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Nicholas Sutton Tennessee Execution

Nicholas Sutton was executed by the State of Tennessee for a prison murder. According to court documents Nicholas Sutton was serving three life sentences for three murders when he stabbed a fellow prisoner to death in 1985 over drugs. Remarkably during the time that he had spent in prison he would come to the aid of correctional guards on numerous occasions. Nicholas Sutton would be executed by the way of the electric chair on February 20, 2020.

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Nicholas Sutton, a multiple murderer who was sentenced to death for fatally stabbing a fellow inmate, was executed Thursday night by electric chair at a Tennessee prison.Sutton was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. (8:26 p.m. ET), according to a news release from the Tennessee Department of Correction.Sutton was convicted in 1981 of killing three people and sentenced to life in prison, where he killed another prisoner. But, according to his lawyer, Sutton at three different times had saved the lives of corrections officers.Gov. Bill Lee on Wednesday denied Sutton’s clemency bid and the US Supreme Court on Thursday denied Sutton’s attorney’s application for a stay of execution.

Sutton, 58, had been on death row since 1985. He was the fifth person to die by electric chair in Tennessee since November 2018.In his final statement, Sutton thanked his wife and God.”I hope I do a much better job in the next life than I did in this one,” he said. “If I could leave one thing with all of you, it is, don’t ever give up on the ability of Jesus Christ to fix someone or a problem. He can fix anything. Don’t ever underestimate His ability. He has made my life meaningful and fruitful through my relationships with family and friends. So, even in my death, I am coming out a winner.”Amy Large Cook, whose brother was killed by Sutton, told reporters she didn’t know whether she would ever have closure.Her brother “was denied the opportunity to live a full life with a family of his own,” she said. “My children were denied meeting a wonderful man who would have spoiled them rotten and loved them with all his heart. He suffered a terrible and horrific death and for that I will never forgive Mr. Sutton.”

Sutton is credited with saving the lives of multiple correction officers, according to the clemency application that defense lawyer Kevin Sharp sent to the governor in January.One of those officers, Tony Eden, says Sutton saved his life during a prison riot in1985.”A group of five inmates, armed with knives and other weapons, surrounded me and attempted to take me hostage. Nick and another inmate confronted them, physically removed me from the situation and escorted me to the safety of the trap gate in another building,” Eden, a retired corrections official said in the clemency application. “I owe my life to Nick Sutton.”

Cheryl Donaldson, former manager of a prison where Sutton was housed, said she slipped and fell in 1994 while carrying her keys and radio, according to the application. She said other inmates could have taken advantage of her.”Nick, however, did exactly the opposite. He sprang into action, helped me to my feet, retrieved my keys and radio, and alerted staff to come to my assistance,” she said.Sheriff’s Deputy Howard Ferrell, who is now deceased, testified that in 1979 Sutton stopped another inmate from hitting the back of his head in the Hamblen County, Tennessee, jail, according to the clemency application.It’s unusual for corrections officers to speak well of inmates, said Jim Aiken, who serves as an expert witness in civil and death penalty cases.”There’s this old adage in corrections… ‘If you can’t say nothing bad about an inmate, you don’t say nothing at all,'” Aiken said.

While in prison, Sutton killed Carl Estep by stabbing him 38 times. The feud was sparked over drugs, said Sharp, Sutton’s lawyer. Inmates said Estep was a drug dealer and had threatened to kill Sutton.

When Sutton was 19, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life for killing his grandmother, Dorothy Sutton, 58. Her body was found wrapped in plastic bags and chained to a concrete block at the bottom of the Nolichuckey River, according to the Tennessean.He received two life sentences in 1981 after pleading guilty in North Carolina to second-degree murder in the deaths of John M. Large, 19, and Charles P. Almon, 46, according to the Asheville Citizen.Sutton was sentenced to death in Tennessee based on three statutory aggravating circumstances — having been previously convicted of first-degree murder, being incarcerated at the time of Estep’s murder and the murder being “heinous, atrocious, or cruel.”

