Prayers Please for Nashville's Daryl Holton--to be Executed at 1 a.m CST

Daryl Keith Holton did a bad thing--he killed his children and their half sister. He is scheduled to be executed this morning at 1 a.m, just a few hours away.

Please say prayers that he will be spared from this, or if not spared that God will be merciful. I don't know that much about his story. Murder is bad, but execution is bad too. He had a choice to be executed by lethal injection or the electric chair, and he chose the electric chair. Why, I am not sure.

Below is an article from the Nashville Tennessean newspaper. Apparently, the maker of the electric chair is saying how horrible it is. I am embarrassed that we are the only supposedly civilized country that still has the death penalty. But I am convinced we won't for much longer. I think the people of the U.S. will finally learn how horrible and futile the death penalty is, and that it really makes violence in this country worse.

I am proud that a group of lawyers is leading this effort to spare him. I am hoping that I can use my law degree to help abolish the death penalty.


Tuesday, 09/11/07
With hours to go, lawyers try to stop Holton execution

BY LEON ALLIGOOD, Staff Writer

A contingent of 69 lawyers, most of them from the Nashville area, asked the Tennessee Supreme Court today to stop the execution of Daryl Keith Holton.
Holton, 45, is scheduled to be put to death by electrocution at 1 a.m. Wednesday. The Shelbyville, Tenn., man was convicted in 1999 of killing four children, including three sons and the boys’ half-sister.

The attorneys said there is “a very serious question whether electrocution violates the evolving standards of decency under the Eighth Amendment and the Tennessee Constitution.” It is unclear when or if the justices will rule on the matter. The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Petitioners, which included such well-known Nashville lawyers G. Gordon Bonnyman, George Barrett and Cecil Branstetter, asked the high court to either “declare electrocution unconstitutional or order an expeditious review of the constitutionality of electrocution in Tennessee.”The 75-page document included autopsy information from numerous electric chair deaths in other states and mentions concerns of Fred Leuchter, builder of Tennessee’s electric chair. Leuchter said he believes the state’s execution plan will not kill Holton instantaneously.“Leuchter’s concern that Holton will be cooked alive is all too real,” the petition said.For more on this story, check Tennessean.com later tonight and tomorrow.

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Prayers also in remembrance of all the 9/11 victims. I still can't imagine how horrible it would have been to be trapped in the towers and to come to the realization you weren't going to get out.