Velma Barfield was the first woman to be executed in the United States after the resumption of capital punishment. Velma Barfield who was classified as a serial killer would be convicted of one murder but would confess to six murders. Velma Barfield was executed on November 2, 1984 by lethal injection.
Velma Barfield was born on October 29, 1932 in South Carolina to an abusive father and a mother who would not intervene. Velma would escape her home by getting married at seventeen to Thomas Burke. Unfortunately Velma would suffer medical issues and have to undergo a hysterectomy which would lead to her abusing pain killers.
Soon after the marriage began to fall apart with Thomas Burke starting to drink and Velma worsening drug addiction. Thomas Burke would pass out on April 4, 1969 and Velma would take their kids and leave the home. When they returned the house was completely burnt down to the studs.
Velma Barfield would get married again in 1970 to Jennings Barfield who would die a year later from heart complications.
In 1974 Velma Barfields mother Linda began to have health problems and began to have severe vomiting and nausea. Linda would be admitted to the hospital and recover. At Christmas the same year Linda would be readmitted into the hospital with the same illness and would die within hours
In 1976 Velma Barfield began to work as a personal assistant for an elderly couple, Montgomery and Dollie Edwards. Montgomery Edwards would die in January of 1977 of the same illness that killed Velma’s mother Linda. A month later Dollie Edwards would die a few months later of the same.
In 1977 Velma worked for another elderly couple, Record and John Lee, John would die from a severe stomach illness a few months later.
The last victim was Rowland Stuart Taylor, who was dating Velma Barfield and a relation to Dollie Edwards, would end up dying after he was fed arsenic. Turns out Velma was stealing from Rowland and she was worried that he would find out.
Authorities would exhume the body of her second husband, Jennings Barfield and it turned out he died from arsenic poisoning
Velma Barfield was only charged with the murder of Rowland Taylor, which she was convicted and sentenced to death. Velma would confess to the murders of Linda Bullard, Dollie, and John Henry Lee.
Velma Barfield would be executed on November 2, 1984 by lethal injection
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After two marriages ended with the death of her husbands, by 1977 Velma Barfield was in a relationship with Stuart Taylor, who was a widower and tobacco farmer. As she had been doing for years, she forged checks on Taylor’s account to pay for her addiction to prescription drugs. Fearing that she had been found out, she mixed an arsenic based rat poison into his beer and tea. Taylor became very ill and Velma volunteered to nurse him. As his condition worsened she took him to hospital where he died a few days later.
Unfortunately for her there was an autopsy which found that the cause of Taylor’s death was arsenic poisoning and Velma Barfield was arrested and charged with his murder. At the trial her defense pleaded insanity but this was not accepted and she was convicted. The jury recommended the death sentence. Velma appeared cold and uncaring on the stand and actually gave the District Attorney a round of applause when he made his closing speech.
Velma Barfield later confessed to the 1974 murder of her own mother (in whose name she had taken out a loan) and of two elderly people, John Henry Lee (by whom she was being paid as a housekeeper/caregiver) and Dollie Edwards (a relative of Stuart Taylor). Velma Barfield always attended the funerals of her victims and appeared to grieve genuinely for them.
The body of her late husband, Thomas Barfield, was later exhumed and also found to contain traces of arsenic. Velma denied that she had killed him. Her motives for these four murders were the same. She had misappropriated money from her victims and then according to her, tried to make them ill so she could nurse them whilst finding another job to enable her to repay the money. Needless to say, the jury was less than impressed by this defense.
Velma Barfield gained notoriety as the “Death Row Granny,” becoming the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1962, and the first since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
Kelly Gissendaner was executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of her husband Douglas Gissendaner on September 30, 2015.
Kelly Gissendaner whose maiden name was Brookshire was born to a poor family in Georgia. According to family members Kelly was molested by several men and family mothers. During high school Kelly claimed she was raped and would give birth to a son nine months later. Kelly first marriage to Jeff Banks would only last for six months.
In 1989 Kelly Gissendaner would marry Douglas for the first time. Soon after they were married they would have a baby, lose their jobs and have to move in with Kelly’ mother.
Douglas Gissendaner would join the Army and would be sent to Germany. While her husband was abroad Kelly would get pregnant by another man who would later die from cancer. Kelly and Douglas would get divorced in 1993
Two years later Douglas and Kelly would get remarried and the couple would purchase a home together in 1995.
In 1997 Kelly Gissendaner would approach Gregory Owen to murder her husband. Kelly figured the only way she could keep her home and improve her finances would be for her husband to die so she could collect the insurance money.
On February 7, 1997 Gregory Owen would carjack Douglas Gissendaner and force him to a wooded area where he would be murdered. Kelly Gissendaner would arrive at the crime scene and the two would set Douglas’s vehicle on fire and hid the body in the woods.
