By Alabama Public Radio
Tuscaloosa AL – Alabama's longest serving inmate on death row faces execution tonight (5/27/10). Thomas Whisenhant was sentenced to death for killing a convenience store clerk in Mobile County in 1976. Cheryl Payton was a 23-year-old mother of two, working in a convenience store in Theodore, when she was abducted, assaulted and fatally shot by Whisenhant. Whisenhant was convicted a year later in 1977. That conviction was overturned because the prosecution gave the jury misleading information in its closing statements. He was convicted again in 1981, but his death sentence was overturned, again, because of improper closing statements by the prosecution. Whisenhant's death sentence was reaffirmed in 1987 and he's been on death row since. Most of his appeals have been exhausted, and no new motions have been filed to block his execution. Whisenhant is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 this evening.