SAMURAI POLICE 1109: January 2022

Death Row inmate Matthew Reeves, 44, had claimed his 'intellectual disability' meant he did not understand he had accepted death by lethal injection as opposed to an alternative method using nitrogen hypoxia recently legalized in the state

On this date, January 27, 2022, Matthew Reeves was executed by lethal injection in Alabama. He was convicted of murdering taxi driver, Willie Johnson in 1996.

Brutal facts have immense power; they etched deep marks in my psyche. Those who commit such atrocities, I concluded, forfeit their own right to live. We tarnish their memory of the dead and heed needless misery on their surviving families by letting the perpetrators live. – Alex Kozinski

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://quozio.com/quote/5k4wzxw7msdt/1195/brutal-facts-have-immense-power-they-etched-deep-marks-in]

https://victimsfamiliesforthedeathpenalty.blogspot.com/2014/07/judge-alex-kozinski-cares-for-victims.html

lethal injection after SCOTUS rejects claim killer with 'language skills of a 4-year-old' did not understand paperwork allowing him to die by less 'tortuous' nitrogen hypoxia

· Death Row inmate Matthew Reeves was executed at Holman Prison, Alabama

· He was convicted of capital murder of taxi driver Willie Johnson in Selma in 1996

· Defence lawyers claimed Reeves had an 'intellectual disability', meaning he did not understand forms he was asked to fill out regarding his execution options

· Supreme Court ruled he had proper counsel and allowed execution to proceed

By Jacob Thorburn For Mailonline

Published: 19:57 AEDT, 28 January 2022 | Updated: 00:51 AEDT, 29 January 2022

An Alabama man was executed Thursday for brutally murdering a taxi driver who gave him a ride more than 25 years ago.

Death Row inmate Matthew Reeves, 44, had claimed his 'intellectual disability' meant he did not understand forms asking him to choose either death by lethal injection or an alternative method using nitrogen hypoxia.

Defense lawyers had claimed Reeves had a reading capacity of a first-grader and the language skills of a four-year-old.

But the Supreme Court rejected this plea on Thursday, voting 5 to 4 that Reeves was intellectually sound enough to comprehend the forms.

He declined his last meal and was executed hours later at Holman Correctional Facility at 9.24pm local time according to Steve Marshall, Alabama's Attorney General.

Reeves was sentenced to death for robbing and then fatally shooting taxi driver Willie Johnson after he had collected the then 18-year-old Reeves on a rural highway in Dallas County, Alabama.

It was reported the teenager went to a party after murdering Mr Johnson with a shotgun, where he danced and re-enacted the killing while still covered in the taxi driver's blood in 1996.

Reeves gave no final words before his execution and only requested a bottle of Sprite.

Questions persisted over the defendant's intellectual capacity after his planned execution was delayed by an Alabama federal judge and then the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Reeves' lawyers tried to claim he was intellectually disabled and lacked the comprehension skills of an adult.

Instead of choosing a 'torturous' lethal injection, Reeves would have chosen to die by newly legalized nitrogen hypoxia, but was never given assistance in filling out the relevant forms, his lawyers claimed.

The case was heard at the Supreme Court after an appeal by the Alabama Attorney General's Office.

America's highest court tossed out the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals' decision on Thursday evening and ruled the execution could go ahead as Reeves did in fact have effective counsel at trial.

But Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted she would deny the state’s petition, while Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Stephen Breyer, who has announced his retirement, also dissented.

Justice Kagan wrote: 'This Court should have left the matter there, rather than enable Reeves’s execution by lethal injection to go forward.'

Mr Johnson had picked up Reeves and a group of others as they were at the roadside in Selma, before he was robbed of $360 and shot in the neck.

Reeves later went to a party and bragged about getting a 'teardrop tattoo' to signify he had killed another person, a court heard. Meanwhile, Johnson's body was discovered in his truck on Thanksgiving.

Snakes are poisonous wherever they are. You can't underestimate a snake just because there's only one. It's dangerous wherever it is. - Ashin Wirathu

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://quozio.com/quote/cfng2qb4scqt/1289/snakes-are-poisonous-wherever-they-are-you-cant]

http://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2021/09/firebrand-buddhist-monk-ashin-wirathu.html

Commissioner John Hamm, speaking on behalf of Mr Johnson's family, said in a statement: 'After 26 years, justice has finally been served.'

Execution by nitrogen hypoxia has been legal in Alabama since 2018, but has not yet been used by the state.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10451351/Alabama-man-executed-1996-taxi-driver-death-Supreme-Court-intervened-case.html

https://thecrimereport.org/2022/01/28/supreme-court-approves-alabama-lethal-injection-execution/

OTHER LINKS:

A few minutes later, Grant's eyelids began to droop and he appeared to be sleeping. After a doctor entered the room to conduct a consciousness check, rubbing his sternum and calling his name, Grant could be heard snoring as a prison official declared him unconscious at 10:09 p.m. He appeared to stop breathing about two minutes later.

