Man who killed baby in botched exorcism gets stay of execution
The East Texas man convicted of killing a 13-month-old in a brutally botched exorcism was granted a last-minute stay Monday over concerns about the bite mark evidence used to convict him and the possibility that he might be too intellectually disabled to execute.
Blaine Milam, who was scheduled to die Tuesday, would have been the Lone Star State’s first execution of 2019.
“We are grateful that the Court of Criminal Appeals stayed Mr. Milam’s execution today so he may prove that his conviction is invalid,” said defense attorney Jennae Swiergula, adding that the conviction rested on “junk science.”
The 29-year-old was sent to death row for the slaying of Amora Bain Carson, whose body was found in Milam’s Rusk County trailer, covered in bites and bruises. The little girl’s death sparked so much publicity that the trial was moved more than two hours away, after intense media coverage of the sordid allegations including everything from drugs to demonic possession.
Initially, Milam told investigators he had no idea what had happened and that he and his girlfriend had just returned home to find the child dead, according to court records. But in the end, he was sentenced to death, and the child’s mother, Jessica Carson, was given a life without parole sentence.
It all started in late 2008, when the couple started taking interest in a Ouija board. The young mother, who records show may have been suffering from postpartum psychosis, thought Milam was possessed by the devil. Then, the couple decided that baby Amora was possessed instead.
In the early hours of Dec. 2, according to court records, they beat the child with a hammer, bit her and sexually assaulted her in an attempt to cast out the demon.
But that didn’t seem to work, so the pair went to a pawn shop in the hope of raising funds to hire a priest. While they were gone, the girl died. Just before 11 a.m., Milam called 911.
“My daughter, I just found her dead,” he said at the time. But Carson later admitted to the Texas Rangers that her daughter had died during the ill-fated exorcism. And, while he was in jail, Milam called for a sergeant so he could confess as well.
“I did it,” he told a jail nurse, according to court records. “But Ms. Shirley, the Blaine you know did not do this.”
Milam was found guilty under the law of parties even though, according to Swiergula, prosecutors had “no meaningful evidence” about who actually caused the girl’s death.
In earlier appeals, the East Texas man focused his efforts on claims of bad lawyering. In the filings entered earlier this month in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Milam alleged that the state withheld exculpatory evidence at trial, that he was denied the right to present a defense, that he was intellectually disabled under the current definition and that the bite mark evidence underlying his conviction isn’t reliable science.
It was those last two concerns that won him the stay in a threepage opinion. In both instances, the court noted, the law has evolved since Milam’s trial.
Two years ago, the Supreme Court ordered Texas to retool how it determines intellectual disability, saying the nonscientific method of evaluating intelligence that the state was then using was so outdated that Texas would run the risk of executing an intellectually disabled person — something the high court has long held is unconstitutional.
Then, last month, the Court of Criminal Appeals declared wrongfully convicted Steven Chaney actually innocent of the Dallas County double murder that kept him behind bars for more than three decades. In that case, the court found that the conviction had relied heavily on testimony regarding bite mark science no longer considered reliable.
The stay doesn’t mean Milam will necessarily come off death row or be released from prison — just that his case will be sent back to a lower court for further examination.