Charles Maynard remembers going camping with Almon, his uncle. He also remembers when Almon’s body was found months after he went missing.But he says Sutton should not be put to death.Maynard said he became more involved in Sutton’s case after one of his aunts told him “you know that man is on death row and you know we don’t need to kill him.”Maynard, a Methodist minister, kept a close eye on the case and wrote a letter to the governor asking for clemency. His daughter, Anne Lee, never knew Almon but became an advocate for Sutton after speaking to someone from the Post Conviction Defender’s Office in Knoxville.Lowell Sutton, who knew Sutton as a child and was Dorothy Sutton’s nephew, says also supports clemency. He says Nicholas Sutton was a “victim of circumstances” who grew up in a troubled household with an unstable father.Amy Large Cook wants Sutton executed.She was 11 when her brother, John Large, disappeared.Cook said she has read the comments by jailers and people he helped in prison and doesn’t believe it.”I want him to be electrocuted,” she said. “But for his sake I hope he has changed and he has nobody to be judged by except his maker.”

Sutton’s choice to be executed by electric chair comes as Tennessee’s faces problems with lethal injection.He, along with dozens of inmates, say lethal injection creates state-sanctioned torture. Tennessee law lets those sentenced to death for a crime that happened before 1999 to choose between electrocution or lethal injection.Sutton’s attorney Kevin Sharp said Sutton’s legal team will continue seeking relief.”His execution is opposed by many family members of victims, many of the jurors who originally sentenced him to death but recognize his changes, and by the extraordinarily high number of correction professionals who came forward on his behalf,” Kevin Sharp said in a statement.Sutton was the seventh man executed by the state since Tennessee resumed capital punishment in August 2018, and the first for killing another inmate,

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/20/us/nick-sutton-execution/index.html

Nicholas Sutton Execution Videos

Abel Ochoa Texas Execution

Abel Ochoa was executed by the State of Texas for five murders that took place in 2002. According to court documents Abel Ochoa would murder his wife, two children and two relatives in a drug filled rage. Abel Ochoa would be executed by lethal injection on February 6, 2020.

Abel Ochoa More News

A Dallas man was executed Thursday evening for a shooting in which he killed his wife, two children and two other relatives during a drug-fueled rage nearly 18 years ago. Prosecutors say Abel Ochoa was high on crack cocaine and looking for money to buy more drugs when he started shooting inside his home in August 2002.

Ochoa, 47, was pronounced dead at 6:48 p.m., 23 minutes after receiving a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the slayings of his 32-year-old wife, Cecilia, and his 7-year-old daughter, Crystal. He also killed his 9-month-old daughter, Anahi; his father-in-law, 56-year-old Bartolo Alvizo; and his sister-in-law, 20-year-old Jacqueline Saleh, and seriously injured his sister-in-law Alma Alvizo.

“I want to apologize to my in-laws for causing all this emotional pain,” Ochoa said, strapped to the death chamber gurney and looking at several of his victims’ relatives who watched through a window a few feet from him. “I love y’all and consider y’all my sisters I never had. I want to thank you for forgiving me.”

As the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began, Ochoa closed his eyes and had no visible reaction.

Jonathan Duran, who watched Ochoa die, said he accepted Ochoa’s apology.

“I accepted the fact as a child, at 12 years old, when I buried my mother, my sisters, my aunt and my grandfather,” Duran said. “Nothing’s going to bring them back. It’s up to us to keep their memory alive, rebuild what we lost. I can’t ever replace my mother or my sisters.”

“After 17 years, me, my family … We can finally say we got closure, we got justice,” Duran added.

Ochoa was the second inmate put to death this year in Texas and the third in the U.S. Seven other executions are scheduled in the next few months in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state.

The execution was carried out after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down a request by Ochoa’s attorneys to halt it. They wanted a review of whether his rights were violated because he initially wasn’t allowed to film a prison interview with his legal team for his state clemency petition.

