Friday, July 23, 2004

this is an audio post - click to play

The final meal request for Mark Bailey, Virginia, July 22.

Mr. Bailey requested that his final meal not be made public.

A complete summary will be forthcoming shortly.


Wednesday, July 21, 2004

OHIO LAST MEAL
SCOTT MINK
July 20, 2004

...finished everything except the broccoli...

Last Meal:   Mink's last "special" meal was a T-bone steak; baked potato with sour cream and butter; steamed broccoli and cauliflower; a hamburger with cheese, onion, lettuce, tomato, ketchup and mustard; french fries with extra salt and Pepsi.

Mink finished everything except the broccoli.

On Tuesday morning, Mink smoked cigarettes and drank coffee but didn't eat.

The prison served him waffles, cereal, milk, coffee and apple juice.

The Skinny:   Scott Mink, 40, was executed by lethal injection for the September 2000 murders of his parents. 

When his parents hid the keys to his blue Isuzu Trooper to keep him from going out to buy drugs, Mink snapped. He got a claw hammer out of his father's toolbox on the porch and then walked into the bedroom of his sleeping parents.

The father and mother, 79 and 72, were bludgeoned with the hammer, stabbed with kitchen knives and beaten with cutting boards. The mother also was strangled, her neck broken with an electric cord.

Scott Mink then bought drugs by selling his parents' possessions, including pictures off the walls of the upstairs duplex where the three lived.

Four days later, Mink turned himself in to police and confessed to killing the couple.

More skinny:   Mink never married and lived with his parents most of his life. Tired of their son's growing crack habit, the Minks had set a 10 p.m. curfew and sometimes hid the keys to his truck. Mink complained that his parents treated him like a child and that his father would only give him $10 or $20 at a time for spending money. 

After the deed:    After the attack on his parents, Mink found his keys.

He took $7 and his father's ATM card.

Mink withdrew $10 with the ATM card because there was only $12 in the account and bought a fake substance he thought was crack.

The next day Mink sold his father's Ford Escort for $50 to $100 worth of crack.

The day after that, he traded his parents' television for $30 in drugs.

He later sold a lounge chair, a clock and pictures off the wall for money to buy drugs.

No Trial:  Mink waived a jury trial, plead guilty and waived his right to present any evidence on his behalf.

Thomas Martin, a court-appointed psychologist who evaluated Mink, said Mink told him he did not fear death. "I have a firm belief that I still have a chance of getting into heaven; God can forgive," Mink said.

The day before:   Mink sipped coffee and watched television.  He was relaxing and talking with prison staff, a prison spokesman said. "He's pleasant, he seems comfortable, and he's in good spirits."

He slept soundly until he was awakened at 6:05 a.m. by prison staff. He declined to shower or eat breakfast, instead splashing his face with water and having coffee and a cigarette.

Last words and such:  "I just thank you for giving me the chance to make a final statement," Mink told Warden James Haviland as he lay strapped to the execution table. "I have made peace with my family and God."

The execution of Mink, 40, was unusually lengthy because it took prison medical staff more than 20 minutes to install intravenous receptacles in Mink's veins. Tom Stickrath, assistant prisons director for Ohio, said Mink's veins were "brittle and they kept collapsing" as staff attempted to insert the shunts. Mink winked and gave his family, seated behind a glass window, a thumbs-up sign from the execution table.

Throughout the process, Mink closed his eyes, his legs crossed at the ankle. Stevens read Romans 8:38-39 from the Bible: "I am convinced that neither life, nor death ... will be able to separate us from the love of Christ Jesus." He was reading from a book entitled, If Grace Is True: Why God Will Save Every Person. 

His remains will be cremated and given to his family.

Factoids:   Mink's execution--three years from when he was convicted--was the fastest an Ohio inmate's death sentence was carried out since the state re-enacted the death penalty in 1981.

Mink also would be the first inmate executed who pleaded guilty, and the first put to death for killing family members.

Mink was the sixth death-row inmate executed this year, putting Ohio behind only Texas in the number of executions in 2004. Texas has executed 10 inmates, and Oklahoma has executed five.

