judy wicker

The state of Alabama had no shortage of reasons to block Thursday's scheduled execution of Thomas Arthur. But the reason Gov. Bob Riley chose to give Arthur a 45-day reprieve was certainly a salient one.

"The decision to grant a brief stay is being made only because the state is changing its lethal injection protocol, and this will allow sufficient time for the Department of Corrections to make that change," Riley said Thursday, just hours before Arthur's execution was scheduled to take place.

That certainly is reasonable. It's beyond comprehension that the state would have tried to carry out Arthur's execution as planned, with all the new questions about lethal injection swirling around.

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Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would hear a challenge of Kentucky's lethal injection protocol, which Arthur's lawyers say involves the same drugs used in Alabama.

Even more astounding, the lawyers disclosed, the state of Alabama already had plans to change its lethal injection procedures, but not in time for Arthur's execution. The lawyers said the procedural changes suggest officials were well aware the procedures that would have been used on Arthur weren't acceptable.

That's a reasonable conclusion, and one has to wonder why the information wasn't disclosed sooner by the state.

Under the proposed new procedures, the inmate's level of consciousness will be tested before the final drugs are administered. This is an apparent effort to address concerns that inmates may be paralyzed but conscious as they are executed and may endure a cruel, suffocating death.

While Riley decided to hold off on Arthur's execution long enough to get the new procedures, he made it a point to say he is convinced of Arthur's guilt in the 1982 murder of Troy Wicker and that he is determined to see the execution carried out.

"I have encouraged the attorney general to make a motion with the Alabama Supreme Court for a new date of execution as soon as possible," Riley said in his statement.

Here's another idea: This 45-day period is more than enough time for Riley to order DNA testing on biological evidence in Arthur's case, which was prosecuted before today's scientific methods were developed.

The nonprofit Innocence Project of New York has said the results could be available in a couple of weeks, and the testing would come at no cost to the state. Even Wicker's family has expressed support for DNA testing; Arthur's case contains enough weird elements to justify some doubts.

For one thing, Arthur was allegedly hired by Wicker's wife to kill her husband. Judy Wicker initially denied that and claimed an intruder raped her and committed the murder. She changed her story to implicate Arthur after prosecutors agreed to recommend parole. In the end, the woman who is said to have ordered the murder and collected the life insurance from it served only 10 years in prison, while the alleged hired killer was sent to Death Row.

Even though Riley is convinced of Arthur's guilt, the governor has nothing to lose by ordering DNA tests. If they confirm Riley's beliefs, Arthur's execution would at least be less troubling on the guilt/innocence front. If the tests raise questions about Arthur's guilt - or identify another suspect - all the better to know the truth now.

Riley did the right thing in delaying the execution. Now, he has a perfect opportunity to go a step further and order DNA tests. As the Innocence Project said Thursday in a statement, there's no excuse not to.
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) ― A man condemned for killing his parents avoided the nation's busiest death chamber Thursday night when he won a reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court, which had already agreed to review another state's lethal injection procedures.

Attorneys for Carlton Turner Jr., 28, had appealed to the high court hoping that its planned review of lethal injection procedures in Kentucky, the same process used in Texas, could keep him alive.

His case is being watched as an indicator of whether executions in Texas could be halted until the court rules on the Kentucky case next year.

In a brief order, the court said it had granted his stay of execution but made no mention of its reasons for stopping the punishment. The order came less than two hours before the death warrant would have expired at midnight CDT.

"All I can say is all glory to God," Turner told prison officials as he was being returned to death row, in another prison about 45 miles east of Huntsville.

The order followed a decision earlier in the day by Alabama Gov. Bob Riley to stay the execution of a contract killer hours before it was to have been carried out, so the inmate could be put to death using a new lethal injection formula the governor had ordered just a day before.

Turner would have been the 27th Texas inmate to be executed this year and the second this week.

After state courts earlier Thursday refused to halt the punishment, Turner's lawyers went to the Supreme Court, which on Tuesday agreed to review an appeal from two condemned inmates in Kentucky who argued that the three-drug process used in lethal injection is unconstitutionally cruel. The same procedure is used in Texas.

"The inmate will be forced into a chemical straitjacket, unable to express the fact of his suffocation," the appeal in Turner's case asserted.

Turner's lawyers went early Thursday to his trial court judge with a request to withdraw the execution order. When that failed, they went to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which voted 5-4 to refuse to stop the punishment. The case then went to the Supreme Court.