A Texas appeals court this week turned down a different request for a stay on claims that there were problems with paperwork related to Ochoa’s death warrant. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles also turned down a clemency petition.

Ochoa’s attorneys said in court documents that his death sentence should be commuted to a life sentence because of “his deep and sincere remorse.”

Ochoa’s trial attorneys had described him as a hard-working, law-abiding citizen whose life unraveled amid a 2½-year addiction to crack.

Ochoa spent up to $300 a week on cocaine and took out loans to support his drug habit. At one point, he underwent treatment at a drug rehabilitation center, but then continued to use cocaine, according to court documents. Ochoa had gone 10 days without using cocaine leading up to the shootings. Desperate for the drug, he persuaded his wife to take him to buy crack. After returning home, he smoked the drug in his backyard.

“While I was lying on the bed my body started wanting more crack. I knew if I asked my wife for more money to buy some more crack she wouldn’t let me have it,” Ochoa said in his confession to police.

Ochoa told police he grabbed his 9mm handgun, walked into the living room and started shooting until he ran out of bullets.

He then went and got more ammunition and returned to the living room, where his 7-year-old daughter was still alive, he said.

“Crystal saw me with the gun and she started running away. I chased after her and I shot her,” Ochoa said.

Police later arrested him at a shopping center after he tried to get money from an ATM.

At trial, Ochoa’s attorneys argued that he shot his family in a cocaine-induced delirium and had brain damage from drug abuse. Ochoa testified that he didn’t remember shooting his family.

Howard Blackmon, one of the Dallas County prosecutors who tried the case, said he argued that Ochoa killed his family in frustration and anger.

“It’s just a horrendous set of circumstances for a parent just to murder, gun down their own children,” said Blackmon, who is now a criminal defense lawyer in Dallas.

Alma Alvizo testified that Ochoa had become aggressive toward his wife after learning she had a son from a previous relationship. Alvizo said her sister told her Ochoa had pointed a gun at her three weeks before the killings.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-execution-today-abel-ochoa-executed-shooting-deaths-wife-two-children-relatives-2020-02-06/

Abel Ochoa Execution Videos

Donnie Lance Georgia Execution

Donnie Lance was executed by the State of Georgia for a double murder. According to court documents Donnie Lance would murder his ex wife and boyfriend in 1997. Donnie Lance would beat to death Joy Lance before fatally shooting Dwight Butch Wood. Donnie Lance would be executed on January 29, 2020 by lethal injection

Donnie Lance More News

Georgia has executed Donnie Lance for the 1997 murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend in Jackson County.

Time of death was 9:05 p.m. Wednesday.

Lance, 66, who was sentenced to death in 1999, was given a lethal injection of pentobarbital at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

He declined to make a final statement, to hear a final prayer. He’d already spent the day praying with family, including his adult kids, who had tried to stop the state from executing him for the deaths of their mother, Joy Lance, 39, and her boyfriend, Dwight “Butch” Wood Jr., 33.

Lance closed his eyes as the warden finished reading the death warrant.

The drug began to flow at about 8:54 p.m.

At 8:56 p.m., Lance blew out a large puff of air. A woman in the front row cried. Lance’s mouth came open, but he barely moved except for wiggling his toes occasionally.

By 9 p.m., the color had drained from Lance’s face. Moments later, his arms and hands, which were strapped to the gurney, became pale.

He was gone.

FUTILE COURT FIGHTS

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Lance’s final appeals at roughly 8:15 p.m., clearing the way for his execution.

The high court, in two separate orders, declined to hear Lance’s requests that it halt his execution on grounds of alleged prosecution misconduct and lower-court rulings that denied his request for DNA testing.

One of Lance’s filings to the nation’s highest court said if his grand jury was not randomly selected, “his death sentence is invalid and unconstitutional.”

