Alley's lawyers plan to appeal latest setback

[Anja]

Alley's lawyers plan to appeal latest setback


With time running out, lawyers for convicted killer Sedley Alley will
appeal a ruling by a state appeals court.

The court yesterday refused to approve DNA testing sought in Alley's case.
He's scheduled for execution next Wednesday in Nashville.

The Court of Criminal Appeals upheld a Memphis judge's ruling that Alley
was not entitled to the testing on evidence gathered at the scene of the
1985 murder he was convicted of committing.

Alley was convicted of killing 19-year-old Suzanne Collins, who was beaten
and sexually assaulted with a sharpened tree limb.

He confessed shortly after the crime, and there was considerable blood
evidence linking him to the attack.

The next step for his lawyers is an appeal to the State Supreme Court.

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[SoulTrainOz]

execution

Sedley Alley is asking the state Supreme Court to stop his execution scheduled for Wednesday and order DNA testing on evidence taken from the scene of the 1985 murder that sent him to death row. Alley filed a petition for a stay of execution Monday, four days after the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals rejected his request for DNA testing.

He is scheduled for execution at 1 a.m. Wednesday. Alley was convicted in 1987 of kidnapping, sexually mutilating and murdering a 19-year-old woman as she jogged on a Navy base just north of Memphis.

He argued at trial and in appeals until two years ago that he was not responsible for the murder because of insanity. He began arguing in 2004 that someone else committed the crime.

"Least an innocent man be executed ... this court should order a brief stay, grant permission to appeal and order DNA testing," Alley's petition says.

The Court of Appeals, upholding a ruling by a Memphis judge, said Alley failed to show, as required by state law, that DNA testing would likely have prevented his conviction had it been available when he was taken to trial.

(source: The Associated Press)

[marion]

Tennessee plans 2nd execution in 45 years

Tuesday, June 27, 2006 Posted: 2033 GMT (0433 HKT)



Sedley Alley, convicted of the 1985
rape-murder of a Marine out for a jog,
has nearly exhausted his appeals.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- Tennessee officials were preparing Tuesday to carry out the state's second execution in 45 years, that of a man convicted of raping and killing a jogger.

The state had planned two, back-to-back executions by lethal injection early Wednesday, but a federal judge issued a stay Tuesday for the second condemned man.

Judge Todd Campbell halted the execution of Paul Dennis Reid and ordered a hearing on whether the inmate is mentally competent to stop appealing his seven death sentences for a string of 1997 murders. The state was preparing to appeal the order, the spokeswoman for the attorney general said.

Reid, who doctors have testified is brain damaged and mentally ill, had dropped his appeals earlier this year, and the state Supreme Court rejected efforts by his defense team and his sister to continue fighting his execution without his cooperation.

Reid was in a similar situation in 2003 and came within hours of execution before he was talked into resuming his appeals and got a stay.

Reid and convicted killer Sedley Alley had both been on death watch at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

Although Alley has exhausted his chances to appeal his conviction and sentence, his defense team continued fighting his execution Tuesday with petitions challenging the state's method of lethal injection and seeking DNA testing on evidence from his case.

The Tennessee Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected issuing a stay, but Alley still had petitions before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Alley failed to convince the state high court that he was wrongly denied DNA testing on crime scene evidence that he contends could prove someone else committed the murder.

Alley, 50, confessed to raping and killing 19-year-old Marine Suzanne Collins in 1985 while she jogged near a Navy base north of Memphis.

At trial Alley claimed to have multiple personalities, but since 2004 he has recanted his confession, argued he is innocent and said DNA testing could prove it.

Reid, 48, a former Texas drifter with music ambitions, was convicted of murdering seven people at three Tennessee restaurants in 1997 after he was fired from his job as a dishwasher.

Family members of some of the victims attended Tuesday's hearing and were not pleased with Campbell's decision.

"There's no way for me to describe what I'm feeling right now," said Kim Campbell, the mother of victim Angela Holmes. "Nobody let (Angela) argue that she had a right to life."

Reid has told reporters and his legal team that he is being controlled, monitored and tormented by a military government. His lawyers say he has quit cooperating with them because he thinks they are part of the effort to harm him.