It did not take long for police to crack the case and Kelly Gissendaner and Gregory Owen would be arrested and charged with capital murder. Gregory and Kelly were both offered life sentences before the trials. Owen would agree to testify against Gissendaner who would be convicted an sentenced to death
On September 30, 2015 Kelly Gissendaner would be executed by lethal injection.
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A Georgia woman who was executed despite a plea for mercy from Pope Francis sang “Amazing Grace” until she was given a lethal injection, witnesses said.
Kelly Renee Gissendaner, who graduated from a theology program in prison, was put to death at 12:21 a.m. Wednesday after a flurry of last-minute appeals failed.
Gissendaner, who was sentenced to death for the 1997 stabbing murder of her husband at the hands of her lover, sobbed as she called the victim an “amazing man who died because of me.”
She was the first woman executed in Georgia in 70 years and one of a handful of death-row inmates who were executed even though they did not physically partake in a murder.
The mother of three was nearly executed in February, but the lethal injection was abruptly called off because the chemicals appeared cloudy.
After a new execution date was set, Gissendaner, 47, convinced the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to reconsider her application for clemency.
In an extraordinary turn, Pope Francis — who called for a global ban on the death penalty during his U.S. visit last week — urged the board to spare her life.
“While not wishing to minimize the gravity of the crime for which Ms. Gissendander has been convicted, and while sympathizing with the victims, I nonetheless implore you, in consideration of the reasons that have been expressed to your board, to commute the sentence to one that would better express both justice and mercy,” Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wrote on the pontiff’s behalf.
Shortly thereafter, the board announced that it would not stop the execution.
The victim’s family was split on whether Gissendaner should live or die: Her children appeared before the parole board to ask that their mom be spared the death chamber, but her husband’s relatives said she did not deserve clemency.
Kelly planned and executed Doug’s murder. She targeted him and his death was intentional,” Douglas Gissendaner’s loved ones said in a written statement
“In the last 18 years, our mission has been to seek justice for Doug’s murder and to keep his memory alive. We have faith in our legal system and do believe that Kelly has been afforded every right that our legal system affords.
“As the murderer, she’s been given more rights and opportunity over the last 18 years than she ever afforded to Doug who, again, is the victim here. She had no mercy, gave him no rights, no choices, nor the opportunity to live his life. His life was not hers to take.
In the hours before her death, Gissendaner pressed a number of appeals, arguing that it was not fair she got death while the lover who killed her husband got a life sentence. She also said the execution drugs might be defective, and that she had turned her life around and found religion while in prison.
She requested her final meal last week: cheese dip with chips, Texas fajita nachos and a diet frosted lemonade.
Jeff Hullinger, a journalist with NBC station WXIA who witnessed the execution, later told reporters that Gissendaner appeared “very, very emotional, I was struck by that.”
He added: “She was crying and then she was sobbing and then broke into song as well as into a number of apologies … When she was not singing, she was praying.”
Lisa Montgomery would be executed for the murder of Bobbi Jo Stinnett on January 13, 2021 by lethal injection.
According to court documents Lisa Montgomery had struck up a friendship with Bobbi Jo Stinnett over dog shows and on a website regarding rat terriers.
Soon the two women were emailing each other and Lisa Montgomery would tell Bobbi Jo Stinnett that she was pregnant as well and the two women would discuss their pregnancies (Lisa Montgomery was not pregnant.)
On December 16, 2004 Lisa Montgomery would go over to Bobbi Jo Stinnett house and strangle the woman to death. Montgomery would cut the fetus from the woman’s body and fled from the home.
Bobby Jo Stinnett mother would discover her an hour later and would call paramedics however they were unable to revive her.
Lisa Montgomey would tell her husband that she had gone into labor and given birth. Police would arrest Montgomery at her home the next day.
Lisa Montgomery would go on trial, be convicted and sentenced to death. On January 13, 2021 Lisa would be executed by lethal injection
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Lisa Montgomery, 52, was executed by lethal injection at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, and pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. Wednesday.
Lisa Montgomery was the first woman to be executed by the federal government since 1953 and was the only woman on death row.The Supreme Court denied a last-ditch effort late Tuesday by her defense attorneys who argued that she should have been given a competency hearing to prove her severe mental illness, which would have made her ineligible for the death penalty.
She was the 11th federal death row inmate to be executed by the Trump administration after a 17-year hiatus in federal executions.”The government stopped at nothing in its zeal to kill this damaged and delusional woman,” her attorney, Kelley Henry, said in a statement. “Lisa Montgomery’s execution was far from justice.”Montgomery’s attorneys, family and supporters had pleaded with President Donald Trump to read their clemency petition and make an executive decision to commute her sentence to life without the possibility of parole.