Turner was 19 when authorities said he shot Carlton Turner Sr., 43, and Tonya Turner, 40, several times in the head. He then bought new clothes and jewelry and continued living in the family's Irving home.

From death row last week, Turner told The Associated Press he didn't find the prospect of death frightening but was concerned about possible pain from the lethal injection.

"The only thing I worry about is when the process is starting, the suffocation and pain if the anesthesia doesn't work," he said.

In Alabama, Riley said he issued the 45-day stay of Tommy Arthur's execution only to allow time for the new lethal-injection procedures to be put in place. The changes are designed to make sure the inmate is unconscious when given drugs to stop the heart and lungs.

Riley said evidence is "overwhelming" that Arthur is guilty "and he will be executed for his crime." The governor encouraged the attorney general's office to ask the Alabama Supreme Court to set another execution date "as soon as possible."

Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw said the request would be filed with the court Friday.

Before Riley issued his stay, state officials had said they intended to execute Arthur at 6 p.m. Thursday, even though the changes Riley ordered could not be implemented by then.

They said the procedures already in place were constitutional, though Arthur's attorney, Suhana Han, contended that Riley's order to change the protocol amounted to the state conceding that its execution procedure was deficient. Han did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Thursday.

Arthur, 65, was sentenced to death for the Feb. 1, 1982, killing of Troy Wicker, 35, of Muscle Shoals. The victim's wife, Judy Wicker, testified she had sex with Arthur and paid him $10,000 to kill her husband, who was shot in the face as he lay in bed.

Arthur was visiting with his daughter when he learned of the stay in a call from his attorney, prison system spokesman Brian Corbett said.

Like Turner, Arthur had asked the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay pending its ruling on the Kentucky case. The Alabama Supreme Court had declined to grant a stay Wednesday.

The wife of Arthur's victim was given a life sentence for her part in the murder and paroled after 10 years behind bars.

In a statement, Peter Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project, urged Riley to use the next 45 days to allow DNA testing on evidence from Arthur's trial.

"Gov. Riley said last week that DNA testing was only a tactic to delay this execution. It's not. Now that the execution is delayed for other reasons, DNA testing should be started immediately," Neufeld said.

Another lethal-injection lawsuit, filed by a convicted ax murderer on death row on Delaware's death row, had been scheduled for trial Oct. 9. A federal judge postponed the trial Wednesday, citing the pending Supreme Court case.

WASHINGTON - September 11 - Alabama Governor Bob Riley should halt the planned September 27 execution of Thomas Arthur, a potentially innocent man who has not had a judicial hearing on evidence that could raise serious doubts about his guilt, Amnesty International said today. The organization is mobilizing its membership across the country and around the world to petition Governor Riley to ensure modern DNA testing is performed on evidence from the crime scene that has not yet been tested -- before Thomas Arthur loses his life.


Thomas Arthur was sentenced to death for the murder of Troy Wicker in 1982. Arthur has been on death row for much of the past quarter of a century. To this day, no physical evidence links him to the crime. Hair samples and fingerprints from the crime scene were tested and did not match Arthur's. Alabama has so far resisted Arthur's request for DNA testing on other materials connected to the murder.

"Given the many unanswered questions in this case, it would be absurd for Alabama not to test all the DNA," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). "When Alabama refuses to examine available evidence, it might as well say 'we don't care if we actually get it right.'"

Troy Wicker, 35, was found dead on February 1, 1982 in his home in Muscle Shoals, having been killed by a single shot through his eye. His wife Judy Wicker told police that she had come home to find an African American man in the house (not Thomas Arthur, who is white), that he had raped her, knocked her unconscious, and shot her husband. Judy Wicker was charged with the murder of her husband, allegedly to collect insurance, and was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Thomas Arthur was charged with shooting Troy Wicker and was also tried in 1982. The state alleged that Judy Wicker hired Arthur to kill her husband. Arthur was sentenced to death -- twice -- but both times his conviction was overturned due to improper admission of evidence.

Judy Wicker testified that Thomas Arthur was the killer, directly contradicting her previous testimony that an African American man had killed her husband. Arthur was convicted and sentenced to death. He is seeking to have modern DNA testing conducted on various pieces of evidence, including Judy Wicker's bloodstained clothing, the rape evidence and hair samples. Arthur has also filed a suit challenging the constitutionality of Alabama's lethal injection procedure and contending that the state's lethal injection procedure constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Thomas Arthur was convicted only on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of a woman who was helping her own parole bid -- yet Alabama is still resisting efforts to establish the truth," said Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, Director of AIUSA's Program to Abolish the Death Penalty. "Serious evidence in capital cases should not go unexamined."

