a private home. The Joe Biden appointee was joined by U.S. Circuit Judge Toby Heytens, also a Biden appointee.

“This technology is akin to sense-enhancing technology that allows the government to peer into a private home, which the Supreme Court has repeatedly held requires a warrant,” she wrote. The cell-site simulator effectively “cracked open the front door” of the property to reveal Andrews, she said.

“Despite the ubiquity of cell-site simulators, no federal court of appeals has squarely addressed whether law enforcement’s use of this technology for realtime tracking of a cellphone constitutes a search for purposes of the Fourth Amendment,” she wrote. “Today, we hold that it does.”

Andrews had a reasonable expectation that his phone wouldn’t be used as a real-time tracking device by law enforcement, the panel found, and the use of the cell-site simulator constitutes a search as defined in the Fourth Amendment. The judges did not decide if the pen register order secured by the cops satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

Despite this, Andrews’ civil suit against the police department and detectives can’t proceed, because the officers are protected by qualified immunity, the panel found, upholding a lower court’s judgment in favor of the police department and its detectives.

Donald Trump-appointed U.S. Circuit Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. concurred with the judgment, adding in a short opinion that he feels the panel should have first determined if Andrews’ constitutional rights had been violated and evaluated whether the pen register order was a valid warrant.

The police sought to arrest Andrews — who had previously worked with them as an informant — on charges of triple attempted murder after a shooting during a drug deal. The prosecution dropped the case against him after a Maryland court found officers should have first secured a warrant to use the simulator. He had spent nearly two years in pretrial detention, and later sued the department and two detectives claiming that they violated the Fourth and 14th Amendments by using the simulator.

“We are pleased that today’s ruling agreed that using privacy-invading technology—here, a device that enables law enforcement to see through walls—requires a valid search warrant,” Mike Pichini, attorney for Andrews, told Courthouse News. “Although disappointed with the overall result, we celebrate that our Constitution constrains law enforcement’s warrantless privacy invasions, especially when such invasions breach residential walls. We, the people, must be vigilant against government warrantless use of ever-evolving technology to erode our fundamental right to privacy.”

The Baltimore Police Department and detectives had argued his constitutional rights were not violated, and that their actions were reasonable as they had a warrant for his arrest and a court order allowing them to use a cellular tracking device that was functionally equivalent to a warrant. The court order did not satisfy the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, Andrews argued.

The case had appeared before the Fourth Circuit before, when the panel expressed concerns the order did not specifically authorize a cell-site simulator and that the device may have searched devices other than Andrews’. The court remanded the case, directing the lower court to conduct more fact-finding.

In May 2025, the police defendants secured summary judgment, with U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher concluding the search required a warrant but that the order the police secured was sufficient and effectively acted as a warrant. Andrews’ Fourth Amendment rights were not violated, she ruled.

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Do you know about the Federal Office of Remigration? If not read this now

Did you know that the U.S. government has an agency called the “Office of Remigration”? In case you’re unfamiliar with the term “remigration,” it’s typically used by white nationalists to describe the mass expulsion of nonwhite immigrants, done in the quest to ethnically cleanse “Western” countries. It’s mostly a European term, but Trump himself employed the phrase “reverse migration” last year, mainstreaming “remigration” on the American right—and true to its name, the office now helps facilitate mass removals in some very dark and sordid ways, reported The New Republic.

So let’s lay down a marker: If Democrats take over the House and/or the Senate, they should make it their business next year to ensure that this agency faces truly withering scrutiny. As many Americans as possible should know what their government is doing in their name.

The Office of Remigration, after all, has mostly managed to remain a very low-profile, poorly understood affair. It’s housed inside the State Department, where its roughly 15 employees toil in anonymity inside a vast bureaucracy, unnoticed by just about all Americans.

But a blockbuster Washington Post investigation just flushed the Office of Remigration’s activities out into the light. Relying on a series of leaked documents, the Post reports that at Stephen Miller’s direction, the agency is effectively paying out huge sums of taxpayer money to some really nasty governments in exchange for their acceptance of third-country deportees who, for various reasons, cannot be returned to their countries of origin.

It’s really sleazy, ghoulish stuff. The administration has authorized or pledged over $400 million for such agreements with more than 30 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America. As the Post reports, the deals place many migrants in countries to which they have no previous connections, and are structured to skirt “human rights safeguards” that typically are built into U.S. foreign assistance payments abroad.

