Finally ... good things happening to bad people! &;-)
Posted on 05/09/2002 10:58:19 PM PDT by Dallas
ATMORE, Ala. --
A political extremist convicted of murdering a policeman in 1993 was put to death in the electric chair Friday, becoming the first woman executed in Alabama in 45 years.
Lynda Lyon Block declined to pursue final appeals late Thursday, claiming the courts were corrupt and lacked jurisdiction in her case. She was put to death shortly after midnight.
Block, 54, may be the last person forced to die in the state's electric chair. Under a law that takes effect this summer, condemned inmates in Alabama will be executed by injection unless they choose the electric chair.
Block and her common-law husband, George Sibley, were sentenced to death for killing Opelika police officer Roger Motley Jr. in a burst of gunfire in a shopping center parking lot. The couple said Motley was reaching for his gun when they shot him.
Block and Sibley, who decried government controls over individuals and renounced their U.S. citizenship, were on the run at the time to avoid being sentenced in the stabbing of Block's former husband in Orlando, Fla.
"The Bible says when murder happens and a person has no sorrow, they are to be immediately executed," said Anne Motley, the victim's mother.
Alabama's electric chair, built in 1927, has been used for 176 executions since it replaced hanging as the state's primary mode of execution.
Block was the fourth woman put to death in Alabama by electrocution and the first since 1957, when Rhonda Bell Martin was executed for poisoning her husband with arsenic.
Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press
Finally ... good things happening to bad people! &;-)
Given time, I'm sure she could have been a good human bomb or a priest.
But alas, she will be fertilizer. RIP baby! :-)
Libertarians both.
Alabama's electric chair, 'Yellow Mama'
The Alabama Supreme Court set a May 10 execution date for a Florida woman convicted in the 1993 shooting death of an Opelika police officer. Barring a stay, Lynda Block would be the 1st woman executed in Alabama since 1957. A zealot against all manner of government intrusion, she has refused the help of lawyers, contending the judicial system is fraudulent and corrupt. State prosecutors said she has no active appeal. Block, 54, and her common-law husband, George Sibley Jr., were convicted in the October 1993 shooting death of officer Roger Lamar Motley while they were on the run from a criminal case in Florida. Roger was slain as he approached the couple's car in a Wal-Mart parking lot. A passerby heard Block's 9-year-old son call for help and asked the officer to see if everything was OK. Sibley also received a death sentence and remains on death row. The Alabama Supreme Court upheld Block's death sentence in 1999 and Sibley's in 2000. At trial, Sibley and Block, who has said she prefers the name Lynda Lyon, said they fired at Motley and his patrol car in self- defense after the officer touched his holster. But witnesses said Sibley fired shots first and Block joined in the shootout after the officer was wounded. Both were sentenced to die in part because forensics experts couldn't decide who fired the fatal shots. At the time, the couple was fleeing from Orlando, Fla., to avoid being sentenced on assault convictions in the stabbing of Block's 79-year-old former husband. They contend they were innocent of assault and had become victims in the case themselves. The couple have refused to pursue the death sentence appeals they are entitled to under state law. The courts had to appoint attorneys to represent them at trial, but they balked at getting help from defense attorneys for the appeals. Assistant Attorney General Beth Hughes has said Sibley and Block refused to "recognize the jurisdiction of the Alabama courts." Block's court-appointed defense attorney, W. David Nichols of Birmingham, said in 1999 that she contends Alabama never became a state again after the Civil War and its courts hold no jurisdiction. The couple met at a Libertarian Party meeting in 1991 and became active in its politics. They took the position that individuals should be free from government intrusions, eventually getting rid of their driver's licenses, car registrations and birth certificates.
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