Alfredo Prieto, a convicted serial killer, was executed by the State of Virginia for the rape and murder of a woman and her boyfriend. According to court documents Alfredo Prieto would rape and murder 22-year-old Rachael Raver and murder her boyfriend Warren Fulton in 1990. It would take twenty years for Prieto to be convicted of the crimes. When DNA matched him to the 1990 murders he was already on California’s death row for the sexual assault and murder of a fifteen year old girl. Alfredo Prieto would be executed on October 1, 2015 by lethal injection
Alfredo Prieto More News
Virginia has executed a convicted serial who claimed he was intellectually disabled.
Alfredo Prieto was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. on Thursday at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarrat.
The 49-year-old had fought to prove that he’s intellectually disabled to bar the state from putting him to death. But a federal appeals court in Virginia upheld his death sentence in June and the U.S. Supreme Court refused Thursday to block his execution.
Prieto was sentenced to death in Virginia in 2010 for the rape and murder of 22-year-old Rachael Raver and the slaying of her boyfriend Warren Fulton III more than two decades earlier.
The El Salvador native had already been on death row in California for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl at the time.
Prieto thanked his lawyers, supporters and family members before mumbling, “Get this over with.”Virginia has executed a convicted serial who claimed he was intellectually disabled.
Alfredo Prieto was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. on Thursday at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarrat.
The 49-year-old had fought to prove that he’s intellectually disabled to bar the state from putting him to death. But a federal appeals court in Virginia upheld his death sentence in June and the U.S. Supreme Court refused Thursday to block his execution.
Prieto was sentenced to death in Virginia in 2010 for the rape and murder of 22-year-old Rachael Raver and the slaying of her boyfriend Warren Fulton III more than two decades earlier.
The El Salvador native had already been on death row in California for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl at the time.
Prieto thanked his lawyers, supporters and family members before mumbling, “Get this over with.”
William Morva was executed by the State of Virginia for the murder of a police officer and a security guard following a prison escape. According to court documents William Morva was being held awaiting trial on armed robbery when he attempted to escape from a hospital and in the process would murder Sheriff’s Deputy Corporal Eric Sutphin and hospital security guard Derrick McFarland in 2006. William Morva who had severe mental health issues would be executed by lethal injection on July 6, 2017. This would be the last execution in the State of Virginia who abolished Capital Punishment in 2021
William Morva More News
A Virginia man who killed a hospital security guard and a sheriff’s deputy after escaping from custody in 2006 has been executed after an unsuccessful campaign to spare the inmate’s life over concerns about his mental health.
William Morva, 35, was pronounced dead at 9.15pm on Thursday after a lethal injection at Greensville correctional center in Jarratt. It was the first execution in Virginia under a new protocol that makes more of the lethal injection procedure secret.
Morva, who was wearing jeans and a blue shirt, said “no” after he was asked whether he had any last words. A few minutes later, he could be heard speaking, but it was not clear what he was saying.
The lethal injection began about 9pm after the warden read him the court order of his execution. Shortly after the drugs began flowing, his stomach moved up and down quickly several times before he became motionless.
Morva’s execution came hours after Virginia’s Democratic governor announced he would not spare Morva’s life despite pressure from mental health advocates, state lawmakers and attorneys who said the man’s crimes were the result of a severe mental illness that made it impossible for him to distinguish between delusions and reality.
In denying a clemency petition, Governor Terry McAuliffe concluded Morva received a fair trial. He noted that experts who evaluated the man at the time found he didn’t suffer from any illness that would have prevented him from understanding the consequences of his crimes. He also said prison staff members who monitored Morva for the past nine years never reported any evidence of a severe mental illness or delusional disorder
I personally oppose the death penalty; however, I took an oath to uphold the laws of this Commonwealth regardless of my personal views of those laws, as long as they are being fairly and justly applied,” McAuliffe said in a statement.
Morva was the first inmate executed in Virginia since officials made changes to the state’s protocol that have drawn fire from attorneys and transparency advocates. Those changes came after attorneys raised concerns in January about how long it took to place an IV line during the execution of convicted killer Ricky Gray.
Execution witnesses used to be able to watch inmates walk in and be strapped down. A curtain would then be drawn during the placement of the IV and heart monitors. After the curtain was reopened, inmates would be asked whether they had any final words before the chemicals started to flow.
In Morva’s execution, the curtain was closed when the witnesses entered the chamber and was not opened until he was strapped to the gurney and the IV lines were in place. Virginia used a three-drug mixture, including midazolam and potassium chloride that it obtained from a compounding pharmacy whose identity remains secret under state law.