Lisa Montgomery was sentenced to death in 2008 by a Missouri jury for the 2004 murder of a pregnant woman, cutting the fetus out and kidnapping it. The baby survived.
A federal judge granted Montgomery a stay of execution Tuesday for a competency hearing — just hours before she was scheduled to be executed.”The Court was right to put a stop to Lisa Montgomery’s execution,” Henry said in a statement. “As the court found, Mrs. Montgomery ‘made a strong showing’ of her current incompetence to be executed. Mrs. Montgomery has brain damage and severe mental illness that was exacerbated by the lifetime of sexual torture she suffered at the hands of caretakers.””The Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of people like Mrs. Montgomery who, due to their severe mental illness or brain damage, do not understand the basis for their executions. Mrs. Montgomery is mentally deteriorating, and we are seeking an opportunity to prove her incompetence,” Henry added.But the Supreme Court denied the effort and pleas to President Trump were unsuccessful.
Two more executions are scheduled this week, for Corey Johnson on Thursday and Dustin Higgs on Friday. Both of their executions have been halted by a federal court judge as the men are still recovering from Covid-19. Prosecutors intend to appeal the ruling on Higgs and Johnson, according to court documents.
Lisa Montgomery, a convicted killer who strangled a pregnant woman in 2004 and then cut the unborn baby from her womb, was executed in a federal prison in Indiana early Wednesday. She was the first woman executed in the federal system in nearly seven decades.
Lisa Montgomery, 52, was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. Wednesday after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said.
Earlier Wednesday, the Supreme Court lifted an appeals court stay that had blocked the execution, and it denied a request for a stay filed by Montgomery’s attorneys that raised mental illness concerns.
“The craven bloodlust of a failed administration was on full display tonight,” Kelley Henry, an attorney for Montgomery, said in a statement.
Henry has said that Lisa Montgomery suffered from severe mental illness that was “exacerbated by the lifetime of sexual torture she suffered at the hands of caretakers,” and her lawyers sought a chance to prove her incompetence.
The execution comes in the waning days of the Trump administration, which in 2019 announced plans to carry out the first federal executions in 17 years. President-elect Joe Biden has suggested he would put a moratorium on the federal death penalty.
Lisa Montgomery was initially set to be executed in December, but the date was delayed after her attorneys, who are based in Nashville, Tennessee, contracted the coronavirus amid traveling to Texas and working on her case.
The spread of Covid-19 across prisons, including at the Indiana facility where all federal executions take place, contributed to increased criticism over the resumption of the federal death penalty last year, even as states put a halt to executions.
With Wednesday’s lethal injection, the Trump administration has put 11 people to death over the past seven months, the most executions in a presidential lame-duck period in more than 130 years.
Montgomery’s execution, which had been planned for Tuesday, was one of three scheduled by the Department of Justice this week.
In a ruling Tuesday, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled to stay the two other federal executions, those of Dustin Higgs and Corey Johnson.
Johnson, convicted of killing seven people related to drug trafficking in Virginia, and Higgs, convicted of ordering the murders of three women in Maryland, both tested positive for Covid-19 last month.
Chutkan wrote in her decision that it is not in the public interest to execute the two men.
In December 2004, Lisa Montgomery, then 36 and living in Kansas, crossed state lines to the Missouri home of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, whom she had met at a dog show, federal prosecutors said. Stinnett was eight months pregnant.
Lisa Montgomery strangled Stinnett with a rope and used a kitchen knife she had brought from home to remove the fetus, according to court documents. The baby girl survived. Montgomery tried to pass her off as her own, but was quickly arrested and later convicted by a jury and sentenced unanimously to death.
Lisa Montgomery had been incarcerated in an all-female federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, where staff is trained to deal with mental health issues. Her lawyers said that they weren’t arguing that she didn’t deserve to be punished, but rather that the jury never fully learned of her severe mental illnesses as diagnosed by doctors.
In a nearly 7,000-page clemency petition filed this month, her lawyers say her mother’s alcoholism caused her to be born brain-damaged and “resulted in incurable and significant psychiatric disabilities.” They also detailed Montgomery’s claims of physical abuse, rape and torture at the hands of her stepfather and others and being sex trafficked by her mother.
“Everything about this case is overwhelmingly sad,” the petition says. “As human beings we want to turn away. It is easy to call Mrs. Montgomery evil and a monster, as the Government has. She is neither.”
Diane Mattingly, an older sister of Lisa Montgomery, told reporters last week that she, too, suffered sexual abuse in the home before being placed in foster care. She has been vocal in recent months that her sister’s life should be spared.
“I went into a place where I was loved and cared for and shown self-worth,” Mattingly said. “I had a good foundation. Lisa did not, and she broke. She literally broke.”