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Mississippi police make arrests involving black woman hanging from a tree

Police in Mississippi have arrested a second man in the death of a Black woman found hanging from a tree and have issued an arrest warrant for a third suspect, reported The Associated Press.

Jackson police said late Tuesday that they arrested 25-year-old Earnest Lloyd Jr. in the death of 29-year-old Tasia Fortune, whose body was found hanging behind an abandoned home in the city on Aug. 3.

Like Fortune and the first man arrested, 51-year-old Jarques Ratliff, Lloyd is Black. He appeared at a brief hearing Wednesday, where he was denied bond.

According to local TV station WLBT, investigators said witnesses directed them to Lloyd, who had allegedly had a physical altercation with Fortune days or minutes before she was killed. Police contend that Lloyd hanged Fortune with a black cable cord, and three co-defendants are also suspected of being involved in her death, the station reported.

Police and the court clerk said Wednesday that they didn’t know if Lloyd has a lawyer.

Fortune’s mother Christy Spivey, who attended the hearing, said afterward that she was ecstatic to see arrests made in her daughter’s death. She said neither she nor several of her daughter’s friends knew Lloyd, and she cautioned that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

“My family is not the only family that this is affecting,” Spivey said of the defendants’ families. “I feel for them as well. The only difference is that mine can never come back.”

“I’ll never truly have peace,” she said.

Ratliff was arrested in September on murder charges. He pleaded not guilty and remains jailed without bond. His lawyer, Toney Baldwin, hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment.

Police said in a statement that they issued an arrest warrant for a third suspect, but gave no details about that person’s identity or alleged link to Fortune’s death. They also said they expect to issue additional warrants.

After Ratliff’s arrest, Jackson’s police chief, RaShall Brackney, said Ratliff had an “association” with Fortune, but she didn’t elaborate.

Although police haven’t suggested a possible motive for the killing, the case has attracted widespread attention because the manner of death recalled lynchings in the Southern state.

A Kentucky native, Fortune had four children and had been living in Jackson for about a decade, relatives said.

Spivey previously said her daughter struggled with homelessness in recent years, and that she wasn’t sure where her daughter was living at the time of her death. She said that before her death, her daughter had talked about starting a cleaning business and was trying to get her life in order.

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Texas executes man for triple murder, co-defendant was executed last week

 The 28th Execution of 2026

Ker’Sean Ramey was executed in Texas on September 23, 2026 for a triple killing committed during an attempted robbery at a rural home, one week after the other man convicted in the case was put to death, reported The Associated Press.

Ramey, 41, was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. CDT following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was the sixth person executed this year in Texas, with three more lethal injections scheduled in the state over the next two months.

In the execution chamber, a prison chaplain rested his left hand on Ramey’s right shoulder and offered a brief prayer before the warden asked the prisoner if he had any last words. Ramey praised God and thanked friends, family and fellow death row inmates he called his brothers.

“To the brothers on Texas death row that grew up with me, that poured into me and showed what it means to be a man, because I came in young, and didn’t understand what manhood was ... to you brothers ... I greatly appreciate you,” he said just before the injection got underway.

As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began flowing, Ramey took a deep breath, sputtered and began snoring. After 10 loud snores and two that were nearly inaudible, all movement ceased.

A physician pronounced Ramey dead 14 minutes after the injection began. Ramey’s body was then covered with a white sheet.

A jury had convicted Ramey of capital murder and sentenced him to death for the August 2005 shootings of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38, at the home they shared in Edna, a small rural city some 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Houston.

Ramey and LeJames Norman believed there was cocaine in the house and hoped to steal it, according to court records. The men entered the home with guns, found no drugs and fatally shot the three residents, who lived just across the street from Norman, the records show.

Norman was executed on Sept. 16 at the Huntsville prison, where all Texas executions are carried out.

Including Ramey’s execution, a total of 28 inmates have been put to death around several U.S. states this year. Florida leads those states with 15 executions so far in 2026, by far the nation’s busiest death chamber.

Hours before Wednesday’s execution, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Ramey’s final appeal.

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His attorneys argued that jurors had never heard that Ramey suffered physical abuse as a child and grew up in poverty. State prosecutors told the court the appeal was “meritless” and said the evidence showed Ramey exhibited “an escalating pattern of criminal behavior.”

