Bobby Swisher was executed by the State of Virginia for the murder of Dawn Snyder
According to court documents Bobby Swisher would kidnap Dawn Snyder from her flower shop at knife point. The woman would be sexually assaulted and murdered
Bobby Swisher would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Bobby Swisher would be executed by lethal injection on July 23 2003
Bobby Swisher Photos
Bobby Swisher FAQ
When Was Bobby Swisher Executed
Bobby Swisher was executed on July 23 2003
Bobby Swisher Case
Bobby Wayne Swisher was executed by injection in Virginia’s death chamber last night, six years after he kidnapped and raped a young mother before slashing her throat and tossing her, still alive, into the frigid waters of the South River. Swisher, a 27-year-old high school dropout, was pronounced dead at 9:05 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, as members of his victim’s family looked on, according to Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor. “I hope you can all find the same peace in Jesus Christ as I have,” Swisher said in his final statement, according to Traylor.
Swisher’s execution had been scheduled for July 1, but Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) delayed it by three weeks to give defense attorneys time to argue before the Virginia Supreme Court that the jury used a verdict form that the court previously found to be defective in a separate case. As defense attorneys and legal experts predicted, the court said it had no authority to consider the claim because Swisher already had exhausted his appeals. Warner had said he would not intervene again if the court did not resolve the issue, and he declined to get involved yesterday.
Defense attorneys Anthony F. King and Steven D. Rosenfield said in a statement last night that Warner “abdicated his constitutional and moral responsibility to do the right thing” in refusing to halt the execution. “Instead, he made a craven and cowardly political calculation that killing Bobby Swisher would advance his political career.” Warner declined to comment on that allegation, according to his spokeswoman, Ellen Qualls.
The defense contends that the jurors who sentenced Swisher to death may not have known that they could have chosen a sentence of life in prison. A spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore (R) said that the state’s verdict form has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and that Swisher’s crimes were so vile that a death sentence was appropriate.
“The facts of this case are almost too horrible to comprehend,” said Tim Murtaugh, Kilgore’s spokesman. According to court documents, Swisher was high on cocaine the evening of Feb. 5, 1997, when he walked into an Augusta County florist shop where 22-year-old Dawn McNees Snyder was working late to prepare for the Valentine’s Day rush. Swisher, then 20, forced Snyder to walk to a field near the South River where he raped her and cut her face and throat. He threw her into the river and later told a friend that he walked along the riverbank asking, “Are you dead yet?”
In a recent telephone interview from a Virginia prison, Swisher said that he had become a born-again Christian and that he had been spending his days reading the Bible. When asked whether he thought his life should be spared, he said: “Some days I do. Some days I don’t.” Swisher refused to talk about the rape and murder. “I remember enough to know I don’t want to remember no more,” he said. “I’ve put up some walls.”
Sandi McNees, Snyder’s mother, who witnessed the execution, said Monday she thinks of her daughter’s suffering each day. McNees said Snyder was a devoted mother who volunteered with the rescue squad and had recently opened the florist shop with a friend. “She packed a lot of life into her short years,” McNees said.
Swisher’s execution was the second in Virginia this year. In April, Earl Conrad Bramblett, who killed a family of four in southern Virginia in 1994, died in the electric chair.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32048-2003Jul22.html?nav=hptoc_m