In October, the Justice Department described the case as an “especially heinous” murder. The Missouri community where her victim had lived gathered last month to remember Stinnett, with some expressing support for Montgomery’s execution.
The U.S. government last executed a female inmate in 1953, when Bonnie Brown Heady of Missouri was put to death for the kidnapping and murder of a young boy in a ransom plot
Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row, died by lethal injection early Wednesday after the Supreme Court vacated several lower-court rulings, clearing the way for her to become the first female prisoner to be put to death by the U.S. government since 1953.
It was midnight when the Supreme Court ended a day of legal challenges, setting aside what Department of Justice attorneys called “unwarranted” obstacles to the execution of Montgomery for a “crime of staggering brutality.” By 1:31 a.m. ET Wednesday, she was pronounced dead.
Just ahead of Montgomery’s execution at the Federal Corrections Complex in Terre Haute, Ind., her attorney, Kelley Henry, said her client’s death by lethal injection was far from justice, as no other woman who had committed a similar crime faced the death penalty.
In 2004, Lisa Montgomery drove from Kansas to Missouri, ostensibly to purchase a puppy from Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a 23-year-old dog breeder who was eight months pregnant. Instead, Montgomery strangled her, cut her fetus from her womb and tried to pass the surviving baby off as her own.
Four years later, she was sentenced to death.
Until Montgomery’s death overnight Wednesday, it had been nearly 70 years since a woman on federal death row had been executed.
The execution followed an intense, 11th-hour, court battle over Montgomery’s fate.
U.S. District Judge Patrick Hanlon in Indiana granted a stay of execution, citing the need to determine whether she was too mentally ill to be executed.
On Tuesday, an appellate court in Chicago reversed that decision, paving the way for the execution to go forward. But in a separate ruling, an appeals court in Washington, D.C., blocked the execution to give time for hearings on whether the Department of Justice had given sufficient notice of Montgomery’s execution date, which was set for Tuesday. The Department of Justice challenged that ruling.
A whiplash of legal challenges and decisions continued throughout the day until the Supreme Court’s midnight ruling allowed the federal Bureau of Prisons to proceed with the plan to end Montgomery’s life by lethal injection. Montgomery’s lawyers had also filed a clemency petition asking President Trump to commute her sentence to life in prison, to no avail.
In preparation, authorities had transferred Lisa Montgomery on Monday from the federal women’s prison in Texas where she had been held for more than a decade to the Indiana facility. The family of the woman she murdered, had traveled there as well to witness Montgomery’s death.
Henry, Montgomery’s attorney, said throughout the legal proceedings that no one was excusing Montgomery’s actions, but that her troubled life provided context for the crime. She said her client had brain damage and severe mental illness that was exacerbated by a lifetime of abuse, including child sex trafficking, gang rape and physical abuse largely at the hands of family members.
She said the Constitution, “forbids the execution of a person who is unable to rationally understand her execution,” Henry said in a statement shortly after the Supreme Court issued its final order.
“The government stopped at nothing in its zeal to kill this damaged and delusional woman,” the attorney said.
Montgomery’s execution is one of three that the Justice Department had scheduled during this final full week of the Trump administration. The two others were halted by a federal judge on Tuesday.
Cory Johnson, 52, was scheduled for execution on Thursday for his involvement in the murder of seven people nearly three decades ago. Dustin John Higgs, 55, was scheduled to be put to death on Friday for his involvement in the murder of three women nearly 20 years ago. Both have tested positive for COVID-19 and the judge ordered their executions be delayed until mid-March to allow them to recover. The Justice Department has appealed that order.
If the judge’s delay is overturned, those executions could be the last to occur for the foreseeable future. Senate Democrats unveiled legislation Monday that would abolish the federal death penalty, and President-elect Joe Biden has said he wants to eliminate it as well.
In 2019, the Justice Department announced it would revive federal executions after a 16-year hiatus. Under the Trump administration, 10 men have been executed since July 2020.
Now one woman joins the list of those put to death.
Lisa Carpenter Graham was sentenced to death for arranging the murder of her adult daughter. According to court documents Lisa Carpenter Graham would convince a friend to murder her daughter. The friend, Kenneth Walton, would taker her daughter, Stephanie Shea Graham, out for a drive that ended on an empty country road. Once Stephanie Shea Graham stepped out of the vehicle Kenneth Walton would fatally shoot her. Lisa Carpenter Graham would put her foot in her mouth when police came to question her and admitted giving a gun to Kenneth Walton however it would take years for the murder case to go to trial. Kenneth Walton quickly plead out to take the death penalty off the table but Lisa Carpenter Graham would go to trial, be convicted and sentenced to death
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Convicted of capital murder for persuading a family friend to gun her daughter down on a remote dirt road in Russell County on July 5, 2007, Lisa Carpenter Graham was sentenced to death Wednesday.