Ohio has 207 inmates on death row.

At the moment there are no more executions scheduled in Ohio this year.

Mink was the...
 
35th murderer executed in U.S. in 2004
920th murderer executed in U.S. since 1976
6th murderer executed in Ohio in 2004
14th murderer executed in Ohio since 1976

 

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

this is an audio post - click to play
 
The final meal request for Scott Mink, Ohio, July 20
 
On Monday, Mink had his special meal: a T-bone steak; baked potato with sour cream and butter; steamed broccoli and cauliflower; a hamburger with cheese, onion, lettuce, tomato, ketchup and mustard; french fries with extra salt and Pepsi.
 
Mink finished everything except the broccoli.
 
On Tuesday morning, Mink smoked cigarettes and drank coffee but didn't eat. The prison served him waffles, cereal, milk, coffee and apple juice.
 
The complete skinny will be forthcoming shortly...
 

GEORGIA LAST MEAL
EDDIE ALBERT CRAWFORD
July 19, 2004

...a bad man...

Last Meal:  Crawford was served regular prison fare of barbecue pork, black-eyed peas, a vegetable medley, cole slaw, a roll, peach cobbler and a grape drink. He did not eat any of it.

The skinny:  Crawford, 57, was executed for the 1983 kidnapping, raping and murdering his 2-year-old niece.

Crawford claims he blacked out after drinking and doesn't remember what happened.

Prosecutors argued at trial he sneaked into the house and kidnapped the girl after her mother--his sister-in-law--refused to have sex with him.

Legal machinations:  Several defense attorneys lined up to appeal Crawford's case. They've been seeking DNA testing of two newly discovered hairs found on the girl's body and clothing to determine if they belong to Crawford or someone else.

Similar pleas caused the Georgia Supreme Court to delay Crawford's execution just three hours before he was originally scheduled to be killed last December.

State courts have ruled additional DNA testing inadmissible on four occasions because Crawford still would have been found guilty, said Spalding County District Attorney Bill McBroom.

The U.S. Supreme Court didn't stop the execution Monday, although three of the court's more liberal members supported giving Crawford a stay to conduct DNA testing of hairs found on the girl's body.

Crawford was linked to the crime by hair and carpet fibers found on the girl's body, eyewitness statements and conflicting accounts he gave to police.
  
Last words and such:  In his final words, Crawford said, "There hasn't been a time in the last 21 years I wouldn't have laid down my life for little Leslie. I don't remember anything. But if this will give them peace, it [the lethal injection] was well worth it."

Factoids:  Crawford was the....
 
34th murderer executed in U.S. in 2004
919th murderer executed in U.S. since 1976
2nd murderer executed in Georgia in 2004
36th murderer executed in Georgia since 1976
  


Monday, July 19, 2004

Reader's Last Meals...Let the feasts continue....
 
Jack C. from parts unknown...  
 
2 Thick striploin steaks bbq'ed with "BullsEye" bbqsauce, Mashed Potatos with Garlic. 2 Slices of bluebarry pie withwhipped cream. I pint of lemon vodka.
 
&
 
rob.f of somwwhere in GA.
 
The last meal would consist of: two bacon sandwiches on white bread with just ketchup, bacon needs to be crisp. One bag of Classic Lays potato chips with sour cream and onion dip.Large salad with romanie lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, mushrooms, cheese, crutons, bacon bits, hot and sweet peppers, french dressing. One pint of Ben and Jerry's Phish Food ice cream, french silk pie, one liter of ice cold Coke. One pack of Camel filters, and a bag of the finest weed, and way I go!!!!!
 
