By Asssociated Press
Atmore AL – A terminally ill killer scheduled for execution Thursday turned to a federal appeals court Tuesday to try to delay his execution for murdering four people in Talladega.
Daniel Lee Siebert's attorneys filed an appeal with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta after U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller refused Siebert's request to delay his execution.
Siebert had argued that Alabama's lethal injection procedure is unconstitutional cruelly and that the drugs used for executions might interact with his cancer medication, causing extreme pain.
The judge sided with the state attorney general's office, which argued that Siebert didn't raise the lethal injection issues until he had exhausted all other appeals and that was too long to wait.
The 11th Circuit gave attorneys until Wednesday morning to file papers in Siebert's appeal, which means a ruling likely wouldn't come until Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning.
Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw said he expects Siebert's case to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court as the inmate seeks to avoid a trip to the execution chamber at Holman Prison scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday.
Death penalty opponents had urged Gov. Bob Riley to delay the execution because Siebert has terminal pancreatic cancer and is only expected to live a few months, but Riley declined Monday. The governor said the state should carry out the jury's wishes that Siebert die for murders that "were monstrous, brutal and ghastly."
Siebert, 53, was sentenced to death for the Feb. 19, 1986, strangulation deaths of Sherri Weathers, 24, and her two sons, 5-year-old Chad and 4-year-old Joey at their Talladega apartment. He was also convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the slaying of Linda Jarman, a neighbor of Weathers, who was killed the same night.
Weathers was a student at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind in Talladega. Siebert had started dating her after he was offered a job in the institute's theater program as a set designer, according to court records.
Siebert also was linked to other crimes inside and outside Alabama.