Norman was arrested about five months after the killings while seeking to re-enter the U.S. from Mexico, where he had fled. He testified at Ramey’s trial in January 2007 that both men shot the victims. Ramey’s attorneys blamed the shootings on Norman.

Ramey’s former girlfriend testified that she was with Ramey when he threw two handguns into a lake after the killings, and that he later described his involvement to her in detail.

Lopez was shot four times, including in the back of the head; Peacock was shot twice in the head; and Roberts was shot five times in the chest, neck and head.

Norman was sentenced to death in December 2008 after pleading guilty to capital murder.

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The Clancy Effect: Richard Allen convicted Delphi killer claims psychosis defense

An attorney for a man serving 130 years in prison for killing two teen girls in Indiana said police were so determined to find him guilty they used confessions gathered while he suffered from psychosis and withheld from trial a witness sketch that looked nothing like him, reported The Associated Press.

Jurors convicted Richard Allen of murder in 2024 in the deaths of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, known as Abby and Libby. The case in the tiny town of Delphi went unsolved for more than five years before Allen was arrested, becoming a magnet for true-crime enthusiasts.

After Allen told investigators he had been on the trail near where the girls died, authorities found any way they could to convict him and make sure no evidence surfaced that any other man was on that walkway, attorney Mark Leeman told a three-judge panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals on Monday.

“We live in a world where one or two things happen here,” Leeman said. “A pharmacy tech with no criminal history goes out for a walk to watch a stock ticker and look at fish and decides to gruesomely murder two girls. Or, we live in a world where the police through confirmation bias failed to find the right guy.”

Judges have plenty of questions about the trial’s fairness

The three judges handling the appeal questioned why the trial judge didn’t allow the defense to call an expert to testify that it looked like the girls were killed by unknown participants in a pagan ritual. They also asked why a police sketch of someone seen near the trail was omitted from trial, noting that the sketch looked nothing like Allen.

The panel also questioned why a defense expert wasn’t allowed to question whether marks on an unfired bullet can be traced to a specific gun, as prosecutors had asserted. And given that videos of Allen’s odd behavior in prison were shown to jurors, the appeals judges wanted to know why the trial judge did not allow the audio to be played as well, audio in which Allen claimed to be a king and that he had started World War III.

But the judges also asked the state several times if the decisions were harmless and whether the jury would have convicted Allen anyway even if the trial decisions being weighed had gone his way.

Indiana Deputy Attorney General Ellen Meilaender said Allen provided the strongest evidence himself when he told police before he was arrested that he was on the trail, but said he didn’t see the girls.

“Allen denied seeing Abby and Libby there, even though the timeline evidence indisputably shows he must have done so, which was consciousness of guilt,” Meilaender said.

The judges will rule at a later date.

Crime scene had plenty of strange evidence

The girls’ bodies were found down a steep hill from an abandoned railroad trestle on a hiking trail just outside of Delphi on Feb. 13, 2017. The eighth graders were dropped off and never made it to their pickup point.

The teens’ throats were cut, and a few branches were scattered over their bodies. One was found nude while the other was wearing the first victim’s clothes. There was no evidence they had been sexually assaulted.

One of the girls took a brief video of a suspicious man nearby saying, “Down the hill.”

Prosecutors said Allen was armed with a gun and forced the girls off the hiking trail. They said he confessed to planning to rape them before a passing van made him change his mind and kill them. An expert testified an unspent bullet found between the teens’ bodies “had been cycled through” Allen’s handgun.

Defense lawyers at his trial said no witness explicitly identified Allen as the man seen near the trail the afternoon the girls went missing. They also said no fingerprint, DNA or forensic evidence linked Allen to the murder scene. They wanted to call an expert to dispute that guns can mark bullets in unique ways, but weren’t allowed.

Allen’s lawyers say isolation led to mental breakdown and false confessions

Allen was held in solitary confinement while awaiting trial. He denied killing the girls for months, but his attorneys said mental stress from isolation led to a steep psychological decline. Eventually, his mental state became so bad he convinced himself he killed the girls and confessed several times, his lawyers said.

Prosecutors said the statements coincided with Allen seeing evidence in the case including the conditions of the teens’ bodies.