Judge Jacob Walker III imposed that sentence after hearing testimony from psychologist and attorney Glen King, who was hired to conduct a presentencing psychological evaluation on Lisa Carpenter Graham, and from psychiatrist Heather Rowe of East Alabama Mental Health, who said she has been treating Graham since February 2013.
The evaluation was to determine whether Graham had any mental illness or other condition that would make her ineligible for the death penalty.
King testified his evaluation showed Graham is not mentally deficient and has no defect that would keep her from understanding the consequences of her actions. He added, though, that his tests showed Graham had an IQ of 77, indicating she likely would not in advance think through her actions like someone who scored higher.
He said his evaluation revealed Lisa Carpenter Graham scored low in “leisure and social activities,” meaning game-playing, travel and establishing friendships beyond immediate family. In that regard, she was “well below average,” King said.
When Russell County District Attorney Ken Davis asked whether Graham had been “malingering” or faking symptoms, King replied that he did not believe Graham tried to fake test responses. But he thought she had exaggerated her mental issues, embellishing psychiatric symptoms.
Also under Davis’ questioning, King acknowledged Graham was functional, having kept accounts balanced for her family business, having been literate and computer literate, and having pursued genealogical research as a hobby.
Rowe testified she found Lisa Carpenter Graham suffered from recurring and severe depression and had “borderline personality disorder.” She did not elaborate on the latter.
Online, the National Institute of Mental Health posts that borderline personality disorder is “a serious mental illness marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships,” and involves “problems with regulating emotions and thoughts; impulsive and reckless behavior; unstable relationships with other people.”
As testimony concluded, Davis argued nothing precluded Walker’s giving Lisa Carpenter Graham the death penalty.
Graham’s lead attorney Margaret Young Brown countered that King’s evaluation showed Graham had “borderline intellectual functioning” that casts doubt on her capacity to take reasonable actions.
She also called Walker’s attention to previous testimony by Graham’s son Kevin “Boo” Graham Jr., who told the judge that since his sister’s death, the only immediate family he has left are his mother, father and grandmother.
His mother’s execution would leave only the father and grandmother: “It wouldn’t be long for the rest of them to be gone, and then I’d have nobody,” he said.
A jury convicted Lisa Carpenter Graham March 5, and Walker III initially set a sentencing date of May 1, but then postponed it so Graham could be evaluated. Walker noted then that Graham had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and was taking medications prescribed for schizophrenia.
Wednesday’s sentencing is not the end of the story, as Graham already has asked for a new trial and will appeal to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. That process will add new chapters to what even veterans of the criminal justice system found to be a sordid and surreal story of a mother whose jealousy and disdain for her daughter led to a cold-blooded murder late at night on Bowden Road near Pittsview.
Lisa Carpenter Graham was convicted of persuading longtime family worker Kenneth Walton to kill her 20-year-old daughter Stephanie Shea Graham, who went by Shea. Walton said the mother met him at the Columbus Public Library on the evening of July 7, 2007, and loaned him her pistol for the job.
He later caught up with Shea at a Victory Drive gas station, where she left her car with friends and rode off in Walton’s pickup truck. He took her on a long, night drive down Alabama Highway 165 before pulling off on Bowden Road so they could relieve themselves.
When she got out to squat beside the truck’s open passenger door, he pulled out the pistol and shot her in the head from the driver’s seat, then got out, walked around the truck and shot her again and again.
He left her half-nude, bullet-riddled body where it lay, and drove away. Asked in court how his deadly betrayal of a young woman who trusted him made him feel, he replied, “I felt normal.”
Because witnesses saw Shea leave the gas station with Walton, investigators focused on him immediately. He confessed, and told them of the mother’s involvement, particularly of the pistol he had returned to her the day after the shooting.
Lisa Carpenter Graham then incriminated herself when authorities came looking for the gun. She had given it to an elderly neighbor she knew as “Papa” to clean, but told sheriff’s investigators she didn’t know where it was, and allowed them futilely to search her house before her husband told them “Papa” might have it.
Finding ample evidence of her involvement, investigators charged her with murder, and Davis announced he would seek the death penalty.
But five years passed before the case finally came to trial — the first time. Davis said Wednesday that the first delay resulted from courthouse renovation that made the building unsafe for holding a death-penalty trial.
Walton pleaded guilty June 14, 2012, and was sentenced to life in prison. Graham’s trial was set for the following fall.
But after jury selection and some initial testimony, then-Circuit Judge George Greene abruptly declared a mistrial on Sept. 25, 2012, saying he could no longer preside because of his failing health.
When prosecutors pursued a second trial, Graham’s defense team appealed, claiming Greene could have continued the trial, and to try Graham again would constitute double-jeopardy. During testimony in that appeal, witnesses said Greene had multiple health issues, and had been falling asleep in court, even snoring.
