James Tucker was executed by the State of South Carolina for two murders
According to court documents James Tucker would force his way into the home of Rosa Lee Dolly Oakley. When someone rang the doorbell Tucker would follow Oakley out into the driveway where she began to scream for help and would be fatally shot by Tucker
James Tucker would stay ahead of the police search and broke into the home of Shannon Mellon’ who would be bound by tape. Tucker would rob the home before fatally shooting the woman
James Tucker would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
James Tucker would be executed by way of the electric chair on May 28 2004
James Tucker Photos
James Tucker Case
James Neil Tucker, who killed two women while looking for money 12 years ago, has been put to death in South Carolina’s electric chair.
Moments before his death, Tucker expressed remorse in a statement read by his lawyer Teresa Norris. “To those I have harmed: my abject apologies and regrets. I am ashamed,” the statement read. Then a brown hood was placed over Tucker’s head and an electrician checked the long, black cord that ran from the ceiling of the death chamber to the wooden chair. The electrician nodded at the warden and about 30 seconds later, a breaker fell with a thump. Tucker’s body jerked upward, then the breaker was shut off and he slumped forward in the restraints. A few seconds later, the breaker thumped again and more current was sent for about two minutes. Tucker’s body had no reaction. He was officially pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m.
Tucker was executed for killing 54-year-old Rosa Lee “Dolly” Oakley in her Sumter County home in June 1992. He stole $14 from Oakley, then shot her twice in the head. Tucker said he needed money to help his pregnant wife. He also was sentenced to death for killing 21-year-old Shannon Mellon in Calhoun County six days later. Mellon’s hands and legs were bound and she was shot three times in the head. Tucker took her car and $20.
Tucker, 47, is the first inmate in the nation to go to the electric chair since Earl Bramblett was executed in Virginia in April 2003, and the first to be electrocuted in South Carolina since 1996. The state allows inmates to choose lethal injection, but Tucker’s lawyer said he felt if he made a choice, he would be condoning his own death.
Oakley’s husband and Mellon’s father watched Tucker’s execution. Neither showed emotion as Tucker died, and they didn’t talk to reporters after the execution. Witnesses were taken to the death chamber about five minutes before Tucker was scheduled to die. Behind a black curtain, prison officials took him the short distance from his cell to the chair.
Muffled voices could be heard as they strapped Tucker in. Then his minister began praying with him and they both sang a hymn about how Jesus is always with someone no matter what happens. Then pastor Eddie Norris said, “Glory, hallelujah, amen?” “Glory, hallelujah,” Tucker said.
Friday’s execution ended a life of crime for Tucker. He was sent to an adult prison at 17 for raping an 8-year-old girl and an 83-year-old woman in Utah. He escaped three times from prison while serving that sentence from 1974 to 1991. Last month Tucker tried to escape from death row by threatening a guard with a safety razor blade melted into a toothbrush. He was recaptured minutes later.
James Tucker said his stepfather abused him and he was raped by an older prisoner while he was in a psychiatric ward as a young teen, according to Orangeburg lawyer Jay Jackson, who defended Tucker in the Mellon case. “Everything was about him and about his needs. And if his needs were averse to yours, then tough,” Jackson said earlier this week. “He just had no sympathy for how his behavior would affect you.”
Tucker is the 247th inmate to die in South Carolina’s electric chair, which was built in 1912. But he is only the second to be electrocuted since the state first offered lethal injection in 1995. Friday’s execution was the fourth in South Carolina this year and the 32nd since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
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