&
 
Kuincey, WPB,FL

Menu:  1 lb Kalua pig, 1 lb Squid Luau, 1 pot cooked rice, 1 container Poi (Sour!), Beef Stew, 2 scoops each mac and potato salad, 3 whole 5 lb lobsters steamed and served with 1 cup drawn butter&lemon, 1 each Ahi, Ulua, Mahi, Ono, Onaga, and kumu fish Filets flame broiled, 1 container pork n peas (my mom's recipe), Fried chicken (x-tra crispy), 1 rack of babyback ribs w/ sweet n spicy sauce, Chicken adobo, 1 French apple pie, 1 Banana cream Pie, 1 jello cheesecake, 1 Chantilly cake, 3 Almond Joy candies,1 box Reese's P-butter cups, 1 pot Green Tea (xtra-hot), Iced Tea w/Lemon..I'll probably be dead before they can inject or gas me!
 

If you were on death row in Nevada...this would be what your last day would look like...
 
The highlights, from the AP...  (reg. req.)
 
Nevada executions follow precise procedures
 
BRENDAN RILEYAssociated Press

CARSON CITY - Unless Terry Jess Dennis asks for a last-minute stay, the condemned inmate will be led through a submarine-type door into the Nevada State Prison's death chamber and be executed at 9 p.m. Thursday.

Dennis will have already had his final meal, coffee, cigarettes or a cigar if he wants in a "last night" cell just outside the half-century-old death chamber.

Before his last meal, Dennis will be able to send out letters and make final phone calls. He might choose to give away his personal items to other inmates.

The condemned man can receive visits by the chaplain, warden or prison director. Dennis' brother already visited him, and no other family members are expected.

Dennis has requested a set of clean prison denims, and has asked for cigarettes during his final days, prison spokesman Fritz Schlottman said.

To guard against suicide attempts, a "death watch" guard keeps an eye on the convict at all times. Dennis can't have any electrical items, such as a radio or television, in his cell although they can be placed in the corridor just outside the cell.

A few hours before the execution, Dennis will be given a sedative to relax him and discourage any last-minute resistance.

About half an hour before the execution deadline, Dennis will be brought into a 9-by-12-foot, beige-painted room. There he will be strapped to a gurney with eight automobile seat belts. If he can't or won't walk to the death room, guards will carry him in.

While lying on the gurney, Dennis will be able to see two bare light bulbs and the old exhaust pipe that was used to fill the room with cyanide gas until the Legislature discontinued the practice in 1983. If he turns his head, Dennis will see a heart monitor.

Through a three-panel window on his right he can see the nine witnesses who are required by law to watch his execution, plus a dozen or so other witnesses who will stand in a 13-by-20-foot viewing room.

Behind him, a one-way mirror hides the faces of two prison employees in a closet-sized "executioners" room." Unless the red phone outside the death chamber brings last-minute legal relief, the prison workers will pump three injections through tubes running out of the wall and into the prisoner's veins.
The first is an overdose of a "downer" that can cause death. Another stops breathing, and a third stops the heart.

A few minutes later if all has gone as scheduled, a doctor will pronounce Dennis dead.

Window shades on the death chamber windows will be pulled down, the needles removed from his arm, and the body transported to a mortuary.

 

From the AP...

Some major Supreme Court cases on capital punishment:

_ In 1972, in a case called Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional.

_ In 1976, in Gregg v. Georgia, the court reinstated the death penalty.

_ In 1986, in Ford v. Wainwright, the court held it unconstitutional to execute the insane.

_ In 1988, in Thompson v. Oklahoma, the court outlawed execution for those younger than 16.

_ In 1989, in Sanford v. Kentucky, the court specifically allowed execution for 16- and 17-year-olds convicted of murder.

_ Also in 1989, in Penry v. Luynaugh, the court allowed execution of mentally retarded defendants in some cases.

_ In 2002, the court reversed itself and outlawed execution of the mentally retarded.

_ Also in 2002, the court said only juries, not judges alone, may make crucial determinations about which cases qualify for a death sentence.
 
 

this is an audio post - click to play
 
The special meal request of Eddie Albert Crawford, Georgia, July 10, 2004. 
 
Crawford's last meal was the regular prison fare of barbecue pork, black eyed peas, a vegetable medley, cole slaw, a roll, peach cobbler and a grape drink.
 
The complete skinny will follow shortly.