Greene retired in December 2013, and died Jan. 1, 2014.
After the Alabama Court of Appeals rejected the defense double-jeopardy arguments on Oct. 17, 2013, Graham’s attorneys appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court. It turned them down on Aug. 8, 2014.
Meanwhile other Russell County judges recused themselves from presiding at Graham’s next trial. Walker, a Lee County Circuit Court judge, was appointed to fill in.
Jury selection in the second trial began Feb. 17, with witness testimony starting the following week.
That testimony showed Lisa Carpenter Graham repeatedly had remarked to witnesses that Shea was ruining her life, and she would kill her daughter if she could. The daughter was facing aggravated assault charges related to a drive-by shooting in Columbus, and Graham feared she would flee town and leave her parents responsible for her $100,000 bond.
Walton testified he lured Shea into his pickup the night she died with the promise of providing her a vehicle in which to run away.
Graham’s attorneys would not comment after Wednesday’s sentencing, but Davis did.
“This is a case in which the death penalty was called for,” the prosecutor said, adding, “This was a woman who opportuned, cajoled, threatened another individual over the course of months to murder her biological child, to take her down into the darkness of Russell County, Alabama, on a dirt road and shoot her five times.”
With Graham’s appeals pending, much work remains to be done, he said.
“This is really the beginning of a capital case,” Davis said. “A capital case calls for automatic appeals. Those appeals will go up on both levels, both the federal level and the state level. No one can say what will happen on appeal. It’s a process the attorney general of Alabama will be involved in, and we will certainly be current with it.”
Christie Michelle Scott is on Alabama Death Row for the murder of her child. According to court documents Scott set fire to her home that would kill her six year old autistic son. Fire investigators believed that the fatal fire was actually set in her children bedroom. It is believed that Scott was trying to collect on the insurance policy. Scott was quickly convicted and sentenced to death.
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The evidence tended to show that in the early morning hours of August 16, 2008, a fire was set in the Scott house and that Mason died as a result of the fire. Dr. Emily Ward, a pathologist with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, testified that Mason died from smoke in his airway and thermal burns.
At the time of the fire, Christie Michelle Scott and her four-year-old son Noah were sleeping in Scott’s bedroom, Mason was in the boys’ bedroom, and Jeremy Scott, Scott’s husband, was not at home and had been out of town for several weeks. Sgt. Brian Shackelford of the Russellville Police Department testified that he arrived minutes after the emergency call, that he kicked open the back door, and that he was only able to make it four or five feet inside the house because of the heat and smoke. Firefighters testified that after extinguishing the fire they searched the house several times before they were able to identify Mason’s badly charred body.
The Scott’s neighbor, Jennifer Davidson, testified that her doorbell rang around 2:30 a.m. on August 16, 2008. She opened the door and found Scott and Noah. Christie Michelle Scott told her that her house was on fire. Davidson went to the back of the house to telephone emergency 911 because, she said, the telephone in the front of the house was not working. When she got back to the front door, she said, Christie Michelle Scott told her that her other son, Mason, was still in the house. Davidson telephoned 911 again to inform them that a child was still in the house. Emergency 911 records showed that the first call was made at 2:33:17 on the morning of August 16 and that the second call was made at 2:35:48—two and one half minutes later.
After police and firefighters arrived at the scene, Davidson stayed with Christie Michelle Scott. Davidson testified that when Scott was in the ambulance Christie Michelle Scott said, “Don’t call Jeremy. Don’t call Jeremy. He’ll blame me or he’ll try to hurt his self.” (R. 998.) Davidson also heard Christie Michelle Scott ask what fire marshal was at the scene. Scott said that she did not like one of the fire marshals because he had worked her other house fire. Davidson also testified that Christie Michelle Scott was fully dressed and that at one point while they were in the ambulance Scott patted her pant pocket and pulled out a cell phone and said: “I had my cell phone the whole time. I could have called 911.” (R. 997–98.)
Davidson’s boyfriend, Brian Copeland, testified that Christie Michelle Scott came to the door of the house he shared with Davidson in the early morning hours of August 16 and told them that her house was on fire. Copeland ran to the Scott’s house to try and find a way inside to help Mason. Copeland said that Christie Michelle Scott told him that all the doors were locked and there was no way to get inside the house, that Christie Michelle Scott did not enter any numbers in the keypad to open the garage door in his presence, that he did not enter any numbers in the keypad, and that he did not have to restrain Christie Michelle Scott to prevent her from going into the house. These statements were inconsistent with Scott’s account of the events on August 16, 2008.