Expert testimony of possible pagan ritual also excluded

Allen’s trial attorneys wanted to put an expert witness on the stand to testify the killings appeared to be a ritual sacrifice by people who worshipped Odin, the king of the gods in Norse mythology.

The expert was expected to say the positioning of the bodies, the branches on the remains, the outdoor location of the crime and knife wounds to the victims all were indications of pagan rituals.

Prosecutors said the expert had limited examples and that defense lawyers shouldn’t be able to present just any theory without evidence to back it up. They said it would have turned the trial into a sideshow.

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Judge calls bite marks 'junk science' grants man new trial for 1985 slaying

Charles McCrory was convicted and sentenced to life in an Alabama prison for the May 1985 slaying of his wife, Julie Bonds McCrory. The case rested predominately on two small marks on Julie’s arm, which the state and its expert said were bite marks that Charles McCrory made in a rageful, brutal killing, reported AL.com

Today, the technique of matching bite marks to a person’s teeth is considered junk science. And the dentist who long ago testified against him has recanted, saying he can’t even be sure the mark was made by teeth at all — much less McCrory’s teeth.

“The bitemark evidence clearly prejudiced the outcome of McCrory’s trial, especially in light of the other evidence presented at trial,” wrote Chief U.S. District Judge Austin Huffaker Jr. in his Monday order.

“The non-bitemark evidence from which the jury could convict McCrory was thin.”

Huffaker’s order said the Alabama Attorney General’s Office has 180 days to begin a new trial for McCrory or release him from prison.

The state did not respond to a request for comment on Monday afternoon. The office could appeal the decision.

McCrory, a 26-year-old tech worker and volunteer paramedic, was always the main suspect in his wife’s murder. There was no DNA implicating McCrory, no confessions or clear motive. No blood was ever found on his clothes or in his apartment.

But Dr. Richard Souviron, a forensic dentist in Florida who matched a victim’s wounds to Ted Bundy’s crooked teeth in Bundy’s 1979 trial, testified at McCroy’s trial that the two small marks on Julie’s arm matched McCrory’s teeth.

That testimony was the sole physical evidence against McCrory, and Huffaker said it “resulted in a fundamentally unfair trial.”

The judge said on Monday that the state court’s decision in 2022, which denied McCrory’s request for a new trial, was “both an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law and was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts.”

McCrory lived in a small apartment down the street from his wife and toddler son in Andalusia, in Covington County. He and Julie McCrory, then 24, were in the middle of a divorce. But McCrory said he was at the family home on the night of May 30, 1985. The two went to couple’s therapy, spent time with their son, and had sex before McCrory went back to his apartment, he said. The two were often together, and Julie’s date book showed the possibility of her husband moving back in.

McCrory heard about the murder the next morning, when his paramedic radio signaled a call for help at his wife’s home and he responded to the scene.

Julie was found laying in the front doorway of her home. She had been severely beaten with five “chop” wounds to her head, 11 puncture wounds to her chest, fractures of her jaw bones, various bruises and two small marks on the back of her upper right arm.

No one ever confirmed what made the puncture marks that riddled her body.

At trial in October 1985, the case hinged on circumstantial evidence like McCrory’s behavior and disputed witness statements as to cars at the family home. The two small marks that Souviron said were made by McCrory’s upper teeth were the only physical evidence.

The lack of physical evidence didn’t matter. McCrory was convicted and sent to prison for the rest of his life.

But, in the years after the conviction, bite mark evidence was questioned. By 2022, national groups called the technique “junk science” and said bite mark analysis isn’t supported by data.

And in 2019, Souviron took back his testimony.

“I no longer believe the individualized teeth marks comparison testimony I offered in his case was reliable or proper,” he said in an affidavit. He added that he “would not” and “could not” give the same testimony today in McCrory’s case.

The dentist fully recanted his statements from 40 years ago, adding that he no longer believes there is a scientific basis for saying the injury— “assuming that the injury is in fact teeth marks” — could be matched to McCrory. He also said he never actually examined Julie’s body, and relied on photographs.

“My experience has taught me that human dentition is not totally unique,” he said. “I also believe that only in certain, very limited circumstances — not present in Mr. McCrory’s case — can the features of human dentition accurately be recorded in human skin.”

The evolving science and the expert’s recantation didn’t persuade Alabama. When McCrory’s team of lawyers from the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Innocence Project asked for a new trial in the state courts in 2020, it was shot down.