More than 120 wrongful convictions in capital cases in the United States have been uncovered since 1977; DNA testing has played a substantial role in more than a dozen of those cases. A state's attorney also said Thursday he hopes a federal judge's ruling that halted a lethal injection in Tennessee would not impact Alabama's execution procedures.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected Arthur's lethal injection challenge on Monday, is still weighing a DNA claim in his case. Arthur, now 65, was convicted in the Feb. 1, 1982 murder-for-hire shooting death of Troy Wicker, 35, of Muscle Shoals.

A spokesman for Riley on Thursday accused Arthur's supporters at the New York-based Innocence Project of attempting to stall the execution by bringing the DNA issue to his office. Riley refused to meet with the group earlier this week and has no current plans to intervene in Arthur's execution, said Jeff Emerson, the governor's communications director.

On the matter of lethal injection, a three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit ruled 2-1 as it upheld a district court's dismissal of Arthur's challenge to the procedure. The majority said there was "no justification" for Arthur's failure to file his lethal injection challenge earlier to allow sufficient time for full court review on the merits of his claim.

U.S. Circuit Judge Rosemary Barkett, in a dissent, said the lower court made a mistake in refusing to hear Arthur's challenge simply because he failed to file a claim as soon as the Alabama Legislature changed the method of execution to lethal injection in 2002.

In Nashville, a federal judge halted an execution set for next week, ruling that Tennessee's new lethal injection procedures are unconstitutional, presenting "a substantial risk of unnecessary pain."

Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw, Alabama's capital litigation chief, said Tennessee joins other states where lethal injection challenges have been filed.

"There are a lot more decisions on the other side that have ruled that lethal injection is constitutional," Crenshaw said.

He said the Tennessee ruling was critical of the qualification of the emergency medical technicians.

"That's not a problem in Alabama," he said. He said the EMTs at Alabama executions have "certification to install IV lines" for the inmate.

Arthur has been on death row at Holman prison near Atmore about 16 years after being convicted for capital murder and sentenced to death in 1992 at his third trial.

The victim's wife, Judy Wicker, now 60 and paroled from a life sentence in her husband's murder after serving 10 years, testified that she began a sexual relationship with Arthur after he agreed to kill her husband and that she paid him $10,000 for the slaying.

She initially said a black man broke into their home, raped and beat her, and that when she came to, her husband was dead. Arthur's supporters claim she changed her story and implicated Arthur to protect her chance for parole.

The prosecution had 13 witnesses, many of whom corroborated Judy Wicker's testimony, according to court documents.

The Innocence Project, which does not represent Arthur and does not have a position on his guilt or innocence, said DNA testing in his case could show whether her initial story about the rape was accurate.

Representatives from the Innocence Project said Riley refused to meet with them earlier this week on the DNA request.

"Rather than looking at the science, he is burying his head in the sand," Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld said in a statement critical of the governor.

In an e-mail Thursday to The Associated Press, Emerson, Riley's spokesman, wrote: "The entire premise of his request is that DNA testing could potentially confirm Judy Wicker's original story. Yet she herself admitted her original story was a lie."

He continued: "All the evidence - all of it - points to his guilt and there is no credible evidence - none - that anyone but Arthur committed this murder. This request is merely a tactic to delay his execution."

He said Riley and his legal staff have "thoroughly reviewed this case. He has no current plans to intercede in this scheduled execution."

Arthur's appeals attorney, Suhana S. Han of New York claims that no evidence against Arthur has undergone DNA testing. Han has requested access to evidence so it can be tested at no cost to the state.

State prosecutors contend such a move would not change the outcome of Arthur's trial, saying Arthur received a fair trial and no evidence was withheld from the defense.

The federal district court also ruled that granting Arthur access to physical evidence, "the testing of which would not have altered the outcome of his trial, would be of little or no probable value."

Arthur, who was serving a sentence for another murder at the time of his arrest in the Wicker killing, exhausted his state and federal appeals when the Supreme Court denied a review on April 16. That led to his filing civil suits for DNA evidence and a challenge to lethal injection.

The anti-death penalty Amnesty International USA also protested Arthur's scheduled execution.