An emergency medical technician with Pleasant Bay Ambulance Service, Elzie Malone, testified that he responded to the fire. He said that Christie Michelle Scott told him that she was alright and that she did not need to go to the hospital. Malone said that Christie Michelle Scott then said: “How am I going to tell Jeremy that I have let his baby die?” (R. 1061.)
Several officials testified concerning a statement that Scott’s father’s, Donald Bray, made to Scott when he arrived at the scene of the fire. William Crenshaw, a volunteer firefighter, testified that when Scott’s father arrived he said: “What the hell have you done with my grandbabies?” (R. 1291.) Sgt. Shackelford testified that Scott’s father said: “Oh, my God. What have you done to my babies?” (R. 1260.)
Jerry Yarborough, a paramedic with Pleasant Bay Ambulance Service, testified that when Scott’s father arrived at the scene he was upset and said to Scott: “Where’s my babies? Oh, no, not my babies. What have you done?” (R. 1126.) When Yarborough tried to calm Scott down, Yarborough testified, Christie Michelle Scott said to him “You don’t understand. I killed his [Jeremy’s] baby.” (R. 1128.) Yarborough also testified that Scott said that she didn’t know how someone could be so unlucky as to have two fires in three years and “I hope it ain’t that one [the fire marshal] from Colbert County. I don’t want him here.” (R. 1128.)
Cpt. Steve Thornton with the Russellville Fire Department testified that he arrived at the scene after the fire had been extinguished. The fire, he said, originated in Mason’s and Noah’s bedroom. He said that some of the electrical outlets from the bedroom were cut out of the wall in his presence, that each outlet was cut at a different length to identify it, and that the outlets were photographed from all angles. One outlet, he said, the outlet that was behind Mason’s bed could not be located; however, numerous photographs of this outlet had been made. Thornton said that firefighters sifted through the fire debris for 8 to 10 hours but were unable to locate this missing outlet.
Dolan Gassett, a deputy fire marshal, testified that he found a disabled smoke detector in the hallway outside the boys’s bedroom. (R. 1818.) Morris Brown, a former firearms and toolsmark expert with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, testified that in his opinion the smoke detector had been forcibly removed, or pulled from the wall, before the fire started and it was lying on the floor, undamaged by the fire. He said: “[S]ome force acted upon the wires enough to cause the tearing of this housing and caused the collateral abrasion of the wire.” (R. 2399–40.) There was evidence indicating that everything else mounted on the walls at the same height as the smoke detector—the electrical box that housed the smoke detector, a thermostat, a wooden doorbell cover, and a picture frame—had sustained serious heat damage or had melted completely. Testing indicated that the smoke detector would have worked properly if it had been on the wall at the time of the fire.
James Edwards, a deputy with the State Fire Marshal’s Office, testified that he interviewed Scott at the Russellville Fire Department on August 26. Christie Michelle Scott gave the following account of the events of August 16:
“I went back to watch TV. I was watching Fear on HBO. I went back to check on them at 10:00 p.m. Mason was asleep and Noah Riley was not. I turned on the satellite and told him that he needed to go to sleep. I went back to watch my movie. The movie went off around 11:00 p.m. I went in the room to check on the boys. The TV was off and Noah Riley was still awake. I told him to come get in the bed with me.
We went to my room and went to bed. As I went to sleep, the house was fine. The Jack and Jill bathroom light was on and the night-light played and—plugged into the wall. In my room I had turned the light on over the toilet for Noah Riley. We went to sleep.
“The next thing I remember is something hitting my face. As I started to wake up, I could smell the smoke and feel the heat on my face. I rolled off the bed and covered Noah Riley and told him to be still. I crawled over to the door. I looked out in the hallway, which was covered in smoke. I could see flickering that I thought at the time was coming from the laundry room.
“I went back into our room, pushed the door to. I crawled back over to the bed and pulled Noah Riley off in the floor. He began to cry at this point. I took a deep breath, stood up, and opened the window. I punched the screen out. I picked up Noah Riley, kissed him, told him I loved him, and dropped him out of the window.
“At this time I could hear crackling and popping. I began to try to get out of the window, got halfway out and fell. When I got on the ground, I took, Noah Riley by the hand and started around the house. He told me that I was hurting him. So I picked him up and carried him through the front yard with me.
“Where there was—there was fire coming out of the window in the boys’ room and going over the top of the roof. It was orange. I ran to Jennifer’s house, banged on the door. When she came to the door, I handed Noah Riley to her, told her to dial 911 that the house was on fire.
“I yelled to her that Mason was still in the house as I headed back to the house. I ran over to the garage doors. I put in the code and the doors would not open. I tried several times to get in with the code. Then I ran around to the front of the house. The flames had started running across the peak of the roof.
“I was headed to the front door when Brian [Copeland] grabbed me and held me down. Later I remembered the light in my bathroom was off when I woke up.”