Huffaker, the federal judge, called the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ruling ambiguous and unreasonable, and said the state prosecutors’ arguments were not persuasive. Neither side disputes that the original 1985 testimony was unreliable and could not come into court today, he wrote.

Bite mark identification methods are “grossly unreliable and unsupported by relevant scientific bodies,” the judge added.

“It amounts to nothing more than rank speculation.”

Prosecutors from the Alabama Attorney General’s Office argued in 2021 that, even without Souviron’s testimony, jurors could have looked at the photographs of Julie’s body and matched the markings themselves. The Alabama Criminal Court of Appeals agreed.

McCrory’s team found the suggestion preposterous. Huffaker did, too.

“This finding blinks reality in light of the evidence,” wrote Huffaker. “If an expert could not testify about bitemark identification because it is junk science, a jury should not have been allowed to consider it either.”

Huffaker added the dentist’s recantation was not rebutted by prosecutors and the state didn’t identify anyone who could say that the marks matched McCrory’s teeth.

“It makes little sense that a lay jury could permissibly form a conclusion that no forensic expert could... There is also no evidence that the two markings on (Julie’s) body are a human bitemark.”

Huffaker also noted other rulings across the country where people who were incarcerated solely on bite mark evidence have been exonerated.

McCrory’s lawyers cited 39 known wrongful convictions and indictments from bite mark forensics. Souviron’s past testimonies alone have led to at least two documented wrongful convictions, they added.

In those cases, the dentist said the suspects’ teeth matched marks on the victims. Each man — one in Massachusetts and one in Florida — was later exonerated after DNA proved who the killer was. Each served more than 30 years in prison.

AL.com reported on the case in depth, and the state’s reluctance to accept evolving scientific methods, in the 2025 series, Alabama Vs. Science.

Six years ago, the state offered McCrory a deal: If he said he killed his wife, he could walk out of prison.

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Mangino discusses Philadelphia 'House of Horrors' on Law and Crime's On the Case

 

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Alabama executes man for 1998 double murder

The 27th Execution of 2026

Alabama executed Jeffrey Lee by lethal injection on September 17, 2026 for a 1998 double murder. His execution comes three months after a judge’s ruling blocked the state from putting him to death with nitrogen gas, reported The Associated Press.

Lee, 49, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, authorities said. Twenty-seven people have been executed around the U.S. this year. Lee’s execution was the second in Alabama this year.

Lee was convicted of killing two people during a Dec. 12, 1998, robbery at Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orrville, a small town about 65 miles (105 kilometers) west of Montgomery. Jimmy Ellis, the store’s owner, and Elaine Thompson, a store employee, were shot and killed. Another employee survived by playing dead.

Lee’s supporters and attorneys made an unsuccessful bid for clemency, noting that the jury that convicted him wanted him to receive a life sentence and filing a legal challenge to the change in execution methods.

The execution got underway just after 6 p.m.

“All is well. I just want to say to my family, I love them. To my brothers on life row, I love them,” Lee said in his final words.

As the injection began, Lee clenched his fists on the prison gurney. His spiritual adviser held Lee’s feet and appeared to pray. Lee closed his eyes and did not appear to open them again.

Ruling blocked Alabama from using nitrogen gas method

The execution was carried out 98 days after Lee won a last-minute reprieve when a judge ruled the state’s nitrogen gas method violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Lee had been scheduled to be executed on June 11 by nitrogen gas, but the execution was called off that night when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to lift the judge’s ruling. The decision was a loss for the state, which began using the gas method in 2024.

The Alabama attorney general’s office on June 12 filed paperwork to set a new execution date for Lee, this time using lethal injection. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Thursday evening that “justice was finally served.”

“In June, after Mr. Lee attempted to avoid his deserved death sentence, I reaffirmed my commitment that justice would ultimately be served,” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey also said in a statement. “Tonight, that promise was fulfilled for his victims, Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, as well as for their loved ones who have long-awaited his sentence to be carried out.”

Lee’s attorneys and supporters made an unsuccessful bid for clemency, noting the jury in his case had made a recommendation of life imprisonment, which the judge overrode.

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A jury voted 7-5 to give Lee a sentence of life imprisonment. However, a judge overrode that and sentenced him to death.

