Christopher Brooks was executed by the State of Alabama for the sexual assault and murder of Jo Deann Campbell
According to court documents Jo Deann Campbell would be attacked by Christopher Brooks who would then sexually assault and murder the woman
Christopher Brooks would be executed on January 21 2016 by lethal injection
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When Was Christopher Brooks Executed
Christopher Brooks was executed on January 21 2016
Christopher Brooks Case
Alabama death row inmate Christopher Eugene Brooks was executed Thursday night for the 1992 slaying of a Homewood woman after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his request for a stay of execution.
Christopher Brooks was pronounced dead at 6:38 p.m. in the execution chamber at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. He was the 57th
death row inmate executed in Alabama since executions resumed in 1983 after an unofficial more than decade-long nationwide moratorium ended. He was the first person executed in Alabama since 2013.
Christopher Brooks final words included: “I hope this brings closure to everybody.” To the two friends, a spiritual advisor, and his lawyers who witnessed the execution he said they were a “Godsend” and that “I will take you with me in my heart”… “I’ll see you soon. Bye. I love y’all.”
Christopher Brooks, however, did not admit guilt in his statement.
After he was brought into the execution chamber, the curtain opened to witnesses at 6:06 p.m. and closed at 6:30 p.m. The exact time of death was 6:38 p.m.
A prison chaplain held Brooks’ hand and appeared to pray with him as the first drug, a sedative, was administered. Brooks’ eyes closed, his mouth gaped open and his breathing slowed. By 6:19 p.m. there was no detectable breathing. A prison captain pinched his upper left arm and pulled open his eyelid to check for consciousness before the final two drugs were administered.
After the execution Alabama Prison Commissioner Jeff Dunn said the execution with the controversial sedative drug midazolam “went exactly as planned.”
Christopher Brooks did not appear to struggle during the administration of the drugs. His attorneys and other inmates had claimed the first drug in the cocktail does not put the condemned inmate in deep enough sleep to prevent pain when the other two drugs are administered.
Dunn said that there are no other executions currently planned, but the prison system does have the drugs available to conduct more. He said the same drug combination has been used in other states.
Dunn also read letters from victim Jo Deann Campbell’s two sisters and mother, all of whom witnessed the execution.
Mona Campbell, her mother, said the execution does not give her closure and will not bring back her youngest daughter. She said she hoped Brooks had “made peace with God.” Jo Deann’s sister, Fran Romano and Corinne Campbell also issued statements.
“Just as God forgives me for my sins I pray for mercy for this man’s soul,” Corinne wrote.
During the execution Brooks’ spiritual adviser held a Bible and read quietly from it.
Christopher Brooks kept his focus primarily on the witness box where his friends, three attorneys, and the five media representatives sat. He glanced once to the victims’ family witness box when he hoped everyone would get closure.
Minutes before he was to die, word spread that the U.S. Supreme Court had denied Brook’s request to stay the execution. Justice Stephen Breyer dissented from the ruling.
Dunn said prison officials were notified of the justices’ decision at 5:55 p.m., five minutes before the execution was scheduled to begin.
“Christopher Eugene Brooks was sentenced to death in accordance with Alabama’s procedures, which allow a jury to render an “advisory verdict” that “is not binding on the court,” the dissent states.
“Moreover, we have recognized that Alabama’s sentencing scheme is “much like” and “based on Florida’s sentencing scheme,” Breyer wrote.
The request for the stay was made to Justice Clarence Thomas. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg concurred with Thomas’ decision to deny the stay.
Christopher Brooks, 43, was convicted in the December 1992 rape and murder of 23-year-old Jo Deann Campbell. Investigators linked Brooks to the crime through DNA, fingerprints, and Campbell’s car and other items taken from her Homewood apartment, including a credit card he had used. Her partially clothed body had been found under her bed and she had been beaten with a barbell.
No one protested the execution in an area set aside for vigils, according to AL.com reporter Casey Toner. Other protests were held around the state, including a small gathering of death penalty opponents in a Birmingham park.
Jo Deann Campbell’s sister, Corrine Campbell, her sister and her mother witnessed the execution in Atmore.
“She was young, energetic, bubbly, hard-working. The young lady had no enemies,” she told The Associated Press.
Campbell had met Christopher Brooks in upstate New York in 1991 when they both worked at separate camps in the Adirondak Mountains. Campbell’s family said the two did not date and that she was surprised when he showed up at Chili’s where she worked as a training manager on Dec. 30, 1992. Campbell had told a friend that she was going to let him, and one of his friends, sleep on her floor.
Christopher Brooks maintained his innocence. The friend was also initially charged, but later the capital murder charge was dropped and he pleaded guilty to a credit card fraud charge after investigators found no forensics evidence and he passed a lie detector test.
Alabama prisons spokesman Bob Horton this afternoon gave a rundown of Brooks’ activities in the hours leading up to the execution.
At 6:10 a.m., Christopher Brooks was delivered a breakfast of grits, biscuit, sausage, jelly and cheese but he didn’t eat it. At 8:40 a.m. Brooks visited with two friends. At 9:50 a.m. he met with his spiritual adviser. At 2:24 p.m. he began meeting with his attorneys and at 4:15 p.m. that ended.
