MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama has scheduled a September execution by nitrogen fuel for a person convicted of killing a comfort retailer clerk throughout a 1997 theft.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey set a Sept. 25 execution date for Geoffrey Todd West. West, now 49, is on the dying row for killing Margaret Parrish Berry.
Prosecutors stated West drove to Harold’s Chevron in Attalla with plans to rob the shop the place he as soon as labored. Berry, 33, was shot behind the top whereas mendacity on the ground behind the counter, prosecutors stated.
Court docket information state that $250 was taken from a cookie can that held the shop’s cash.
A jury convicted West of capital homicide and voted 10-2 to suggest a dying sentence. A choose adopted the jury’s suggestion and sentenced West to dying.
Etowah County Circuit Choose William Cardwell in the course of the 1999 sentencing stated it was tough to order the execution of a younger man however stated the taking pictures dying was “clearly deliberate and intentional, carried out execution model.”
Prosecutors additionally charged West’s girlfriend with the slaying. She pleaded responsible and was sentenced to 35 years in jail.
Alabama final yr turned the primary state to hold out an execution with nitrogen fuel, a technique that entails pumping nitrogen by a face masks and depriving the inmate of oxygen.
The tactic has now been utilized in six executions — 5 in Alabama and one in Louisiana. Alabama has scheduled one other nitrogen execution in August.
West was one among a number of Alabama inmates who chosen nitrogen as their most well-liked execution technique after state lawmakers licensed the strategy. He made the choice earlier than Alabama developed procedures for the strategy.
