By Associated Press
Atmore AL – A death row inmate trying to halt his scheduled execution Thursday lost a critical decision in a federal appeals court Tuesday.
In a 2-1 ruling, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision that said Luther Jerome Williams waited too late to file a lawsuit challenging Alabama's lethal injection procedures. The 11th Circuit said Williams' real goal is to delay his execution for "many months, if not years."
Williams, 47, of Birmingham, is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Thursday at Holman Prison in Atmore. He was sentenced to death for the robbery and shooting dealt of John Robert Kirk on Jan. 23, 1988, in Tuscaloosa County. Kirk was killed when he stopped his truck along Interstate 59 while driving home from work.
After Attorney General Troy King asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for Williams, he filed a suit in April contending Alabama's lethal injection procedures don't adequately sedate inmates and cause them to suffer pain that is unconstitutionally cruel.
Upholding U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller's decision to dismiss Williams' suit as tardy, the 11th Circuit's majority decision said Williams didn't sue until five years after Alabama began using lethal injection.
"Both the State and the victim's family have a strong interest in the timely enforcement of Williams' death sentence," Judge Joel Dubina wrote in the majority decision.
In dissent, Judge Rosemary Barkett said Williams filed his suit 16 days after the attorney general sought an execution date and that should be considered filing promptly. She said Williams' claim about Alabama's death penalty procedures should be heard in court.
"A civilized and just society would surely want to assure itself that it does not administer executions in a manner that is needlessly painful and unconstitutionally torturous, especially when the solution to provide sufficient anesthetic to safeguard against painful death would appear so simple and easy to accommodate," she wrote.
An attorney for Williams wrote Gov. Bob Riley on Monday, asking him to delay Williams' execution until after a federal judge holds a trial in October on two other inmates' claims that Alabama's lethal injection procedures constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Riley's communications director, Jeff Emerson, said the governor and his legal staff were reviewing the letter Tuesday, but no decision had been announced.
Riley turned down a similar request from death row inmate Darrell Grayson before he was executed July 26 at Holman Prison in Atmore.