Christopher Brooks requested two peanut butter cups and a Dr. Pepper for his last meal. He did eat that meal.
Holman prison’s warden by law is the one who administers the drugs, Horton said. Carter Davenport is currently the warden.
Christopher Brooks’ has been in a holding cell outside the execution chamber since Tuesday, Horton said.
The warden and corrections commissioner Jeff Dunn were said to have met with the victim’s family at 4 p.m. at the Fountain Training Center at the prison. Three of Brooks’ attorneys, two friends and a spiritual adviser were to witness the execution for Brooks. The state was to have the commissioner, an associate commissioner, a deputy commissioner, an inspector, and general counsel present.
U.S. District Court Judge Keith Watkins on Thursday afternoon denied a request by Brooks’ attorneys to allow them to have cell phones in the witness room for the execution so they could have access to the courts if an issue arose. The judge said he was unpersuaded by their arguments and also said their request was filed too late.
The judge in a separate order also denied Brooks’ attorneys an opportunity to witness the placement of the IVs into him that will be used for injecting the drugs. But Watkins did grant Brooks’ attorneys request to preserve all logs kept by the execution team, printouts or data generated by the EKG monitor and heart monitor. The judge said he would decide later whether the order to maintain those records will be extended, modified, or vacated
Christopher Brooks’ execution was the first since Andrew Lackey on July 25, 2013 and the first since Alabama changed its three-drug lethal injection cocktail. Inmates contend in pending lawsuits the drug combination is unconstitutional and will cause inmates to suffer.
“Alabama intends to use an execution protocol on Brooks that has never been used in Alabama and that is the subject of two pending federal court cases,” Brooks’ attorneys argue in its request for a stay to Justice Thomas. “Brooks should not be the subject of Alabama’s experiment to see if it can carry out an execution using this protocol while the very validity of the protocol is at issue in ongoing federal court proceedings.
“Christopher Brooks would suffer the most irreparable harm imaginable if Alabama was permitted to carry out his execution,” Brooks’ attorneys stated. “This Court should grant a stay of execution.”
The Alabama Attorney General’s Office told the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday that it was time to carry out the death sentence against Brooks.
“Brooks raped and murdered Jo Deann Campbell on December 31,1992, and,her family has been waiting for justice for more than twenty-three years,” according to the Alabama Attorney General’s brief to the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday. “As this Court has recognized, ‘the state and the victims of crime have an important interest in the timely enforcement of a sentence.'”
The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the Alabama Supreme Court on Tuesday denied requests for a stay of execution. Both decisions were appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Brooks’ only other chance was Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, who did not halt the six other executions that have taken place during his administration. Birmingham Catholic Bishop Robert J. Baker on Wednesday sent a letter to Bentley asking the governor to commute Brooks’ sentence.
Brooks was one of 187 inmates on Alabama Death Row. Twenty-two have served longer than Brooks on death row.
Alabama changed its drug combination for executions in 2014 after it and other states reported they could no longer find supplies of the drugs it had used in the past, mainly because manufacturers did not want their drugs used in executions.
The new drug protocol calls for an injection of 500 milligrams of midazolam hydrochloride as a sedative followed by 600 milligrams of rocuronium bromide to stop breathing, and then 240 “milliequivalents” of potassium chloride to stop the heart.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June had ruled the use of midazolam was not unconstitutional in executions.
In his federal appeals Brooks’ attorneys alleged that the use of midazolam as the sedative and first drug administered in Alabama’s new drug combination “cannot reliably produce and sustain a deep, coma-like state” and could cause him to feel the pain of the other two drugs that follow. His attorneys cited midazolam’s use in a few botched executions.
Brooks’ attorneys had argued that hearings on federal lawsuits filed by other inmates are set for April and his execution should be stayed at least until them.
Brooks attorneys, in a separate filing, also appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court that Brooks’ execution should be stayed because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week finding that Florida’s system allowing judges to override jury recommendations in capital murder cases is flawed. Alabama has a similar override law.
In an opinion issued last week,Justice Sotomayor wrote on behalf of all but two justices that the sentencing scheme in Florida gives too much power to judges. It means the jury plays little more than an advisory role because a judge can weigh different factors and reach a different conclusion, she wrote.
The Alabama Attorney General’s Office stated in a brief Wednesday that the U.S. Supreme Court did not mention Alabama’s law in that decision and that the court had previously upheld Alabama’s law.
“Second, and more importantly, unlike in Florida, the jury in Brooks’s case specifically found the aggravating circumstances necessary to impose the death penalty. Specifically, the jury’s unanimous guilty verdicts of capital murder during the course of a robbery, burglary, and rape, proved the existence of an aggravating circumstance under Alabama law,” according to the AG’s brief.
Brooks’s request for a stay also should be denied because the decision in the Florida case is not retroactive, so it doesn’t apply to him anyway, the AG’s office wrote.
Brooks’ attorneys had argued that the judge who sentenced him to death considered aggravating evidence which had not been presented to the jury.
The jury, after considering the evidence and various factors, had voted 11 to 1 for a recommendation of death in Brooks’ case and the judge went along with that recommendation. At least 10 members of the jury are required for a death sentence recommendation under Alabama law
https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2016/01/christopher_brooks_execution_s.html