In 2017, Alabama abolished judicial override and stopped allowing judges to change juries’ sentencing decision in capital cases. But the law was not retroactive. Supporters of Lee’s clemency bid held a rally Tuesday outside the Alabama Capitol under the banner, “HONOR THE JURY.” They gathered in a vigil Thursday night outside the Alabama Governor’s Mansion.

“His death sentence rested solely on judicial override — an old law that Alabama has repealed,” Lee’s attorneys said in a statement after the execution. “The State itself concluded this practice was wrong enough to abandon yet still put a man to death under it. That is a moral failure, not just a legal formality.”

Ivey, who declined to intervene, said in her statement that the case “underscores exactly why” the law passed in 2017 did not apply to existing death sentences

Two killed in 1998 pawnshop robbery

The surviving witness testified that Lee entered the store, asked to see wedding rings and said he would be back after getting money from his grandmother. Lee returned a short time later with a sawed-off shotgun and shot Ellis, Thompson and the other employee. The surviving witness fell to the floor, pretending to be dead, and called 911 once Lee left the store.

Ellis, a singer whose voice resembled Elvis Presley’s, had gained a national following for a time as an Elvis impersonator. He performed as the masked singer “Orion” and was the subject of a 2015 documentary.

Lee was convicted in 2000 of capital murder and attempted murder.

Supreme Court turns back stay request

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon denied Lee’s request to stay the execution to consider if the state was allowed to make the switch to lethal injection. Justices turned back the request without comment.

Lee filed a lawsuit in 2016 challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol. After Alabama authorized nitrogen as an execution method, Lee selected it as his preferred method. He agreed to dismiss the lethal injection lawsuit in 2018 because the state agreed that “if he is to be executed, defendants will carry out that execution by nitrogen hypoxia.”

Lee’s lawyers argued the state was bound by the terms of that agreement to not use lethal injection. The state attorney general’s office asked the high court to let the execution proceed, arguing that nothing precludes the switch to lethal injection.

For decades, lethal injection was the generally preferred U.S. execution method until problems procuring and administering the drugs led states including Alabama to consider alternatives.

Lethal injection remains Alabama’s primary execution method. But in 2024, the state began carrying out some executions using nitrogen gas, which involves replacing breathable air with gas through a respirator mask, causing death from lack of oxygen. Nitrogen has now been used in seven executions in Alabama and one in Louisiana.

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Texas executes man for triple murder in 2005

The 26th Execution of 2026 

LeJames Norman, 40, was put to death by lethal injection on September 16, 2025 at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, reported The Associated Press. He was put to death for the 2005 fatal shooting of three people during an attempted robbery at his neighbor’s home in rural Texas, the state’s fifth execution this year.

Norman been sentenced to death in the fatal shootings of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38, inside the home they shared in Edna, located about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southwest of Houston.

Ker’Sean Ramey was also convicted in the shootings and sentenced to death. His execution is set for next week.

Court records indicated Norman and Ramey believed there was cocaine in the house and hoped to steal it, but they never found any drugs. Norman was arrested about five months after the killings while trying to cross back into the U.S. from Mexico.

Norman pleaded guilty to capital murder, leaving a jury to decide his punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court denied a request on Wednesday from Norman’s attorneys to stop his execution.

No last words before execution

Asked by the warden if he wanted to make a final statement, Norman shook his head.

He was laying on a thin mattress atop a steel table, his head on a white pillow. He nodded toward a window through which a sister, two of his children and a friend watched and made eye contact as one of them danced.

As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, he took a couple of deep breaths, appeared to yawn and made snoring sounds — six of them. All movement then stopped.

Thirty minutes later, after a physician examined him, he was pronounced dead at 6:44 p.m. and covered with a white sheet. Only his right hand and lower forearm, covered with an elastic bandage, were visible.

No relatives or friends of the three murder victims in his case witnessed Norman’s punishment.

Judge halts Georgia execution

Stacey Humphreys, 53, was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in the 2003 killings of 33-year-old Cyndi Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown in an Atlanta suburb. He too had been scheduled to die by an injection of the same drug at 7 p.m. EDT at the state prison near Jackson.

However, a judge halted Humphreys’ execution late Tuesday after his lawyers filed a petition seeking a resentencing under a new state law that allows victims of abuse to have their sentences reconsidered and reduced, if they can tie their crimes to abuse they suffered.