Brenda Mcelyea and Suzette Smith

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2497876752910/execution-of-donald-grant-described-as-peaceful-and-uneventful]

Shirl Pilcher, the sister of one of Grant's victims, Brenda McElyea, said her family felt that justice had been served.

“Although Donald Grant's execution does not bring Brenda back, it allows us all to finally move forward knowing justice was served," Pilcher said after witnessing his execution.

Grant had asked a federal judge to temporarily halt his execution, arguing that he should be reinstated as a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit challenging Oklahoma’s three-drug lethal injection protocol as presenting a risk of unconstitutional pain and suffering. But both a federal judge and a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver previously denied that request. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Grant’s request on Wednesday.

Several Oklahoma death row inmates with pending execution dates have sought to delay their executions after John Grant convulsed on the gurney and vomited after receiving the first dose of midazolam, a sedative, during his October execution.

John Grant's execution was the state's first since problems with the state's lethal injection protocols in 2014 and 2015 led to a de facto moratorium. Richard Glossip was just hours away from being executed in September 2015 when prison officials realized they received the wrong lethal drug. It was later learned the same wrong drug had been used to execute an inmate in January 2015.

The drug mix-ups followed a botched execution in April 2014 in which inmate Clayton Lockett struggled on a gurney before dying 43 minutes into his lethal injection — and after the state’s prisons chief ordered executioners to stop.

During a clemency hearing in November, Donald Grant admitted killing Brenda McElyea and Felicia Suzette Smith so that there would be no witnesses to his robbery of the Del City hotel. Court records show both women were shot and stabbed, and Smith was also bludgeoned. Prosecutors say both women also begged him to spare their lives before he killed them.

During November's hearing, he expressed “deep, sincere remorse” and apologized for the killings, but the state’s Pardon and Parole Board voted 4-1 against recommending clemency.

“I can't change that," he said of the crime while speaking to the board. “If I could, I would, but I can't change that."

Two of Donald Grant's attorneys, Susan Otto and Emma Rolls from the federal public defender's office, argued that he was mentally ill and had suffered brain damage that made him a candidate for mercy. They also discussed Grant’s childhood growing up in a New York City housing project during the crack epidemic of the 1980s, a time when he was frequently beaten and members of his family experienced alcoholism, drug addiction and mental illness.

If the criminal taking of a human life does not merit forfeiture of one's own life, then what value have we placed on the life taken? - Pat Buchanan

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://quozio.com/quote/5hvg8xggccvn/1318/if-the-criminal-taking-of-a-human-life-does-not-merit]

http://victimsfamiliesforthedeathpenalty.blogspot.com/2015/11/pat-buchanan-on-sanctity-of-life-pro.html

Article: http://victimsfamiliesforthedeathpenalty.blogspot.com/2015/11/scalia-v-pope-whos-right-on-death.html

But the board also heard from members of McElyea's family, who tearfully urged them to reject clemency for him.

Pilcher, McElyea’s sister, recalled the pain she experienced when she had to tell their father that McElyea had been killed.

“I had to call my dad and tell him his daughter, his baby girl, was dead,” Pilcher said. “I had never seen him cry, but that night I heard him weep and it broke my heart.”

The U.S. Supreme Court considered Thursday whether to let Alabama execute a death row inmate who claims an intellectual disability combined with the state’s inattention cost him a chance to avoid lethal injection. The state executed Matthew Reeves, 43, by lethal injection Thursday night.

———

This story has been corrected to show the correct spelling of Shirl Pilcher's last name.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/oklahoma-prepares-execute-man-2001-hotel-slayings-82502532

Shirl Filcher (pictured center), the sister of one of Grant's victims, Brenda McElyea, said her family felt that justice had been served.

‘Although Donald Grant's execution does not bring Brenda back, it allows us all to finally move forward knowing justice was served,' Filcher said after witnessing his execution. 'There was a time that there was doubt that justice would ever be served, and now there is none.'

“Today marks 20 years, six months, nine days and just minutes since Brenda McElyea was taken from this world by Donald Grant, but today, justice was served,” Filcher said.

'Brenda's father Walter McElyea's dying wish was for justice to be served, and although he did not live to see it, I know he is rejoicing today.'

'[Now] we can move forward, and the memories of the murder, the trial and the years spent waiting can be replaced with happier memories of Brenda, memories of her laughter, her smile, her wit, her charm and her loving heart. I, for one, am ready to remember the beauty of my sister instead of reliving the brutality of her death.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10446635/Oklahoma-prepares-execute-man-2001-hotel-slayings.html

OTHER LINKS:

SAMURAI POLICE 1109

Thursday, January 27, 2022

Matthew Reeves executed by lethal injection in Alabama (January 27, 2022)

See also

Donald Grant executed in Oklahoma for the murders of Brenda Mcelyea and Suzette Smith (January 27, 2022)

See also