A psychiatrist, Dr. Rebecca Dailey, testified that Mason was brought to her for an evaluation in April 2007. She diagnosed Mason with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (“ADHD”); Oppositional Defiant Disorder (“ODD”); and Pervasive Developmental Disorder (“PDD”). She prescribed Abilify for his obsessive behavior; Risperdal as a antipsychotic; and Vyvense for his hyperactivity. Dr. Dailey testified that she last saw Mason 12 days before his death.
A pediatrician, Dr. Duane Carter, testified that on February 6, 2008, he diagnosed Mason with bronchitis and prescribed an antibiotic Omniced, a steroid drug Decadron, and a codeine based cough syrup whose generic name is promethazine. He prescribed promethazine again on April 16, 2008. Dr. Carter testified that the cough syrup would make a child sleepy.
A toxicologist at the Department of Forensic Sciences, Dr. Jack R. Kalin, analyzed Mason’s blood. Dr. Kalin testified that he identified the following drugs in Mason’s system: amphetamines, codeine, and promethazine, an antihistamine typically used to treat nausea in postoperative patients. He said that the amphetamine level in a typical child being treated for ADHD is less than 100 but that Mason’s level was 450—a level, he said, that was consistent with what you would expect to see in a DUI case. Dr. Kalin further testified that this was the first case where he had seen codeine used in conjunction with promethazine and that both substances would induce sleepiness and drowsiness. Dr. Kalin said that he did not find the presence of Risperdal or Abilify in Mason’s blood. Mason’s carbon-monoxide level, he said, was greater than 90% which is extremely high.
The State’s experts ruled out lightning, spontaneous combustion, rechargeable batteries, and faulty electrical wiring as the cause of the fire. Michael Haynes with the State Fire Marshal’s Office testified that there was no indication that any hydrocarbon accelerant had been used. (R.1927.) Dr. Raphael A. Franco, Jr., an electrical engineer, testified that he was asked to examine the scene and to determine whether the fire was electrical in origin. In August 2008, he said, he went to the scene and stayed there for 12 hours conducting his examination. Dr. Franco testified that there were five electrical outlets in the boys’s bedroom, that the wiring ran under the floor, that the outlets were all on one circuit breaker, that he inspected every outlet and receptacle, except outlet number 1, that he took 425 photographs of the scene, that he examined the wiring underneath the house, that he examined the attic, that the night-light was not the cause of the fire, that there was no damage to the underground wiring in the house, that the fire did not originate in outlet number 1 because the electrical box that housed the outlet was intact, and that, in his opinion, the fire was not electrical in origin. He further testified that the television had been plugged into outlet number 5, that the cord to the television was damaged by an external fire which caused the circuit breaker to trip meaning, he said, that the electricity had to pass through outlets number 1 through 4 before going to 5 and that the fire could not have been electrical in origin.
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A Russellville jury found Christie Scott guilty of three counts of capital murder in the death of her young son a year ago.
Mason Scott, 6, died in a house fire in August of 2008. Christie Scott and Mason’s brother escaped from the blaze.
“[The jury] did see what happened in this case, and the fact that Mason was murdered by his mother,” said Franklin County District Attorney Joey Rushing.
Fire marshals testified that the fire began in Mason’s room. However, Christie Scott’s attorney said the state conducted a bad investigation where they looked at rumors and not facts.
In their closing arguments, the defense also reminded jurors that a faulty television cord could have been the cause of fire.
State prosecutors closed their case by stating that circumstantial evidence was strong, with Christie Scott having purchased an insurance policy for her son shortly before the fire. Also, prosecutors said Scott had been looking at real estate the night of the fire, and a cherished wedding ring was taken out of the house before the fire.
Jeremy Scott, Christie’s husband and Mason’s father, had to be consoled by his mother while they waited for her to arrive from the Franklin County jail for the verdict.
Christie Michelle Scott didn’t show emotion as heard the jury’s verdict late Wednesday morning. As she was being lead away from court, she would not comment.
She was the first woman convicted of capital murder in Franklin County.
“This is the most heinous crime in Franklin County history,” Rushing said. “There is nothing worse than a mother murdering her son for insurance.”
“If you kill a child and you’ve done it intentionally, then yes, she deserves the death penalty,” said Franklin County resident Jeff McCormick.
The sentencing phase of the trial will begin Thursday morning. Due to the capital murder verdict, she will be either sentenced to life in prison or to death by lethal injection.
However, the jury won’t begin deliberating her sentence immediately. The defense and prosecution will present witnesses and then the judge will turn it over to the jury panel.
Christie Michelle Graham is currently incarcerated at the TUTWILER DEATH ROW the home of Alabama Death Row For Women
Why Is Christie Michelle Graham On Death Row
Christie Michelle Graham was convicted of the fatal arson that would kill her six year old son
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