"Court Votes to Postpone an Execution in Alabama," is the New York Times report.
Thomas Arthur, a death-row inmate in Alabama, was granted a last-minute reprieve by the State Supreme Court on Wednesday evening after another convict confessed to the murder for which Mr. Arthur was to be executed.
Mr. Arthur, 66, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Thursday at the state prison in Atmore, Ala., for the murder of his lover’s husband in 1982. He was paid $10,000 for killing the husband, Troy Wicker, 35, according to testimony from the woman who said she had hired him, Judy Wicker.
On Monday, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence in Alabama stepped forward with a handwritten affidavit claiming that he, and not Mr. Arthur, was responsible for the murder. The convict, Bobby Ray Gilbert, said in the affidavit that he shot Mr. Wicker in the face at the behest of Ms. Wicker, whom he said he had met in a nightclub.
Lawyers for Mr. Arthur, who was tried three times in the killing, used the new claims as the basis for the last-minute appeal. The first convictions were overturned on legal issues.
On Wednesday evening, the Alabama Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to stay the execution pending further court orders. The court did not announce a reason for the stay.
Mr. Arthur’s lawyers said in legal filings that the state now acknowledges it cannot find what the lawyers say could be a critical piece of evidence if subjected to DNA testing — a rape test performed on Ms. Wicker.
"Execution delayed; state lost evidence," is the article in the Birmingham News.
Arthur's attorneys had asked Jefferson County Circuit Court and the Alabama Supreme Court to delay the execution to allow the testing of DNA evidence, including a rape kit collected at the crime scene. Assistant Alabama Attorney General Clay Crenshaw said in an interview Wednesday, and in an affidavit, that the state can't find that evidence.
The Muscle Shoals Police Department, Colbert County district attorney's office, and the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences all said it's not in their possession, he said.
"All I know is that they don't have it," Crenshaw said.
Attorneys for Arthur called the loss of the evidence "astounding." State and federal courts previously have rejected Arthur's requests for access to the evidence, ruling that even favorable results from DNA tests would not prove his innocence, and that he missed filing deadlines.
Judy Wicker initially told authorities that her husband was killed by a burglar, who raped her. A jury determined, however, that she conspired to have her husband killed. She served 10 years in prison for the crime before recanting her story at Arthur's third trial and testifying that he was the killer. His first two convictions were overturned on technicalities.
Arthur's attorneys have contended that DNA tests not available at the time of his trial could determine if Arthur, Gilbert or another man had sex with Judy Wicker the day of the murder.
Arthur has maintained his innocence since his arrest, and has drawn the support of the human rights organization Amnesty International and the Innocence Project, which advocates DNA testing of evidence in capital murder cases.
The Florence Times Daily has, "Arthur's execution stayed."
Arthur's attorney, Suhana Han, filed in Jefferson County Circuit Court a motion with the confession from another man for Wicker's murder, a motion for a hearing on Arthur's claim of innocence and a request for evidence testing.
"We believe this is the right result, and we look forward to the opportunity to finally litigate Mr. Arthur's claim that he is innocent, and we also hope to finally have opportunity to test DNA evidence," Han said in an interview.
Attorney General Troy King, whose office defends capital murder convictions in appellate court, said he feels bad for the Wicker family. The family three times has "come to the brink of an execution" expecting justice, "only to have someone step in and intervene and take away what the state of Alabama promised them," he said.
The Montgomery Advertiser carries an AP report, "Inmate claims guilt in 1982 killing."
Bobby Ray Gilbert, who is serving life without parole in an unrelated murder, said in his handwritten affidavit, signed Monday, that he was a 17-year-old having a sexual relationship with Wicker's wife when she hired him to kill her husband for $2,000 because he was abusive.
Prosecutors contend Judy Wicker hired Arthur for the killing in an insurance scheme. She was given a life sentence for her part in the crime and paroled after 10 years behind bars.
In his affidavit, Gilbert, now 43, said he first admitted the killing to a friend only last year and attempted to contact Arthur's lawyers without immediate success.
In response, Judy Wicker, in a 3-page sworn statement to King's office, said "none of Gilbert's allegations are true." She said she didn't know Gilbert and never had a relationship with him.
"I hired and paid money to Thomas Arthur, not Bobby Gilbert, to kill Troy Wicker," she stated.
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