I think we need to bring back public hangings. Yes, let’s gust hang the sorry rascal’s right out in broad daylight.
Gov. Bob Riley, who vowed that he would not block the execution of terminally ill killer Daniel Lee Siebert, now must decide what to do after a federal appeals court has blocked it.
Riley spokeswoman Tara Hutchison said the governor was still studying the appellate court's Wednesday ruling to see what the state's next move might be.
But the governor doesn't need more study to determine what he thinks of the court's decision blocking the execution of the convicted killer whose crimes Riley said "were monstrous, brutal and ghastly."
"We respectfully disagree with the court," Hutchison said.
The court, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, reversed U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller in Montgomery late Wednesday afternoon, granting a stay of execution to Siebert, who claimed his cancer medication would interact with a lethal injection, causing him unnecessary pain.
The panel halted the execution until the U.S. Supreme Court hears a lethal injection challenge from Kentucky, after which the district court in Montgomery must reconsider its decision based on any guidance from the high court.
Attorneys on both sides were not immediately available for comment on the decision. Death penalty opponents had asked Riley to delay the execution, saying it was pointless to kill an inmate who was expected to die from pancreatic cancer within the next few months.
But Riley said he believed that to do so would alter the decision of the jury that gave the 53-year-old the death penalty for the 1986 murder of two young women and two children, ages 4 and 5. A fifth murder conviction was added, after Siebert admitted to a previous murder, Riley said. Siebert, who has been on death row for more than 20 years, was to have been executed today at Holman prison near Atmore.
But Wednesday the appeals court agreed with Montgomery attorney Thomas M. Goggans, who has represented Siebert and who argued that the case should be delayed until a ruling in the Kentucky case.
Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw, the state's capital punishment chief, told the 11th Circuit in a filing Wednesday that Siebert's claim about his cancer medication possibly counteracting with a three-drug cocktail used in the execution was never supported by evidence. He also said that Siebert's argument that this could be cruel and unusual punishment paled in comparison to the general public's right to see the verdict carried out.
"Put simply, the public has an interest in seeing Siebert held accountable for his horrific crime," Crenshaw told the 11th Circuit.
Siebert's attorney submitted a letter from an oncologist, Dr. Jimmie Harvey of Birmingham, that said "complications could arise" from the drug combinations.
Crenshaw said Harvey's opinion should not be considered because there was no evidence he had examined Siebert or that any of Siebert's extensive medical records supported his conclusion.