Alabama executes 83-year-old inmate
Three decades after a bombing campaign claimed the life of a federal judge, set off panic and prompted a sprawling federal investigation, authorities in Alabama executed the now-83-year-old man convicted in the explosions.
The lethal injection of Walter Leroy Moody Jr. on Thursday night made him the oldest inmate put to death in the modern era. And in a sign of how death row populations are aging amid a nationwide decline in executions, Moody became the eighth inmate older than 65 put to death since the beginning of 2015.
Moody, who maintained his innocence in the bombings, was convicted in 1991 on federal charges and then in 1996 on state charges.
A grudge against the justice system saw him mail out four pipe bombs in 1989. One was shipped to the Alabama home of Robert Vance, a federal judge, and killed him.
Moody’s lethal injection stands out for his age. Going into Thursday, the oldest inmate executed since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 was John Nixon, who was 77 when Mississippi executed him in 2005.
More than 2,800 people remain on death row nationwide at a time when states are carrying out fewer and fewer executions, falling to 23 executions last year from a modern peak of 98 in 1999, according to Death Penalty Information Center records.
“Death row populations are getting older,” said Robert Dunham, the group’s executive director. “Octogenarian executions are going to remain extremely rare. It’s unprecedented in the modern era. It may happen again, but it will be rare. We’ve seen a series of executions of individuals in their 70s in the last couple of years, and that will become increasingly common.”
Earlier this year, the group’s records show, Georgia executed a 67-year-old death row inmate. Last year, Alabama executed a 75-yearold inmate who had previously faced the death chamber seven times. In 2016, Georgia executed a 72-yearold inmate — at the time, the oldest inmate on its death row — and Missouri executed another who was 66.
In 2013, 12.2 per cent of death-row inmates were age 60 or older, according to Justice Department data. In 2007, that same population made up 5.8 per cent of death row inmates.