Eric Nance was executed by the State of Arkansas for the murder of Julie Heath
According to court documents Eric Nance would pick up Julie Heath after her car broke down. Julie body would be found over seven miles away. Eric would tell police he accidentally killed Julie however her autopsy would tell a different story
Eric Nance would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Eric Nance would be executed by lethal injection on November 28 2005
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When Was Eric Nance Executed
Eric Nance was executed on November 28 2005
Eric Nance Case
Without uttering any last words, Eric Nance was executed Monday after a delay of more than an hour while a U.S. Supreme Court justice reviewed his appeals.
Nance, 45, remained silent when asked by Department of Correction Director Larry Norris if he wished to make a final statement. Witnesses said his eyes remained closed. A lethal injection of sodium pentathol was administered at 9:24 p.m. A coroner pronounced Nance dead six minutes later.
Nance was convicted of murdering Julie Heath, 18, a Malvern cheerleader, by stabbing her in the throat with a box cutter after coming upon her standing by her broken-down car along U.S. 270 in October 1993.
A little more than a year later, Heath’s mother, Nancy, committed suicide. Heath’s family said they blamed Nance for her death, too, and four family members witnessed the execution at the Cummins Unit in Lincoln County. Afterward, they said they hoped Nance’s death would allow Julie and Nancy Heath to rest in peace. “This was not easy for us. We do feel for his mother and family,” said Johnie Hood, a cousin of Heath. Belinda Crites, another cousin, said Nance’s refusal to speak before dying demonstrated his lack of remorse for his crime. “He couldn’t even say he was sorry,” she said, with teary eyes. “What he went through tonight was painless compared to what he put Julie through.”
The execution was originally scheduled for 8 p.m., but shortly before then U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is in charge of reviewing death penalty cases in several Southern states including Arkansas, asked for a delay to give him time to review four appeals. In those appeals Nance’s attorneys argued that he was mentally retarded and that new DNA technology would exonerate their client of attempted rape, which was considered by a Hot Spring County jury as an aggravating circumstance that merited the death penalty.
Shortly after 9 p.m., the Supreme Court denied all four appeals, just as the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis and the state Supreme Court had done earlier Monday. Earlier in the day, Gov. Mike Huckabee denied Nance’s appeal for clemency, issuing a news release stating that after “prayerful consideration and a thorough review,” he decided not to halt the execution.
Afterward, about two dozen protesters gathered outside the governor’s mansion in Little Rock for a Monday night vigil. Most were members of the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. “They’re killing someone to prove that killing is wrong,” said Dave Rickard, a spokesman for the group.
The last time the U.S. Supreme Court delayed an Arkansas execution was in 1997 when Kirt Wainright was put to death. That delay lasted about 45 minutes, said Dina Tyler, a spokesman for the Department of Correction.
Jennifer Horan, a federal public defender and Robert Rankin, a minister, spent most of the day with Nance. They did not speak to reporters after the execution. Condemned inmates often don’t give final statements before being put to death, said Tyler. “Some give long poems, some say nothing,” she said. Medical personnel were scheduled to conduct a postmortem review late Monday before releasing Nance’s body to his family, Tyler said.
Nance became the 27th person executed in Arkansas since 1990, when the state resumed imposing the death penalty after a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled it constitutional. A state law changed the method of execution from electrocution to lethal injection seven years earlier. Since then, only John Edward Swindler, who was originally sentenced to death by electrocution, has been put to death in that way. Swindler was executed in 1990.
Nance was calm all day, Tyler said, finishing his last meal of a bacon cheeseburger, french fries, ice cream and Coke before 4 p.m. Information for this story was contributed by Jim Brooks of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
http://www.ardemgaz.com/ShowStoryTemplate.asp?Path=ArDemocrat/2005/11/29&ID=Ar00905
