An advocacy group has sent a petition to Gov. Kay Ivey in an attempt to halt the scheduled Thursday execution of convicted double murderer Jamie Ray Mills after an appeals court declined Tuesday to stay his execution.
Jamie Mills, his wife, JoAnn Mills, and a local drug dealer, Benjie Howe, were arrested and charged with capital murder in the 2004 deaths of Floyd Hill, 87, and his wife Vera Hill, 72.
The Hills were robbed and beaten to death with a machete, a tire iron and a ball peen hammer.
The murder weapons and a pair of work pants containing the Hills' DNA were found in the trunk of Jamie Mills's car.
A jury voted 11-1 to impose the death penalty on Jamie Mills. His execution by lethal injection is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. JoAnn Mills pleaded guilty to murder and received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. The state dropped the case against Howe.
The petition to halt Mills's execution comes from an anti-death penalty group, Death Penalty Action (DPA).
The group cited a pair of lawsuits filed by the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which claims that Mills may have been falsely convicted based on a deal made between prosecutors and Mills's wife.
EJI claims that JoAnn Mills told police in two different statements that she suspected Howe had planted the weapons in their car and that Howe had brought stolen items to their home in the past.
"It was only after police threatened JoAnn's children and falsely claimed that DNA evidence on the murder weapons matched Jamie Mills' that she gave a third statement which was new and different, this time implicating Jamie Mills," EJI said in a statement.
EJI claims new evidence has emerged showing the District Attorney had a secret deal with JoAnn Mills that if she testified against Jamie Mills consistent with her third statement, the state would drop the pending capital murder charges against her and allow her to plead to a sentence with the possibility of parole.
Mills's attorneys filed two suits, one challenging the legality of the state's lethal injection protocol and the other reciting Mills's claim that his wife lied in her allegedly induced testimony against him.
A U.S. District Judge denied the petition for an execution stay, calling Mills's claim about his wife's testimony "meritless," a decision upheld by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday. The court argued that there is no evidence of any agreement between JoAnn Mills and prosecutors. As of the writing of this article, Mills has not appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the appeal is almost certain to come.
Despite the court decisions, DPA argues in its petition that "State prosecutors obtained his conviction illegally by falsely telling the judge and jury that they had not made a deal to secure the testimony of its star witness."
"We are concerned that while the vast majority of states with capital punishment continue on a downward trend of executions, Alabama has continued to go against trend by carrying on with scheduled execution dates," the petition reads.
"Additionally, Alabama has repeatedly shown that it is not capable of carrying out executions, as it is botching its lethal injection process — amounting to cruel punishment and the torture of prisoners."
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email craig.monger@1819news.com.
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