Timothy Baldwin was executed by the State of Louisiana for the murder of an elderly blind woman during a robbery. According to court documents Timothy Baldwin was attempting to rob his neighbors home when he was beat to death the elderly blind woman with a frying pan. Timothy Baldwin would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Timothy Baldwin would be executed by way of the electric chair on September 10, 1984
Timothy Baldwin More News
Timothy Baldwin, a former Cub Scout leader convicted of beating an 85-year-old blind woman to death with a frying pan, was electrocuted early today at the Louisiana State Prison.
Mr. Baldwin’s last appeal, to the Supreme Court, was rejected late Sunday afternoon. His lawyer, William Quigley, said there was nothing more he could do on his client’s behalf.
Mr. Baldwin was pronounced dead at 12:13 A.M., according to Department of Corrections officials in Baton Rouge.
Before the execution, Mr. Baldwin, 46 years old, ate the bacon and tomato sandwiches he requested and telephoned relatives.
”He’s calm, he’s collected,” the prison warden, Frank Blackburn, said of Mr. Baldwin hours before the condemned man was electrocuted. ”He pretty well feels there’s nothing left in the way of appeals.”
About 50 people marched outside the Governor’s mansion early Sunday evening to protest Mr. Baldwin’s execution, the fourth in Louisiana in the past nine months.
”We think it’s wrong for the state to kill people,” said Nick Trentacosta of Louisiana Citizens Against the Death Penalty. ”It brutalizes our society.”
The Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 late Sunday afternoon to let the execution proceed. Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall dissented from the ruling, but there was no further comment from the court, a spokesman in Washington said.
Mr. Baldwin was convicted of killing Mary James Peters, the godmother of his youngest son and a neighbor in West Monroe, La. She was beaten to death with a skillet, a telephone and a stool.
Securities belonging to the victim were found in Mr. Baldwin’s van, and a traveling companion testified that Mr. Baldwin had told him of the crime.
The dead woman was found by a Meals-on-Wheels worker 12 hours after the April 4, 1978, attack.
The elderly woman, semicomatose with a fractured cheek bone and shattered jawbone, died in a hospital the next day. An autopsy listed brain hemorrhages as the cause of death. Federal Courts Act
Within four hours Friday, two lower Federal courts refused to block Mr. Baldwin’s execution.
The effort was rejected by Judge Nauman Scott of Federal District Court in Alexandria and by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. His lawyer filed an application for a stay late Friday in Washington with Justice White.
Gov. Edwin Edwards, who has expressed opposition to the death penalty, had already refused to intervene. He made his decision after a visit to Mr. Baldwin on Death Row and one to a woman charged as his accomplice, who is in a state prison for women.
Helen Ginger Roberts of Alexandria, a lawyer for Timothy Baldwin, asserted in the request for a stay that a plea-bargaining system used in Ouachita Parish was unfair to Mr. Baldwin.