[SoulTrainOz]

Tennessee's top court refuses to stop Alley execution


By SHEILA BURKE
Staff writer


The Tennessee Supreme Court has refused to stop Sedley Alley's scheduled Wednesday execution by lethal injection.

Alley, 50, turned to the state's highest court Monday, asking for both a stay of execution and for the court to overturn a lower court's ruling and order DNA testing.

Alley's lawyers contend that DNA testing could prove he's innocent. The state, however, maintains that the DNA of any number of other persons could be found on evidence taken from the 1985 crime scene outside of Memphis, and it still wouldn't undermine the case against him.

Alley was convicted of the brutal rape and murder of 19-year-old Suzanne Collins, a Marine stationed outside Memphis.

He and serial killer Paul Dennis Reid are both scheduled to be executed early Wednesday morning.

www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060627/NEWS03/60627011

[marion]

Tenn. Executes 2nd Person in 45 Years

By ROSE FRENCH
Associated Press Writer
Jun 28, 7:59 AM EDT



NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Tennessee carried out its second execution in 45 years early Wednesday, and train-hopping serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz went to his death in Texas by asking his victims' families for forgiveness.

The fate of another Tennessee inmate was playing out in the courts. The state had scheduled back-to-back executions of convicted killers Sedley Alley and Paul Dennis Reid, but Reid received a stay.

An appeal was before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which was scheduled to meet Wednesday morning. Reid's planned witnesses were asked to return to the prison by midday. If the stay was not lifted by midnight, the state Supreme Court would have to set a new execution date.

Resendiz' execution Tuesday night was Texas' 13th of the year in the nation's most active death penalty state. Resendiz, who had told psychiatrists he couldn't be executed because was half-man and half-angel and didn't believe he could die, received lethal injection for the slaying of a physician in 1998.

Claudia Benton, 39, was stabbed with a kitchen knife, bludgeoned with a 2-foot bronze statue and raped in her Houston home, down the street from a railroad track.

Her slaying came during a deadly spree in 1998 and 1999 that earned Resendiz a spot on the FBI's Most Wanted list as authorities searched for a murderer who slipped across the U.S. border and roamed the country by freight train.

Her death was among eight in Texas linked to Resendiz. He was suspected in two more murders in both Illinois and Florida, and one each in Kentucky, California and Georgia.

"I want to ask if it is in your heart to forgive me," Resendiz said from his death chamber gurney, looking toward victims' relatives. "You don't have to. I know I allowed the devil to rule my life."

In Tennessee, Alley was pronounced dead at 3:12 a.m. EDT. He was put to death for killing 19-year-old Marine Suzanne Collins in 1985 while she jogged near a Navy base north of Memphis. Though he confessed, he claimed at trial that he was not responsible for the sexual assault and murder because he had multiple personalities. He recanted his confession in 2004, and said DNA testing could prove his innocence.

Just two hours before Alley was originally scheduled to die, Judge Gilbert S. Merritt on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay after a last-minute appeal was delivered to his home in Nashville.

His hasty order, half-typed and half-handwritten, was quickly reversed by his own colleagues, Chief Judge Danny J. Boggs and Judge James L. Ryan. Tennessee Attorney General Paul Summers argued in an appeal of Merritt's ruling that the procedure was "highly irregular and in brazen violation of every rule that applies to this situation."

Before the injection began, the prison warden asked Alley if there was anything he wanted to say. He replied: "Yes, to my children. April, David, can you hear me? I love you. Stay strong."

"We will, Dad," daughter April McIntyre answered. Both his children had their hands against the glass in the witness room and their arms around each other as he died.

Reid, 48, a former Texas drifter with music ambitions, was convicted of murdering seven people at three Tennessee restaurants in 1997 after he was fired from his dishwashing job. He came within hours of execution in 2003 before he was talked into resuming his appeals and got a stay.

Federal Judge Todd Campbell halted Reid's execution Tuesday to determine whether he was competent to drop his appeals of seven death sentences tied to a string of 1997 murders in the Clarksville area.

Reid has told reporters and his legal team that he is being controlled, monitored and tormented by a military government.

The last Tennessee inmate executed was a convicted child rapist and murderer put to death in 2000. Before that, the last execution was by electric chair in 1960.

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Associated Press writers Michael Graczyk and Juan A. Lozano contributed to this story from Huntsville, Texas.