[Tennessee] Death row inmate gets execution stay

AP ^ | 5/11/6

[SmithL]

NASHVILLE — Death row inmate Sedley Alley received a stay of execution Thursday from a federal judge.

Alley was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday for the 1985 rape and murder of 19-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Suzanne M. Collins at the Millington Naval Air Station outside Memphis.

Federal Judge Aleta Traugher issued the stay because for Alley, who is challenging the state’s lethal injection procedure.

A ruling on whether the drugs used in lethal injection violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment is pending in the U.S. Supreme Court.

[SmithL]

Justice delayed - we wouldn't want to cause any discomfort for a rapist/murderer.

[Semper Paratus]

Next, dying of old age in prison is cruel and unusual.

[Paleo Conservative]

Alley was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday for the 1985 rape and murder of 19-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Suzanne M. Collins at the Millington Naval Air Station outside Memphis.

She would have been 40 this year.

[RDTF]

maybe beheading is more humane?

[SmithL]

In 1998, Aleta Grillos Trauger ’68 became the first female U.S. District judge in the Middle District of Tennessee.

After graduating from Cornell, Trauger taught in England for a year and in Tennessee for two years. Realizing education was not her calling, she enrolled in law school at Vanderbilt University and graduated in 1976.

She worked as a law clerk and later as an associate at a small Nashville firm from 1974 o 1977. She then went to work as an assistant U.S. attorney for five years in Nashville and Chicago and in 1981 prosecuted former Tennessee Gov. Ray Blanton for selling liquor licenses while he was in office. She served as Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen’s chief of staff for a year in the early 1990s.

Trauger met Vice President Al Gore when they attended Vanderbilt Law School in the mid-1970s, and she was a Clinton-Gore delegate in 1992. She was appointted as a U.S. Bankruptcy judge in 1993, and in October 1998, the Senate approved President Clinton’s nomination that made her a U.S. District judge.

[Red Badger]

21 freakin' years............

[American Quilter]

Okay, fine. Execute him in the same manner in which he murdered Suzanne. Let's see him try to claim THAT'S cruel and unusual.

[mtbopfuyn]

I'm with you. An eye for an eye.

[ErnBatavia]

http://www.deadmaneating.com/

[HipShot]

Lest we forget:

Case history here.

[Rummyfan]

This question is ludicrous on its face, yet the anti-capital punishment crowd is shopping it around the nation. We used to hang people, electrocute people, gas people. Are those now unlawful as they would be deemed 'cruel and unusual'? How about the judge spends some personal time with the murderer and then she can define what is and is not cruel and unusual!

[Rummyfan]

Another Clinton suck-up!

[newzjunkey]

I thought Tennessee would be immune to this kind of bogus attempt. I expect it here in CA but in the South? We're in BIG trouble in this country.

[yellowdoghunter]

To think of her horrifying last moments is just too much. And yet we are supposed to have sympathy for someone who gets to lay down, close his eyes, and go to sleep?

Give me a break!

[newzjunkey]

Trauger met Vice President Al Gore when they attended Vanderbilt Law School in the mid-1970s, and she was a Clinton-Gore delegate in 1992. She was appointted as a U.S. Bankruptcy judge in 1993, and in October 1998, the Senate approved President Clinton’s nomination that made her a U.S. District judge.

Explains everything.

[newzjunkey]

cruel and unusual punishment

Amazing how far we've come when this used mean being drawn and quartered while still alive. Now we've got people saying it means putting a murderer to sleep!

[HipShot]

I'm with you and American Quilter on this one. What he did goes beyond horror.

It's way beyond me to show him any kind of mercy. I'm not man enough I suppose.

[Methadras]

this is why the death penalty has been rendered useless and without teeth... it is because that someone on death row can rot there pushing appeal after appeal that get nowhere and only prolongs the sword of justice to prevail, only at the 11th hour to have a stay of execution exercised by a federal judge and render the whole thing moot...

either get rid of the death penalty altogether and render life without possibility of parole, or rework the death penalty system to allow a maximum of 2 years on death row, giving enough time for the defendants legal team to scrounge up a decent appeal with any new or pending evidence of their clients innocence... it should also be mandated that federal judges cannot interfere in this particular states rights issues, without compelling evidence to the contrary that the defendant did not commit the crime or there was mitigating circumstances that would lead to a stay of execution...

otherwise, after two years it should be lights out... this is just absolute crap...

[American Quilter]

It's way beyond me to show him any kind of mercy. I'm not man enough I suppose.

Not true. To show this man mercy would be weakness, not strength. It would also sanction his evil. Nothing wrong with you!

[Dick Vomer]

Sedley Alley, a civilian married to a military person, abducted nineteen-year old Lance Corporal Suzanne Marie Collins while she was jogging near Millington Naval Base in Millington, Tennessee late in the evening of July 11, 1985. He attacked and murdered her and left her body in a field.

Two marines jogging near where Suzanne was abducted heard her scream and ran toward the sound. However, before they reached the scene, they saw Alley's car drive off. They reported to base security and accompanied officers on a tour of the base, looking for the car they had seen. Unsuccessful, they returned to their barracks.

Soon after returning to their quarters, however, the marines were called back to the security office, where they identified Alley's car, which had been stopped by officers. Alley and his wife gave statements to the base security personnel accounting for their whereabouts. The security personnel were satisfied with Alley's story, and Alley and his wife returned to their on-base housing.

Suzanne's body was found a few hours later, and Alley was immediately arrested by military police. He voluntarily gave a statement to the police, admitting to having killed Collins but giving a substantially false - and considerably more humane - account of the circumstances of the killing. Sedley Alley's wife left him after getting in a fight. He drank two six-packs and a bottle of wine.

He told authorities that he had gone out for more liquor when his car accidentally hit 19-year-old Suzanne Collins as she jogged near the Millington Naval Base. Alley's story is that he accidentally killed the young woman -- who was due to graduate from aviation school the next day.

However, an autopsy revealed that her skull had been fractured with a screwdriver. After she died, a tree limb was rammed into her vagina so hard that it entered her abdomen and lacerated one of her lungs. Alley tried to convince a jury that he had multiple personality disorder.

Alley was convicted on March 18, 1987 of murder in the first degree and was sentenced to death. He was also convicted of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated rape, for which he received consecutive forty-year sentences. He was scheduled to die by electrocution May 2, 1990, but was reprieved indefinitely by the state Court of Criminal Appeals.

Judge Penny White made that decision, and she paid for it with her career. She was ousted from the bench during a fierce political campaign that portrayed her as soft on crime.