State Seeks Execution Date for Whisenhant
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - After 31 years on death row, condemned killer Thomas Whisenhant could receive an execution date under a filing Tuesday with the Alabama Supreme Court.
Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw said the state filed the request to execute Whisenhant, who arrived on death row at Holman Prison in 1978 for a grisly abduction, rape and murder in Mobile.
The request came a day after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Whisenhant's appeal of his conviction for the Oct. 16, 1976 killing of convenience store clerk Cheryl Lynn Payton.
Court records show Whisenhant left her body in a remote area and later returned and mutilated it.
Whisenhant, now 62, also was accused of killing two other convenience store clerks in the Mobile area, and mutilating the body of one of them.
The state's motion to the Supreme Court said Whisenhant confessed to killing Payton and the other clerks. The defense contends he is insane.
The killings generated publicity in the Mobile area, which caused Whisenhant's 1977 trial to be moved to Birmingham.
That trial drew wide notice, featuring two of Alabama's best-known legal personalities, Southern Poverty Law Center founder Morris Dees, who represented Whisenhant, and then-Mobile County District Attorney Charles Graddick. A year later, Graddick was elected Alabama attorney general on a law-and-order platform and he is now a circuit judge in Mobile.
Whisenhant's original 1977 conviction for Payton's death was reversed by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals and he was retried and convicted again in 1981.
That conviction was upheld by the criminal appeals court, but his sentence was overturned because of a remark made by a prosecutor during the sentencing phase.
Whisenhant was again sentenced to die when a new hearing was held in 1987.
Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen, who now represents Whisenhant, said Tuesday he still maintains that Whisenhant should have been found not guilty because he was insane at the time of the crimes. Jurors at the two trials rejected the insanity defense.
"Anyone who evaluates the evidence in this case would say he is deeply disturbed or insane," Cohen said. "It will be a dark day for justice if he is ever executed."
Cohen said he is evaluating what legal actions to take to fight the state's efforts to execute Whisenhant. "Our options are narrow and we are exploring what they might be," Cohen said.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