Morva is the third inmate to be executed since McAuliffe took office in 2014. In April, McAuliffe granted clemency to Ivan Teleguz, saying jurors in the murder-for-hire case were given false information that may have swayed sentencing.
Among those who had urged McAuliffe to spare Morva’s life were the daughter of the slain sheriff’s deputy, two United Nations human rights experts, and representatives from the Hungarian embassy. Morva’s father was born in Hungary and Morva was a Hungarian-American dual national.
“Our message and William’s story and his family’s story were resonating with a lot of people, and I don’t know why it didn’t resonate with the governor,” Morva’s attorney Dawn Davison said after the execution.
Morva was awaiting trial on attempted robbery charges in 2005 when he was taken to the hospital to treat an injury. There, he attacked a sheriff’s deputy with a metal toilet roll holder, stole the deputy’s firearm, and shot an unarmed security guard, Derrick McFarland, in the face before fleeing. A day later, Morva killed another sheriff’s deputy Eric Sutphin with a bullet to the back of the head as Sutphin searched for him near Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus.
Experts who examined Morva for his trial said he suffered from personality disorders that resulted in “odd beliefs”.
After his trial, a psychiatrist diagnosed him with delusional disorder, a more severe mental illness akin to schizophrenia that made him falsely believe, among other things, that he has life-threatening gastrointestinal issues and that a former presidential administration conspired with police to imprison him, his attorneys said.
His lawyers argued Morva escaped and killed the men because he was under the delusion that he was going to die in jail.
Ricky Gray was executed by the State of Virginia for the murders of eight people. According to court documents Ricky Gray and Ray Dandridge would shoot and kill eight people over a seven day period. Both Ricky Gray and Ray Dandridge would be convicted and sentenced to death. Ricky Gray would be executed by lethal injection on January 17, 2018. Ray Dandridge would later be resentenced to life in prison
Ricky Gray More News
Convicted killer Ricky Gray, who confessed to killing a family of four in 2006, was executed Wednesday in Virginia after the US Supreme Court denied a stay of execution where his lawyers argued a lethal drug cocktail violated his constitutional rights.
Gray, 39, was pronounced dead at 9:42 p.m. ET on Wednesday, said Lisa Kinney, communications director for the Virginia Department of Corrections.
When asked whether he had any last words, Gray said, “Nope.”
Ahead of Gray’s execution, his lawyers appealed to the US Supreme Court for a stay of the execution – criticizing the use of a controversial drug combination – calling it an “experimental and unconstitutional method of execution.”
The state of Virginia used a lethal injection composed of a three-drug cocktail of midazolam, potassium chloride and the paralytic drug, rocuronium bromide. Gray’s attorneys argued that midazolam had already failed to render prisoners unconscious during executions in Alabama, Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe issued a statement saying he would not intervene.
“Mr. Gray was convicted in a fair and impartial trial, and a jury sentenced him to death in accordance with Virginia law,” the governor said.
Executions are typically done with three drugs given in stages: The first (sodium thiopental or pentobarbital) puts the prisoner to sleep, the second (pancuronium bromide) brings on paralysis and the final agent (potassium chloride) stops the heart.
States that have capital punishment have been forced to find new drugs to use since European-based manufacturers began to ban exports of the cocktail ingredients to the United States over concerns the drugs were being used for capital punishment.
Denmark-based Lundbeck banned US prisons from using its pentobarbital.
So, death penalty states began looking for alternatives.
In some executions, controversial drugs as midazolam or propofol have used instead, which has raised much concern.
In January 2014, Ohio used the sedative midazolam and the painkiller hydromorphone in the execution of convicted murderer and rapist Dennis McGuire. McGuire appeared to gasp and convulse for at least 10 minutes before dying from the drug cocktail used in his execution, witnesses described.
When Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett was sentenced to death by lethal injection he was administered the drug cocktail: midazolam; vecuronium bromide to stop respiration; and potassium chloride to stop the heart. Witnesses described the man convulsing and writhing on the gurney, as well as struggling to speak, before officials blocked the witnesses’ view.
Lockett appeared to have a heart attack and died.
Gray and his nephew Ray Dandridge went on a killing spree in January 2006, murdering seven people in six days, court documents reveal.
In Dandridge’s affidavit, he said that before they went to the the Harvey’s home, Gray “smoked marijuana laced with something.” Gray’s attorneys unsuccessfully argued that the jurors who sentenced him to death did not get a clear explanation of the severe abuse that shaped Gray’s life and his subsequent use of PCP, a drug which can cause psychosis.