Wednesday afternoon, in a brief order, the Georgia Supreme Court turned down a similar appeal. The justices said Lance’s motion was “lacking arguable merit.” The vote was 8-0, with Justice Sarah Warren disqualified from the case because she had worked for the state Attorney General’s Office.

Before Wednesday’s filing in the U.S. Supreme Court, Lance’s legal team filed a separate appeal before the high court. The other appeal challenges lower court rulings that denied Lance’s request for DNA testing of the state’s evidence.

The nation’s highest court rejected both appeals.

Lance’s attorneys have also argued that the jury that convicted him and sentenced him to death should have known he had brain damage and an IQ that makes him borderline intellectually disabled.

Lance has maintained his innocence, and his grown children have spent months unsuccessfully calling for DNA testing on case evidence to confirm whether he killed their mother.

FAMILY’S FINAL VISIT

Stephanie Cape and her brother Jessie Lance visited their dad Wednesday afternoon and shared old stories and memories, trying not to think about his fate. The siblings said they’d both been thinking a lot about what their mother would think of the situation.

“I can’t imagine any mother would want this to happen,” Jessie Lance told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Just let us keep our dad.”

Stephanie Cape had her last embrace with her father. He told her to remember that just because he’s leaving doesn’t mean he’s going anywhere.

Donnie Lance told his kids he had been saved and intended to go to heaven with all their other lost family members.

The siblings had spent their lives with a cavernous void where their mother should’ve been. Their father filled it best he could, they said, by offering advice and encouragement.

The siblings know that other relatives of the victims wanted their father dead. But Stephanie Cape said — and her brother agreed — that the two of them were the only ones with something left to lose in the case. “Everybody else has already lost all they’re going to lose,” the daughter said.

What could those who wanted Donnie Lance dead gain from his death? Tammy Dearing, Wood’s sister, explained moments after she walked out of the death chamber: “I feel relief this is over, no more worries about appeals — we got our justice.”

THE TERRIBLE CRIME

Lance’s death marks the end to a complex and emotionally trying saga.

It began on Nov. 8, 1997, when Joy Lance, who had worked as a secretary at a trucking company, was savagely beaten to death. Her boyfriend, Wood, a truck driver and father of three, was shot in the back with a shotgun. The bodies were found at Wood’s home in the Maysville area, and police brought Donnie Lance in for questioning within hours.

Donnie Lance’s attorneys noted there was no physical evidence on him, in spite of the bloody nature of his ex-wife’s beating. The lawyers asked for DNA testing on wood fragments from what is believed to be the butt of the shotgun and a fingerprint from a shotgun shell found at the scene.

Jackson County District Attorney Brad Smith and state attorneys have said the evidence against Lance, “although circumstantial, was overwhelming.” Prosecutors maintain Lance was abusive to his ex-wife for years before the murders. Witnesses said they’d heard Donnie Lance threaten to kill her if she divorced him and became involved with Wood.

Lance was indicted for murder in the deaths by a grand jury that his attorneys have said was improperly picked. Instead of choosing grand jurors at random, a prosecutor allegedly packed it with friends and others he knew would be on his side, according to Lance’s defense team.

“The same clique of people sat (on the grand jury) for years and years,” said Katrina Conrad, an investigator from the Federal Defender Program. “(Prosecutor Tim Madison) picked jurors from one church in Jefferson, and the preacher there would preach about the grand jury indicting people.”

At trial, prosecutors painted Lance as a cold and calculated killer who committed the murders to exact revenge.

“I sat through many days of the trial in ‘99 and I heard what a monster this man was,” said Wood’s brother-in-law Terry Dearing.

After the jury convicted Lance, his trial attorney chose not to present any mitigating evidence to sway the jury from sentencing him to death. That was extremely rare.

Lance’s new attorneys say the jury should’ve been told about his brain damage from repeated head traumas. One of the injuries, Lance’s lawyers said, occurred when Lance was shot in the head during a previous confrontation with the murder victims.

