By Associated Press
Montgomery, AL – The Alabama Supreme Court on Wednesday set execution dates for five death row inmates during each of the first five months of 2009.
James Harvey Callahan is set to be executed Jan. 15, followed by Danny Joe Bradley on Feb. 12. The court scheduled Phillip D. Hallford for execution March 19, Jimmy Lee Dill for April 16, and Willie McNair on May 14.
Last January, Callahan won a reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court a little more than an hour before he faced lethal injection at Holman Prison.
It was not immediately known if appeals could disrupt the 2009 execution schedule.
In April, Attorney General Troy King had asked the court to set execution dates for Dill, Hallford and McNair. King said the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in a Kentucky case removed any question as to the constitutionality of Alabama's lethal injection protocol.
McNair, of Henry County, has been on death row for 17 years for his conviction in the May 21, 1990, slaying of Ella Foy Riley, an elderly widow who lived alone and was attacked in her home.
Dill, convicted in Jefferson County, has been on death row nearly 19 years in the shooting death of Leon Shaw, who died of his injuries on Nov. 22, 1989, after brain surgery.
Hallford, of Dale County, has been on death row nearly 20 years for the April 13, 1986, shooting death of his daughter's boyfriend, 16-year-old Charles Eddie Shannon.
Callahan was sentenced to death for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Jacksonville State University student Rebecca Suzanne Howell on Feb. 4, 1982.
Bradley received a death sentence in Calhoun County for the 1983 murder of Rhonda Hardin in Piedmont.