Gray was convicted of killing Kathryn and Bryan Harvey and their two young daughters, Stella and Ruby, during a home invasion on New Year’s Day.
The Harveys were found brutally beaten, bound and repeatedly stabbed in the basement of their Richmond home. The home was also set on fire.
Five days later, Gray was also involved, though not convicted, in the murders of three other Richmond residents: Percyell Tucker, his wife, Mary Tucker and Mary’s daughter, Ashley Baskerville.
A Virginia jury convicted Gray of five counts of capital murder and sentenced him to death on two of the counts, the murders of Stella and Ruby, according to the court documents.
Dandridge was convicted in the killings of the Baskerville-Tucker family and sentenced to life in prison.
After Gray’s arrest for the Harvey family murders, he also confessed to killing his wife. With the help of Dandridge he bludgeoned her to death with a lead pipe in November 2005, according to the court documents. Gray was questioned at the time but was not arrested for her murder.
“There’s no excuse for what he did, but it’s a tragedy from beginning to end for the Harvey family and for Ricky Gray,” Virginia’s Attorney General told CNN about the case.
In a video posted on the site, family members and doctors who testified in his case, detail the sexual and physical abuse Gray suffered as a child.
Gray turned to drugs as a child – using marijuana, cocaine and PCP – as he “desperately tried to numb the haunting traumas,” according to the site.
Days before his execution, Gray issued a public apology.
“I’m sorry they had to be a victim of my despair,” Gray said in part in an audio recording posted on the clemency site.
“Remorse is not a deep enough word for how I feel. I know my words can’t bring anything back, but I continuously feel horrible for the circumstances that I put them through. I robbed them from a lifelong supply of joy.”
Gray is the second inmate to be executed in 2017. Death row inmate Christopher Wilkins, 48, was put to death in Texas on January 11.
Teresa Lewis was executed by the State of Virginia for the murder of her husband and stepson. Teresa Lewis would be executed by lethal injection on September 23, 2010. Lewis was the first and so far only woman to be executed in the State since 1912
Teresa Lewis was born on April 26, 1969 in Danville Virginia. Lewis would get married at sixteen years old and had a daughter however the marriage would soon crumble. Lewis began an addiction to painkillers and alcohol
Teresa Lewis would begin working at a textile mile where she would soon marry the manager, Julian Clifton Lewis Jr. Julian older son would die in a car accident and he would inherit two hundred thousand dollars.
In 2002 Julian youngest son Charles Jr Lewis obtained a $250,000 life insurance policy as he was deploying to Iraq naming his father as the beneficiary and Teresa as the secondary beneficiary.
The next month Teresa began an affair with two much younger men, Matthew Jessee Shallenberger and Rodney Lamont Fuller. Soon the plan came forward to get rid of her husband and stepson to collect the insurance money.
The first time Shallenberger and Fuller attempted to kill Teresa’s husband failed so the pair would try again a week later. The two men shoot both of the men as they lay sleeping in their beds. Teresa Lewis would wait 45 minutes before calling the police. When police arrived Julian would tell them that his wife knew who shot him before passing away. Teresa Lewis attempted to stick to the story the two murders were the result of a home invasion.
Teresa Lewis attempted to withdraw $50,000 from her husbands account and police would also learn that she was gathering the assets of her husband and stepson before the funeral even took place. Teresa Lewis would be arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder.
The judge in the case would rule that Teresa Lewis was the mastermind of the double murders and sentenced her to death. Teresa Lewis would be executed by lethal injection on September 23, 2010
Teresa Lewis Videos
Teresa Lewis More News
A 41-year-old woman who conspired to murder her husband and stepson has been executed in the US state of Virginia.
Teresa Lewis was the first woman to be put to death in the US for five years and in Virginia since 1912.
Lewis, who had learning difficulties, used sex and cash to persuade hitmen to kill her family in 2002.
The US Supreme Court and Virginia’s governor refused to stop her execution, which took place at 2100 (0100 GMT) at Greensville Correctional Center
Lewis spent her last hours with her spiritual adviser and family members at the prison in the city of Jarratt.
She requested a final meal of two breasts of fried chicken, sweet peas with butter, a slice of either German cake or apple pie, and a Dr Pepper soft drink, prison spokesman Larry Traylor said.
As she was escorted into the death chamber, Lewis appeared tearful, her jaw clenched, Associated Press reported.
Shortly before her execution, Lewis asked if her stepdaughter Kathy Clifton, daughter of her murdered husband Julian Lewis, was there.
Ms Clifton was in a witness room separated from the execution chamber by a two-way mirror.
