US prisoner executed at eighth attempt
WASHINGTON: Tommy Arthur was executed late on Thursday after his eighth, and final, rendezvous with the US state of Alabama’s capital punishment system.
The 75-year-old was given a lethal injection after the US Supreme Court allowed the execution to proceed by denying the inmate’s stay requests.
Arthur’s death ends a legal saga spanning more than three decades in which he became known by some as the Houdini of death row, managing to evade his final sentence seven times.
He was first sentenced to death back in 1983 for a murder he denies committing. Since then, the southern US state has executed 58 people — an end Arthur had until now dodged.
“Thomas Arthur’s protracted attempt to escape justice is finally at an end,” Alabama’s Attorney-General Steve Marshall said in a statement released following the execution.
In last-minute appeals Arthur’s lawyers had challenged the injection method to be used on Thursday and asked that a mobile phone be put in the death chamber to record the execution in case something went awry — requests the nation’s highest court denied.
In her dissenting opinion Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted the risks of the lethal injection protocols, writing: “When Thomas Arthur enters the execution chamber tonight, he will leave his constitutional rights at the door.”
His case had angered both opponents and supporters of the death sentence: the former saw his endless run-ins with execution as a form of psychological torture, while those who supported the sentence see Arthur and his legal team as constantly playing the system to cheat justice.
“Thomas Arthur is an escape artist,” said Janette Grantham, director of the advocacy group Victims of Crime and Leniency.
“He has used every trick in the books to manipulate the courts for over 34 years. He has used every trick possible to manipulate the public into believing he is innocent,” she said.
Arthur was found guilty of conspiring with his then-lover Judy Wicker to murder her husband Troy so that she could cash in on his life insurance. She was accused of paying Arthur US$10,000 (340,000 baht) for the hit.
Prior to the execution Troy Wicker’s niece had told Alabama media that the execution would give surviving family members closure after decades of pain. “Our family deserves closure and justice,” she said.