The state appealed that ruling, asking the Georgia Supreme Court to find that Humphreys is not entitled to have his sentence reconsidered under the new law. But the high court declined to hear that appeal before the scheduled execution time and left the lower court’s stay in place.

Georgia’s high court said it would consider the questions raised about the new law in the state’s appeal “in the ordinary course of business and according to a forthcoming scheduling order.”

Killings at a model home and allegations of a biased juror

The two women who Humphreys killed were working as real estate agents for a new subdivision in the Atlanta suburb of Powder Springs. He entered the sales office in a model home around midday on Nov. 3, 2003, and forced them to strip naked and give him their bank PINs before fatally shooting them, according to evidence presented at trial.

Humphreys withdrew more than $3,000 from the women’s bank accounts, according to court filings. He told police after his arrest that he had recently taken out some high-interest payday loans and needed money for a payment on his truck.

Witnesses told police they saw a man fitting Humphreys’ description at the sales office and a vehicle in the parking lot that matched his black Dodge Durango. Police zeroed in on Humphreys and tried to question him at his Dunwoody home days later. He fled and was arrested in Wisconsin after leading police on a high-speed chase.

In addition to the petition for a reduced sentence, Humphreys’ lawyers have argued that he should be resentenced because his death sentence was tainted by a biased juror who lied during jury selection and bullied other jurors into voting for a death sentence. Courts have repeatedly rejected those arguments for procedural reasons, though U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by the other two liberal justices, argued last year that the issue should be further explored rather than leaving it “caught in a web of procedural barriers.”

Additionally, Humphreys’ lawyers have argued that it was not fair that his clemency application was heard by only four members of the five-person State Board of Pardons and Paroles. A judge had ordered one member of the board to recuse herself, agreeing with Humphreys’ legal team that there was a conflict of interest because she previously worked as a victim advocate with the Cobb County district attorney’s office and had worked with the victims in his case. The parole board on Tuesday denied clemency for Humphreys.

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Trump attacks his appointees to the Supreme Court after vote by mail slap down

President Trump assailed the Supreme Court’s decision to block his administration’s efforts to change mail voting and issued a blistering criticism of the three justices he appointed during his first term, reported The New York Times.

“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court,” he wrote on social media, referring to Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch. “They are merely a shell of their original selves, a Court that is costing the United States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings that are of such magnitude that it won’t be easily possible for our Country to recover or heal.”

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an executive order by Mr. Trump that would have drastically changed how Americans vote by mail ahead of the midterm elections. Mr. Trump has long railed against mail-in voting and suggested it is rife with cheating — even though he has voted by mail in recent elections.

In his post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump slammed the decision as “horrible, highly political.”

“It is a big loss for Republicans, and America itself, and makes cheating by the Radical Left ‘Dumocrats,’ on Mail-In Ballots, a much easier thing to do - And now they have an open field to do so!” he wrote.

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Mangino discusses thefts from area booster organizations on WFMJ-TV21

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Former President Obama sounds the alarm on artificial intelligence

Former President Barack Obama warned during a recent private fund-raising event that artificial intelligence technology could be “dangerous” if not properly managed, as he implored Democrats to aggressively develop political and governing agendas to prioritize the issue in the coming years, reported The New York Times.

In his remarks, which have not been previously reported, Mr. Obama urged Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the House minority leader, to assemble a clear framework for a public conversation about A.I. policy, should Democrats win back the House in the midterm elections, according to a partial transcript provided by Mr. Obama’s office.

He also suggested that candidates running for president in 2028 ought to make A.I. one of their “central agendas” and “have a very clear plan” for responding to safety and economic concerns around the technology.

The recommendations from the former president amount to some of his most detailed comments yet about A.I. as a political issue for his party. At a moment when President Trump continues to downplay concerns about the technology, some Democrats see an opportunity for the party to draw a clear contrast in the midterms and beyond on an issue of growing significance. In a Democratic Party with no clear leader, many look to Mr. Obama for guidance, and his comments carry considerable weight.

The remarks come amid escalating worries about the risks associated with A.I. development, as well as growing calls for lawmakers and politicians to do more to tackle the topic. Some A.I. industry leaders are now calling for a slowdown after a summer in which swarms of misaligned A.I. agents broke free from their containers and proceeded to scheme against their owners, cheat on tests and hack outside companies.