“I want Kathy to know that I love her and I’m very sorry,” Lewis said.
Those were her final words. The time of her death was given as 2113 (0113 GMT).
On 30 October 2002, Lewis left the door to her family home in the Virginia city of Danville unlocked for gunmen Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller.
Lewis’s husband Julian, 51, and stepson, Charles Lewis, 25, were later found dead from shotgun blasts.
Lawyers for Lewis filed a petition for clemency on 25 August 2010, but the US Supreme Court refused to intervene. Two of three women in the nine-judge court voted to halt the execution.
Lewis, who has an IQ of 72, claimed that she did not possess the intelligence to have planned the killings, and that new defence evidence allegedly proved one of the gunmen manipulated her.
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell said medical and psychological reports provided no compelling reason to grant clemency to Lewis, noting she had admitted her role in the killings.
“After numerous evaluations, no medical professional has concluded that Teresa Lewis meets the medical or statutory definition of mentally retarded,” Mr McDonnell said after he rejected the clemency plea.
Lewis was motivated to hire the gunmen by the desire to inherit her husband’s assets and her stepson’s life insurance. She paid for the weapons and ammunition used in the murders.
Shallenberger and Fuller were both sentenced to life in prison. Shallenberger committed suicide in 2006.
Virginia carries out the second highest number of executions of any state in the US.
Teresa Lewis spent her last days praying and singing hymns, but she appeared frightened and tense as she entered Virginia’s death chamber.
Lewis, 41, died by injection at 9:13 p.m. Thursday at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., according to The Associated Press.
Lewis’ final words were a message for the daughter of the husband she had killed.
“I just want Kathy to know that I love her, and I’m very sorry,” she said.
Her death brought an end to the debate over whether Lewis deserved to die, with supporters saying she was borderline mentally retarded, despite the prosecution’s claim that she was the mastermind of her husband’s and stepson’s murders.
Her attorney, James Rocap III, said Lewis was peaceful before going to her death and had been praying and singing in the days leading up to her execution.
“We thought that we were supposed to be helping her, while she was actually helping us,” Rocap said.
But when Teresa Lewis entered the death chamber to be strapped onto a guerney and injected with the lethal cocktail of drugs, her jaw was visibly clenched. She looked around tensely and appeared frightened, witnesses reported.
In the chamber with her were 14 corrections officers who assisted her onto the guerney and secured her to it with heavy leather straps.
Moments before her execution, Teresa Lewis asked if her husband’s daughter — her stepdaughter — was near. She was. Kathy Clifton was in an adjacent witness room blocked from the inmate’s view by a two-way mirror. Lewis then gave her final words of farewell to her.
As the drugs flowed into her body, her feet bobbed but she otherwise remained motionless. A guard tapped her lightly on the shoulder, reassuringly, as she slipped into death.
Teresa Lewis was sentenced to die for concocting a grisly plan to hire two hit men to kill her husband and stepson in October 2002. Lewis stood by while Julian Lewis and son Charles Lewis were shot at close range as they slept.
She had promised the killers a cut of a life insurance policy to carry out the murders. Both triggermen were sentenced to life in prison, and one committed suicide in 2006.
Despite the controversy surrounding her execution, the Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal earlier this week, and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell had denied her petitions for clemency.
On the website Save Teresa Lewis, run by supporters who tried to have her death sentence commuted, a message was posted in which Lewis thanked them for their work on her behalf. They also posted a farewell Lewis had recently written to fellow inmates.
“Man wants me to die, but I’m not worrying over this, I’m trusting Jesus,” she wrote. She urged the prisoners to turn to Jesus promising, “He will forgive you of all your sins and He will bring you into His loving arms.”
Teresa Lewis, case number 09-4, became the 12th woman to be put to death in the United States since 1976, and left behind 60 women remaining on death row nationally, who constitute less than 2 percent of the total death row population. She joined a group of about 40 women who have been executed in the United States in the past 100 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that opposes the death penalty and tracks its impact.
Those opposed to Lewis’ death sentence said the fact that she was a woman should not allow her to be treated differently. What they found troublesome was that Teresa Lewis, with an IQ of 72, was borderline mentally retarded and received a more severe sentence than those who pulled the trigger.
“It would be grossly unfair if the one person among those involved who is probably the least danger to society, who is certainly no more guilty than those who carried out the murders and whose disabilities call out for mercy, is the only person scheduled to die for this crime,” said Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
Teresa Lewis was executed for the murders of her husband and stepson
When Was Teresa Lewis Executed
Teresa Lewis was executed on September 23, 2010
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