Willie Turner was executed by the State of Virginia for the murder of Jack Smith
According to court documents Willie Turner would rob a jewelry store and in the process of the armed robbery would shoot and kill the owner Jack Smith
Willie Turner would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Willie Turner would be executed by lethal injection on May 25 1995
Willie Turner Photos
Willie Turner Case
A barber who had been scheduled for death six times in 15 years was executed by lethal injection tonight after the courts had rejected his argument that his repeated trips to the “death house” were unconstitutional.
The 49-year-old prisoner, Willie Lloyd Turner, had said he knew the death warrant by heart because his execution had been repeatedly scheduled and then, as a result of his appeals, postponed by the courts. He said his 15 years on death row, the most of any condemned Virginian, violated the Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
Four times Mr. Turner was moved to the death house, where the prisoner lives in a cell next to the execution chamber for at least two weeks before a sentence is carried out. “Even a cat has only nine lives,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “Enough is enough. This is psychological torture.”
Mr. Turner was pronounced dead at 9:08 P.M. at the Greensville Correctional Center here. Witnesses said his last words referred to the two intravenous lines dripping lethal chemicals into his arms. “When is it going to start?” he asked, his lips twitching. “Will I feel it?”
Mr. Turner was convicted of shooting a jewelry store owner to death in 1978 in the town of Franklin. Prosecutors said he shot the jeweler, W. Jack Smith Jr., in the head after tripping an alarm, then fired twice into the victim’s chest as he lay behind the counter.
Five times, once with four hours to spare, Mr. Turner won stays of execution. But Federal courts rebuffed his final appeal, ruling that the delays were a result of his own litigiousness. Judge James C. Cacheris of Federal District Court in Alexandria wrote that it would be “a strange twist of logic” to reward a prisoner for repeatedly futile appeals.
The United States Supreme Court ruled against Mr. Turner’s last appeal this afternoon. Only Justice John Paul Stevens dissented.
Until January, when Virginia’s condemned were given the choice of lethal injection, all executions in the state were by electrocution. In Mr. Turner’s unpublished autobiography, “My Times in the Death House,” he described the “sickening odor of burnt flesh and disinfectant.”
“Two times, the guards have gone out of their way to show me the electric chair,” he wrote. “As your date gets closer, the execution squad practices more and more. They test the electric chair. Because it is in the room right next door, I could hear it crack and hum.
Opponents of the death penalty said Mr. Turner was one of several prisoners throughout the country who had filed new appeals after being given hope by an April ruling of the Supreme Court. In that ruling, the Justices granted a stay of execution to a Texan who argued that his 17 years on death row violated the Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment. But that case, for which a hearing is set in a Federal court in Midland, Tex., next month, involves execution delays that resulted largely from action by the state, not the defendant.
Willie Turner‘s case went more than 20 rounds in state and Federal courts. The Virginia Attorney General’s office estimated that the case had consumed 10 to 15 percent of a state lawyer’s time for 15 years.
Kika Matos of the N.A.A.C.P. Capital Punishment Project said Mr. Turner’s case demonstrated a flaw in the system. “There are procedural safeguards these inmates are entitled to,” she said. “But imagine the agony of being one of these condemned prisoners the guards call ‘dead men walking