At a closed-door fund raising event in Manhattan organized by the campaign arm of the House Democrats, Mr. Obama and Mr. Jeffries spoke for nearly an hour in front of party donors and lawmakers, according to four people familiar with the event, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private gathering.

“Once you are speaker, I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Jeffries, according to the transcript. Mr. Jeffries had asked him a question about how Democrats should address A.I. in a Congress that has taken little action on the issue, according to two of the people.

“This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous,” Mr. Obama said. “If we do get on top of it, I do think it’s beneficial. I genuinely think it’s going to accelerate, for example, drug development in ways that can help us cure diseases. I do think that this can help us figure out pathways for a clean energy future.”

The former president often spoke in general terms, rather than drilling down on specific policies, according to the transcript. And he planted himself firmly in a middle ground in the heated debate over A.I., saying he considered himself neither an “accelerationist” nor a “doomer.”

One challenge facing Democrats as they chart a path forward on A.I. is speaking in one voice on the issue. The tug of war over how to regulate A.I. has been more divisive among Democrats than Republicans, who are generally more in alignment. Some Democratic politicians have called for more A.I. regulation, while others have received millions of dollars in support from groups tied to the industry’s biggest players.

A.I. is becoming a larger part of the country’s political calculus heading into the midterms. This year’s elections have been flooded with money from A.I. companies and allied groups. And anxiety about the technology, a rare issue that many Republican and Democratic voters can agree on, has peaked in recent days after a researcher at the A.I. company Anthropic loudly and publicly resigned, writing in a viral social media post that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Mr. Jeffries explicitly mentioned the resignation in his question to Mr. Obama, according to one of the people familiar with the event.

Dario Amodei, the chief executive of the A.I. company Anthropic, called for a global slowdown of A.I. development in a 3,800-word essay published on Saturday. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, and Elon Musk, whose SpaceX rocket company has been ramping up spending on A.I., quickly wrote in social media posts that they agreed with him.

The White House has long maintained an unabashedly accelerationist stance. Mr. Trump recently told reporters he didn’t have “any” concerns about A.I.’s risks — just about falling behind to competitors like China. He has said that those who oppose A.I. data centers must prefer to be “backwards and poor.”

“President Obama is correct that decisive action must be taken on artificial intelligence,” Mr. Jeffries said in a statement, adding that “Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to govern on behalf of the American people.”

“We will not repeat their error,” he continued.

On Capitol Hill, where little has been done to regulate A.I., some Democrats have been circulating a letter urging House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, to stop members from going home on recess until they pass A.I. safeguards.

Many Republicans want action, too. Several have introduced bipartisan A.I. legislation, and Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has called for a special session on the topic. A growing number of Republicans are campaigning against data centers, in addition to many Democrats.

As House speaker in 2023, Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, set up A.I. learning and brainstorming sessions, stressing a bipartisan approach. After Mr. Johnson became speaker later that year, he and Mr. Jeffries announced a bipartisan task force on A.I. that produced a report in late 2024. House Republican leadership declined to renew the task force in the next Congress. In response, Democrats formed their own A.I. commission, which is now putting the finishing touches on a policy framework. That framework is expected to be released this fall after some final checks by Mr. Jeffries, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Obama has taken a special interest in A.I. in recent years, and he has offered himself as a sounding board to industry leaders, including Mr. Altman and Mr. Amodei, according to two people familiar with his conversations.

Mr. Obama sees Mr. Amodei’s essay urging an A.I. slowdown — and the affirmations by other A.I. executives — as an encouraging development, and the two are engaged in discussions about A.I. safety, according to one of the people. Representatives for OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment.

With many Democrats already jockeying for position ahead of the next presidential race, Mr. Obama, in his remarks at the fund-raiser, outlined what he would do on A.I. if he were one of them.

“I would talk about this, and I would say: ‘Here’s our plan for safety. Here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this,’” he said, according to the transcript.

He contrasted the technology with other innovations that could be dangerous in the wrong hands, saying that compared to “nuclear power, you don’t need a bunch of highly enriched uranium” to build powerful A.I.

“I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there’s going to be job displacement,” Mr. Obama said, according to the transcript, adding, “if it turns out that you’ve got a lot more people who can’t find full-time work because they’ve been rendered redundant, how are we going to respond?”

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