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Execution delayed; state lost evidence
Thursday, July 31, 2008
STAN DIEL
News staff writer
Convicted killer Thomas D. Arthur narrowly escaped death again Wednesday when the Alabama Supreme Court, without comment and on a 5-4 vote, indefinitely delayed his execution. Arthur had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. today.

Convicted of the 1982 contract killing of Troy Wicker Jr. of Muscle Shoals, Arthur twice last year came within a day of execution before stays were granted.

Wednesday's court ruling granting the stay followed a bizarre series of filings in which the state admitted losing key evidence, Arthur's daughter was accused of trying to bribe a witness and the same witness, an admitted conspirator in the murder, offered testimony to debunk the confession this week of another man who insists it was he - not Arthur - who killed Wicker.

Eric Ferrero, spokesman for the Innocence Project, a New York-based nonprofit group that is working with Arthur's defense team, late Wednesday called on Gov. Bob Riley to order DNA testing of evidence in the case and resolve questions about Arthur's guilt.

"The governor has the authority - and the moral obligation - to order DNA testing immediately," Ferrero said.

Efforts to reach Riley for comment Wednesday were not successful.

Judy Wicker, the wife of the murder victim, reaffirmed her trial testimony in an affidavit Wednesday, saying she paid Arthur to kill her husband so she could collect $90,000 in life insurance proceeds.

Bobby Ray Gilbert, who is serving a life sentence at St. Clair Correctional Facility for stabbing another inmate to death in a dispute over a carton of cigarettes, this week claimed he had an affair with Judy Wicker in 1982, and that he committed the crime.

"None of Gilbert's allegations are true," Wicker said in a sworn statement filed Wednesday. "I do not know anyone named Bobby Gilbert. I hired and paid money to Thomas Arthur, not Bobby Gilbert, to kill Troy Wicker."

Also in her affidavit, Judy Wicker claimed that Arthur's daughter, Sherrie Stone, offered to pay her to falsely testify that Arthur is innocent. Stone denied trying to bribe Wicker, but said she told Wicker during a visit last year that "we would be happy to help her family if any money came out of it."

"I told her I wanted her to tell the truth," Stone said Wednesday. Asked whether Stone's contact with Wicker warranted any criminal investigation of Stone, a spokesman for the attorney general's office declined to comment.

Rape kit missing:

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.

Blocked twice in'07:

Arthur came within hours of being executed Sept. 27, but Riley issued a stay so the state could add a step to its execution procedure. Arthur's execution was rescheduled for Dec. 6 and blocked again on Dec. 5 by the U.S. Supreme Court, pending the outcome of a Kentucky challenge to the constitutionality of lethal injection. The court in April upheld lethal injection.

Arthur's execution today would have been the first in Alabama since that ruling and the first following the new lethal injection protocol.

Also late Wednesday, Alabama State Bar President Mark White praised the justices of the state Supreme Court for their courage in voting in favor of a stay, and said reform is necessary to see that capital murder defendants are better represented.

"Our system of justice must find a way to avoid the situation where DNA exonerates a person after execution," he said.

In Wednesday's state Supreme Court ruling, Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb and Justices Champ Lyons Jr., Thomas A. Woodall, Patricia M. Smith and Glenn Murdock voted in favor of the stay. Justices Lyn Stuart, Michael F. Bolin, Harold Frend See Jr. and Tom Parker dissented.

The Associated Press contributed to this report sdiel@bhamnews.com



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