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| Tommy Arthur |
The U.S. Supreme Court has stopped the execution of an Alabama inmate convicted in a 1982 murder-for-hire.
Five justices voted to grant the stay late Thursday night for inmate Tommy Arthur as the high court considers whether to review Arthur's appeals.
The decision was handed down about an hour before Arthur's death warrant expired.
Seventy-four-year-old Arthur had been scheduled to be executed Thursday evening by lethal injection at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
He was convicted of killing Troy Wicker. Police on Feb. 1, 1982, found Wicker shot to death in bed in his Muscle Shoals home.
Wicker's wife initially said she had been raped and an intruder killed her husband. She later testified that she had sex with Arthur and promised him $10,000 to kill her husband.
The Supreme Court said the stay will expire if it declines to take up Arthur's case.
Source: ABC News, November 4, 2016
The Supreme Court stayed the execution Thursday night of an Alabama inmate who had been scheduled to die by lethal injection.
This marked the seventh time that Thomas D. Arthur — who was convicted of murder and is the second-oldest inmate on Alabama’s death row — had faced an execution date that was called off, according to the office of Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange.
Arthur’s execution was scheduled for Thursday evening, but the uncertainty stretched into the night as officials in Alabama waited for the Supreme Court to consider his appeals.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — the Supreme Court justice assigned to the 11th Circuit, which includes Alabama — said in an order shortly before 10:30 p.m. that he was halting the execution until he or the other justices issued another order.
Thomas referred the case to the full court, and shortly before midnight, the justices issued an order granting Arthur’s stay request. The order included a statement from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. explaining that while he did not believe this case merited a review from the Supreme Court, he had decided to vote for a stay anyway as a courtesy to his colleagues.
Roberts wrote that four of the other justices had voted in favor of staying the execution.
“To afford them the opportunity to more fully consider the suitability of this case for review, including these circumstances, I vote to grant the stay as a courtesy,” he wrote. Roberts said Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito would have rejected the request; he did not explain why an eighth justice was not involved in the vote.
According to the court’s order, Arthur’s stay request would remain granted until the justices decide whether to consider the case. If they decide against it, the stay will be terminated.
“We are greatly relieved by the Supreme Court’s decision granting a stay and now hope for the opportunity to present the merits of Mr. Arthur’s claims to the Court,” Suhana S. Han, an attorney for Arthur, said in a statement.
In appeals filed Thursday, Arthur’s attorneys argued that Alabama’s “deficient lethal injection protocol” would have had “torturous effects,” pointing to the state’s planned use of the sedative midazolam, which has been used in at least three executions that went awry. Last year, the Supreme Court upheld Oklahoma’s execution protocol in a case that hinged in part on that sedative.
Arthur’s court filings also argued that the state should execute him by firing squad, arguing that “execution by firing squad, if implemented properly, would result in a substantially lesser risk of harm” than the proposed lethal injection method.
Strange’s office, in its response, noted that under Alabama state law, the Department of Corrections is only allowed to carry out executions by injection and electrocution.
Source: The Washington Post, Mark Berman, November 4, 2016
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