In January 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Lance’s appeal, which included information about his trial attorney’s failure to submit any mitigating evidence in the sentencing phase of the trial. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, saying Lance’s lawyer should have presented evidence of his client’s cognitive impairments. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan joined in the dissent.

Sotomayor said multiple experts had testified in a previous hearing that Lance, a former race car driver, had frontal lobe damage. (The frontal lobe of the brain controls myriad cognitive processes, including memory, reasoning and language.) Sotomayor said the experts also agreed that Lance’s IQ was borderline for intellectual disability.

Lance’s children said he had been a positive force in their lives since going to prison, a constant they could count on. And his daughter’s daughter, a 2-year-old, called Lance “Papa Don.”

Tammy Dearing, Wood’s sister, said she sympathizes with the Lance children, but their father made his bed.

“We as taxpayers have supported this man for too long,” she said. “There’s so many things we missed out on as a family. I watched Butch’s kids grow up without a dad.”

Donnie Lance’s kids chose not to be in the death house to see their dad’s final moments. Jessie Lance told him he would be there for him, but the father asked him not to, so the son wouldn’t have to see it.

https://www.ajc.com/news/crime–law/execution-looms-tonight-for-georgia-man-whose-kids-want-save-him/ZLhsNr3xiAtHBuGGkRMkIL/

Donnie Lance Execution Videos

John Gardner Texas Execution

John Gardner was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of his wife. According to court documents John Gardner and his estranged wife were going through the process of a divorce which ended with her murder. John Gardner who had a history of violence towards women would fatally shoot Tammy Gardner. John Gardner was executed by lethal injection on January 15, 2021.

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A Texas inmate with a history of violence against women was executed Wednesday evening for fatally shooting his wife. John Gardner, 64, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the January 2005 slaying of Tammy Gardner, becoming the first inmate put to death this year in the United States.

Prosecutors said the couple was getting divorced when Gardner broke into his wife’s North Texas home and shot her in the head as she was sitting in bed. She died two days later at a hospital.

Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Gardner, strapped to the death chamber gurney, turned his head and apologized several times to his wife’s son, daughter and mother, who watched through a window a few feet away

“I would like to say sorry for your grief,” he said. “I hope what I’m doing today will give you peace, joy, closure, whatever it takes to forgive. I am sorry. I know you cannot forgive me, but I hope one day you will.”

After telling several friends watching through an adjacent window that he loved them, he apologized again, adding that he didn’t want to talk a lot and would ask the warden to go forward with his punishment because “I want to see the Lord Jesus so bad.

Shortly after the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began, Gardner took three deep breaths and then began snoring. Within seconds, all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead at 6:36 p.m. CST, 16 minutes later.

Seven other executions are scheduled in the next few months in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. Last year, 22 inmates were executed in the U.S., with nine inmates being put to death in Texas, the most of any state.

Gardner’s appellate attorneys had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, alleging his trial lawyers were ineffective, particularly for failing to present evidence Gardner suffered from “abandonment rage,” a condition Gardner claims causes men to kill their female companions with excessive force when faced with recent or imminent abandonment.

The Supreme Court denied the petition on Monday. Seth Kretzer, one of Gardner’s attorneys, said he was “deeply saddened” by the Supreme Court’s decision. No other appeals were filed by his attorneys.

“For those of us who are foot soldiers in the long war for conviction integrity, the struggle continues, the hope endures and the spirit never dies,” Kretzer said.

Prosecutors at trial described the marriage between John and Tammy Gardner as short but violent. She was Gardner’s fifth wife. The couple married in 1999.

“He was a classic abuser,” said Curtis Howard, who was one of the prosecutors for the Collin County District Attorney’s Office.

Friends and family of Tammy Gardner, 41, testified she lived in constant fear of John Gardner, who would hit and choke her and threaten her with a gun. Tammy Gardner had wanted to divorce her husband but told her boss at a wholesale horse-equipment company, “I can’t leave, he will kill me.”

In December 2004, Tammy Gardner filed for divorce after borrowing money from her company to do so.

