Thanks for this article to my partner-in-crime, David in TN, who wrote,
This is why I don't think [Knoxville Horror kidnapped-rapist-torturer-killer of two, Lemaricus] Davidson will ever be executed. The Tennessee courts will drag it out until the death penalty is outlawed.
Florida man on death row for 40 years executed
Bill Cotterell
6:59 p.m. CST, January 7, 2014
Reuters-Chicago Tribune
TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) - A Florida man who spent nearly 40 years on death row for killing a Miami couple and later stabbing a prison guard to death with a sharpened spoon was executed on Tuesday, a state prison official said.
Askari Abdullah Muhammad, 62, who was known as Thomas Knight when he killed his former employer and his wife in 1974, was pronounced dead at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2345 GMT) from a lethal injection, said Misty Cash, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections.
Muhammad won a stay of execution last month after he legally challenged the use of a sedative, midazolam hydrochloride, as the first in a series of three drugs used for lethal injections in Florida.
The state switched to midazolam last year when makers of another sedative, pentobarbital, refused to supply it to states using the drug in executions.
Attorneys for Muhammad said the new drug was an ineffective sedative and caused inmates to suffer pain when the subsequent two drugs - a paralytic agent and heart-stopping drug - were administered to complete the injection process.
[Execution is supposed to hurt!]
A Florida circuit judge ruled, however, there was insufficient evidence of pain in two previous executions carried out with midazolam last year.
Muhammad was sentenced to death for the 1974 murders of Sydney and Lillian Gans in Miami. Muhammad had previously worked for Gans at a paper bag company, and abducted him from a parking lot with a rifle, forcing Gans to drive home and get his wife before making them withdraw $50,000 from a bank.
He shot the couple in the back of their heads and fled but was captured a short time later.
Muhammad escaped while awaiting trial and was implicated in the fatal shooting of a liquor store clerk in October 1974 in Cordele, Georgia. He was not charged in that case but was returned to Florida for trial in the Gans murders.
In 1980, while on death row, Muhammad stabbed correctional officer Richard Burke while being escorted to a shower room. Three years later, he was sentenced to die for Burke's killing.
Muhammad made a final appeal in late December, arguing that the state withheld evidence of his mental condition that might have disputed premeditation in the slaying of the prison guard.
The state's highest court rejected that appeal without comment on Monday.
(Editing by Kevin Gray, G Crosse and Steve Orlofsky)
14 comments:
Suffer pain? Even placing the needle in the arm must be excessive pain to the persons that oppose the death penalty.
I believe he was only found guilty of killing Mr. and Mrs. Gans. NOT found guilty of killing the guard or the store clerk. It took forty years? It is like the guy just had a heart attack or similar. Well, he did have a heart attack, didn't he!!
There was not even a question of innocence or guilt in this case. Clear cut instance of the guilty and his legal staff able to game the system for decades. Justice delayed in justice denied.
While being taken to the shower room killed the guard. That is what the judges have said, a shower a day, an hour exercise per day, and three hot nutritious meals a day the preparation of which is supervised by a college trained dietician.
Let those judges escort the condemned to the shower room.
That it took forty years to execute an obviously guilty man does indicate that our legal system is BROKEN. I hate normally to use that word BROKEN but that is what it is.
And the liberal elite have broken it beyond redemption and done so in a less than reasonable manner.
Normally killing another person in prison after already having been found guilty is considered to be an egregious offense, and makes one that more likely to be executed. Thomas went to his death but laughing I might assume, this was all one big joke to him.
I hate it too when these colored murderers are called by their false Islamic names. Askari [Thomas], Mumia [Wesley Cook], etc. Converts to Islam and all that.
That is just another way of gaming the system and attracting attention.
Those villains don't have a religious bone in their bodies. Never did, never will.
NO evidence that there was a problem with the chemicals?
And how is evidence obtained? The guy is dead and you cannot ask him how it felt, etc.
Hanging and snapping the neck is accompanied by the loosening of the bowels and the condemned gets a pants full of crap. They make the guy wear a diaper when they do hang.
What's he worried about, you know they wipe the skin with antiseptic before inserting the needle, wouldn't want someone who's being executed to get an infection....Jerry
Why are States mesmerized by chemicals to kill prisoners? This enables the anti-capitol-punishment crowd to continually spend money in court to stretch out the prisoner's time in prison.
Why can't we just have FIRING SQUADS to execute prisoners? There are plenty of crime victims and relatives that will bring their own gun such that the state wouldn't have to expend a penny.
The Chinese do executions by shooting and it works very well. In fact, never a case of shooting someone and NOT having that person die. Relatively painless when shot n the back of the neck, snap the spinal column and all that.
Those drug companies that manufacture and distribute those drugs used in the executions are predominantly located in NO death penalty Europe. They refuse to sell the drugs to U.S. suppliers and so the question is raised, what drug is a substitute.
This issue of using the right cocktail to execute someone is really bogus. Too much of just about anything can kill. Junkies overdose and die everyday. Just use some pain killer or morphine which are readily available and give them a lot of it, more than enough just to make sure.
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