U.S. Supreme Court delays planned Alabama execution

ATMORE, ALA. — The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily delayed the planned execution of an Alabama man convicted of a judge’s mail-bomb slaying.

The nation’s highest court issued the stay order Thursday evening on behalf of 83-year-old inmate Walter Leroy Moody as it considered his requests to block the lethal injection procedure. His execution time was originally set for 6 p.m. CDT.

It is not uncommon for the court to temporarily stay an execution as it considers an inmate’s final appeals. Moody has argued that his federal sentence of multiple life sentences could not be interrupted by the state of Alabama.

The court is expected to rule later whether the execution plan can proceed.

Moody is set to die for the 1989 mail-bomb death of U.S. Circuit Judge Robert S. Vance of Birmingham. If the sentence is carried out, Moody will become the oldest inmate put to death since the United States resumed executions in the 1970s.

Vance, a member of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was at his kitchen table in Mountain Brook, Alabama, on Dec. 16, 1989, when he opened a package after a morning of errands and yard work.

The explosion ripped through the home near Birmingham, killing Vance instantly and severely injuring his wife, Helen. Prosecutors said Moody, who had attended law school, had a grudge against the legal system because the 11th Circuit refused to overturn a 1972 pipe-bomb possession conviction that prevented him from practicing law.

Authorities said Moody mailed out a total of four package bombs in December 1989. A device linked to Moody killed Robert E. Robinson, a black civil rights attorney from Savannah, Georgia. Two other mail bombs were later intercepted and defused, including one at an NAACP office in Jacksonville, Florida. Authorities said those bombs were meant to make investigators think the crimes were racially motivated.

Moody was first convicted in 1991 in federal court and sentenced to seven life terms plus 400 years. He was later convicted in state court in 1996 and sentenced to death for Vance’s murder.

Moody’s attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his execution in order to review whether his federal sentence, which was handed down first, can be interrupted. They also argued that the aggravating factors used to impose a death sentence were improper.

Separately, Moody’s lawyer asked the Alabama Supreme Court to block the lethal injection arguing that an emergency medical technician who assessed Moody on Wednesday told the inmate he had “spider veins” and seemed concerned. Alabama halted an execution last month after workers couldn’t find a usable vein on a 61-yearold inmate.

Vance’s son, Robert Vance Jr., now a circuit judge in Jefferson County and Democratic candidate for chief justice in Alabama, said it’s important that people remember how his father lived, not just how he died.

Moody