At work, she marked February 7, 2005 on her calendar, the date her divorce would be final. She would go over to the calendar and say, “You’re almost there. You’re almost there,” according to trial testimony.

“She was on pins and needles … hypervigilant, looking out for him,” said Howard, who is now an attorney for the Plano police department.

But sometime between 11 p.m. and midnight on January 23, 2005, just 15 days before the divorce became final, John Gardner, who drove from Mississippi, broke into her home in Anna, Texas, located about 45 miles north of Dallas, and shot her in the head as she was sick in bed.

Despite being shot and unable to hear, Tammy Gardner called 911 and told a dispatcher her husband had shot her and he had left in a white pickup truck with Mississippi plates.

She was hospitalized but went into a coma and was taken off life support two days later.

In the petition before the Supreme Court, Lydia Brandt, one of Gardner’s attorneys, had argued that if evidence of abandonment rage would have been presented at trial, it would have humanized him, “thereby providing a basis for a sentence of less than death.”

Howard said the theory would not have made a difference at trial because abandonment was not related to all of his many acts of violence, which included shooting his second wife, who was pregnant at the time and later died from resulting injuries, abducting his third wife at knifepoint and savagely beating his third wife’s daughter.

Howard said in his career, he prosecuted three death penalty cases, and two of them were related to intimate partner violence.

“This is one of those tragedies that we see in Texas all too often,” he said.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-execution-today-john-gardner-receives-lethal-injection-fatally-shooting-wife-2020-01-15/

John Gardner Execution Videos

Quintin Jones Texas Execution

Quintin Jones was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of his great aunt in 1999. According to court documents Quintin Jones would beat to death the elderly woman when she refused to give him money to support his addiction. Quintin Jones execution on May 18, 2021 was a bit odd as there was no media witnesses at the execution which is the first time that has happened in over forty years. Regardless of who was there Quintin Jones was put to death by lethal injection

Quintin Jones More News

Texas inmate Quintin Jones was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday without media witnesses present.

The press could not witness the death of the 41-year-old because prison agency officials neglected to notify reporters it was time to carry out the punishment, according to the Associated Press. It was the first time in at least 40 years that media was not present at an execution.

A Texas department of criminal justice spokesman, Jeremy Desel, said he did not receive the usual phone call from the Huntsville Unit prison to bring reporters. Desel said the error “will never happen again”. Desel also said he did not know if the error was a violation of state law or a violation of agency policy.

Jones, convicted of killing his great-aunt in 1999, was executed at the state penitentiary in Huntsville at 6.40pm.

ones, convicted of killing his great-aunt in 1999, was executed at the state penitentiary in Huntsville at 6.40pm.

“I would like to thank all of the supporting people who helped me over the years,” he said in his last statement. “Love all my friends and all the friendships that I have made. They are like the sky. It is all part of life, like a big full plate of food for the soul. I hope I left everyone a plate of food full of happy memories, happiness and no sadness. I’m done, warden.”

Jones had made a clemency petition asking the state pardons board and governor to commute his sentence to life in prison. His plea was rejected.

Jones beat his great-aunt to death with a baseball bat she kept for her own protection. The killing was motivated by Jones’s drug addiction at the time. His other great-aunt, Bryant’s younger sister, Mattie Long, has forgiven him.

“Another Black man has been executed tonight. America’s outlook on justice remains broken, barbaric and inhuman,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in a tweet. “Perhaps we need more forgiveness, more love, more understanding. I have no other words.”

The writer Suleika Jaouad also expressed her grief on Twitter. “Justice was not served. The world is not a better place because Quin is gone,” Jaouad wrote. “May his memory expand our capacity for grace and mercy.”

In his six years in office, the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has only granted clemency once: to a white inmate, Thomas Whitaker.

Over the course of the year Texas plans to carry out five executions including that of Jones, out of a nationwide total of seven.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/20/quintin-jones-texas-execution-media

Category: US Executions