Alabama schedules execution despite controversy

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Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:26pm ET

By Peggy Gargis

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - Alabama Gov. Bob Riley on Monday rejected calls to postpone this week's execution of convicted serial killer Daniel Lee Siebert despite his terminal cancer and a national controversy over lethal injections.

Siebert's execution, scheduled for Thursday at 6 p.m. CST (2300 GMT), will be the first to go forward since the beginning of a "creeping moratorium" that has halted executions in several U.S. states while the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether lethal injections cause unacceptable pain.

"I would in essence be commuting his sentence to life in prison and that is not the sentence he was given by a jury. His crimes were monstrous, brutal and ghastly," Riley said in a statement dismissing calls to halt the execution because of Siebert's cancer.

The governor added that Alabama had changed its lethal injection procedures to make sure inmates were unconscious when the lethal drugs were injected during executions and that the state would therefore move forward with Siebert's sentence.

Siebert was convicted of the February 19, 1986, murders of two students -- Linda Jarman and Sherri Weathers -- at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind, plus Weathers' two young sons.
He was also convicted of murdering Linda Odum on March 8, 1986. Siebert claims to have murdered several others in various U.S. states.

Executions in at least six U.S. states have been put on hold because of a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a challenge by two Kentucky death-row inmates to the three-drug cocktail used in lethal injections. The challenge says the method could cause excruciating and unnecessary pain.

The only execution that went ahead despite the Supreme Court case was in Texas on September 25 and that was just hours after the court announced its decision to look at the matter.

A Supreme Court decision on the Kentucky case is expected by the middle of next year.

So far this year, 42 people have been executed in the United States, according to the nongovernmental Death Penalty Information Center. Last year, there were 53 executions.

All but one of the 38 U.S. states that carry out the death penalty use lethal injection for executions, as does the federal government.

Lethal injection came under legal scrutiny after botched injections in Florida and California in which it took inmates up to 30 minutes to die.

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Prattville Woman Waits as Killer's Potentially Controversial Execution Nears

Oct 23, 2007 08:18 AM

Governor Riley has cleared the way for Alabama's next execution to take the life of an admitted serial killer.

State prison officials say Daniel Siebert's execution should go forth Thursday evening with no delay.

But lethal injection is under fire in federal and state courts, and that might have an impact here.

WSFA 12 News reporter Chris Holmes spoke with one victim's family and examined the court case that may delay the execution.

It's a story you'll see only on WSFA 12 News and wsfa.com.

Tricia Harris has never seen Daniel Siebert's face and she never wants to.

She's lived with the aftermath of his most heinous crime for the last 21 years, and the only reminder of her sister is Sherri Weathers' artwork.

"She was deaf, couldn't hear or talk, but she was one of a kind.

There was just something about her," Harris said about her sister.

Siebert murdered Weathers, her two young sons and another woman in 1986, and he's confessed to killing even more people nationwide, so there's no doubt in Harris' mind he deserves to die.

"Maybe it will ease some of the pain we're going through," said Harris.

But Siebert is asking both federal district and state Supreme Court judges to stop his execution. He has cancer and is taking pain medication to manage it.

His lawyers claim those drugs would interfere with the lethal injection chemicals and cause him excruciating pain and cruel and unusual punishment.

Siebert's appeal also comes as the U.S. Supreme Court considers a Kentucky case in which two inmates claim the anaesthetic in lethal injections don't render the condemned person unconscious, and when the other two chemicals go into an inmate’s body, they cause undue pain.

So, in response, Alabama has adopted new procedures to check if Siebert is unconscious before those are administered.

'Number one, speaking his name, number two, raking a finger or brushing a finger across his eyelashes, and number three, a pinch on the arm," said Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett. "All of those are generally accepted practices."

The state has not changed the chemicals it will use in Siebert's execution. Tricia Harris says it doesn't matter to her either way.

"What about the pain he caused my sister and her two little boys? Why should anyone care his pain that he's going to be going through," she asked rhetorically. "He never thought about the pain he's put everyone else through."

Sherri Weathers' mother is planning on witnessing Daniel Siebert's execution. Her sister will not.

Instead, Tricia Harris is giving her seat to a New Jersey woman.
Siebert has confessed to killing the woman's daughter after Sherri Weathers' death - but he never went to trial for that case. So now, Alabama's execution is her hope for justice as well.

Siebert's execution is set for 6 p.m. Thursday night pending any late court action, but the state says Siebert has exercised all of those avenues.

His attorneys did not return our calls.