Alabama set to carry out 1st execution in more than 2 years

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Alabama set to carry out 1st execution in more than 2 years
By KIM CHANDLER

ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — A man convicted of the 1992 rape and beating death of a woman is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Thursday evening in what would be Alabama's first execution in more than two years.

Christopher Eugene Brooks, 43, is set to die at 6 p.m. CST at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, authorities said. He was convicted of the capital murder of 23-year-old Jo Deann Campbell, a woman authorities say he first met when they worked at a camp in upstate New York.

Campbell was seen speaking to Brooks at a restaurant where she worked on Dec. 30, 1992, and she later told a friend someone was spending the night in her living room, according to witnesses. The next day, police found Campbell's partially clothed body under the bed in her apartment in the Birmingham suburb of Homewood. Prosecutors said she was bludgeoned with an 8-pound dumbbell and sexually assaulted.

Brooks' bloody fingerprint was on a doorknob in Campbell's bedroom and a latent palm print on her ankle, according to court records. The documents say Brooks was found later with Campbell's car keys and had cashed her paycheck.

At trial, defense lawyers argued another man who was at the apartment that night might have committed the killing. Prosecution witness said semen on the victim's body was consistent with Brooks' DNA.

Alabama's last execution was in 2013. Drug shortages and litigation prevented any executions since.

Authorities said it would be the first execution since Alabama announced in 2014 that it was changing two of the three drugs, including switching to the sedative midazolam to render an inmate unconscious.

Lawyers for the state have argued Alabama's new drug combination is "virtually identical" to one Florida has used multiple times without incident. But attorneys for Brooks argued that midazolam was used in problematic executions, including one in which an Oklahoma inmate took 43 minutes to die.

The U.S. Supreme Court — in a split decision in June — allowed Oklahoma to proceed using midazolam. Six Alabama inmates argue in an ongoing lawsuit that it is an ineffective anesthetic and that they would feel the effects of the subsequent injections of rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride to stop their lungs and hearts.

On Wednesday, an attorney for Brooks asked the U.S Supreme Court to halt the execution, arguing further court review of the state's new execution protocol is needed before its first-time use.

"Brooks should not be the subject of Alabama's experiment to see if it can carry out an execution using this protocol while the very validity of the protocol is at issue in ongoing federal court proceedings," Assistant Federal Defender John Palombi wrote the Supreme Court.

Brooks' attorney also asked the Supreme Court to review the case after justices last week ruled Florida's system for sentencing people to death is unconstitutional because it gives too much power to judges to decide capital sentences.

Lawyers with the Alabama attorney general's office argued in court filings that Brooks was simply trying to delay execution. A jury convicted him in 1993 of capital murder for murder committed in the course of a robbery, burglary and rape.

"Brooks raped and murdered Jo Deann Campbell on December 31, 1992 and her family has been waiting for justice for more than twenty-three years," the state's lawyers wrote.

Andrew Reid Lackey was the last Alabama inmate executed, receiving an injection July 25, 2013, for killing a man during a 2005 robbery.

Campbell's sister, Corrine Campbell, told The Associated Press she, her sister and her mother headed to Atmore on Thursday but hadn't decided if they'd be witnesses.

She added her sister was very welcoming and trusting, but had no idea whom she had invited to stay at her place when Brooks showed up uninvited.

"She was young, energetic, bubbly, hard-working. The young lady had no enemies," she said.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge W. Keith Watkins, responding to a motion by lawyers for some Alabama death row inmates, ordered prison officials to retain execution medical records, including data generated by a heartbeat monitor. He didn't say whether inmates' lawyers, who are challenging the new execution method, would get to see them.

Authorities said Brooks spent recent days in a holding cell and was visited by three attorneys, two friends and a clergy member.


-- (c) Associated Press 2016-01-22

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ATMORE, Alabama (AP) - Authorities: Man put to death for woman's rape and murder in 1st Alabama execution since 2013.

[ggt]

I am not against capital punishment...but after being reminded for more that 20 years that you are going to die...what's the point...maybe someone in the victims family is still waiting for closure...