Alabama to execute man held on death row for nearly 34 years
By David Beasley
(Reuters) - A 74-year-old man on death row for more than three decades for the 1982 murder of his girlfriend's husband was to be executed in Alabama on Thursday, following three trials and another man's confession to the crime.
Thomas Douglas Arthur shot to death Troy Wicker as he slept, court records showed. Prosecutors said Arthur's girlfriend, Judy Wicker, paid him $10,000 to kill her husband.
Alabama seeks to execute him despite questions about its death penalty process following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in January that struck down a Florida law giving judges powers that juries should wield in deciding death eligibility.
The U.S. Supreme Court has since ordered Alabama to review similar practices in four other cases.
Arthur is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. local time at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. He would be this year's 18th U.S. execution and the state's second, the Death Penalty Information Center said.
Arthur had two convictions overturned on constitutional grounds, including improper introduction of evidence about a prior murder conviction. After his third conviction in 1991, he asked the jury to sentence him to death, seeking more time with his children during prison visits and a private cell.
The killing in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, occurred when Arthur was in a prison work release program after the earlier murder.
Judy Wicker told police a black man raped her, knocked her unconscious and shot her husband at their home. Arthur, who is white, disguised himself as a black man, prosecutors said.
At her trial, Judy Wicker denied Arthur was the killer but later changed her testimony during his trial, Arthur's lawyers said. She was convicted of murder and paroled after 10 years in prison, according to the Alabama Department of Corrections.
In 2008, another inmate, Bobby Ray Gilbert, confessed to killing Wicker but a state court held that Gilbert and Arthur had conspired to submit a fake confession.
Limited crime scene testing found no DNA link to Gilbert or Arthur. Alabama lost a rape kit that might have cleared Arthur, his lawyers said.
Recently, his attorneys asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to consider a firing squad instead of a drug used in Alabama's method of lethal injection, saying it could cause pain and suffering.
On Tuesday, they petitioned the Alabama Supreme Court to stop the execution based on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, calling Alabama's law virtually identical to Florida's. Alabama argued in court filings that it was not.
Both courts turned down his appeals on Wednesday and Arthur's lawyers plan to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
(Reporting by David Beasley; Editing by Grant McCool and Bill Trott)
