Louis Jones was executed by the Federal Government for the murder of Tracie McBride
According to court documents Louis Jones would drive onto the Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas where he would kidnap Private Tracie McBride at gunpoint. The woman would be driven to a home where she would be sexually assaulted. Tracie McBride would be then driven to a bridge where she was fatally beaten with a tire iron. McBride body would be found underneath the bridge
Louis Jones would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Louis Jones would be executed by lethal injection on March 18 2003
Louis Jones Photos
Louis Jones FAQ
When Was Louis Jones Executed
Louis Jones was executed on March 18 2003
Louis Jones Case
Without so much as a glance toward the loved ones of the woman he killed, Louis Jones Jr. went to his death Tuesday. Sentenced in 1995 to die for kidnapping, raping and killing 19-year-old Pvt. Tracie Joy McBride, Jones was pronounced dead at 7:08 a.m. after an injection of lethal chemicals at the federal penitentiary. He became the third federal prisoner put to death in 40 years. The others were Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Texas drug lord Juan Raul Garza, both in June 2001.
Jones, a decorated Gulf War veteran, received a fraction of the attention given to those cases. As the death chamber curtain opened at 7 a.m. Tuesday, Jones looked toward the witnesses he had invited and mouthed the words, “I love you.” Draped with a white sheet and strapped to a hospital table, he could see his four supporters and loved ones and the eight members of the media. He could not see the McBride family, hidden behind a one-way glass, and did not acknowledge them.
Jones first recited Psalm 118:18: “The Lord hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over unto death.” In a hoarse voice, he then began singing the hymn “Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross,” repeating the chorus — “In the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever ’til my raptured soul shall find rest beyond the river.” A Bureau of Prisons official cut into his singing to read the charges of which Jones was convicted. Jones kept on singing until U.S. Marshal Jim Kennedy gave the final go-ahead for the execution. The speaker from the death chamber was turned off, but Jones continued to sing.
At 7:06 a.m., an official announced that the first of three drugs had been administered. Jones’ eyes froze open, staring blankly. His lips remained parted, as if halted in midsong. At 7:07 a.m., the second drug was administered. He was pronounced dead a minute later, after the third drug — which stopped his heart — had been administered.
On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to block the execution, and President Bush denied Jones’ clemency petition. The petition claimed Jones suffered brain damage and a change in personality after being exposed to sarin nerve gas during the 1991 war. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Pierce, who prosecuted Jones, dismissed his claims. “It is an insult to the thousands and thousands of people who went over there and did their patriotic duty, came back and are law-abiding citizens,” Pierce said. Jones’ attorney, Tim Floyd, said his client had hoped Bush would intervene. “It is a cruel irony,” Floyd said, “that on the day we mobilize for war in Iraq, the life of Sergeant Louis Jones Jr. — a consummate soldier — was ended at the hands of the government he proudly served.”
Jones spent the early morning meeting with his daughter, 22-year-old Barbara Jones, according to Floyd. She did not witness the execution. His last meal consisted of peaches, nectarines and plums. “He died with a song of praise to God on his lips,” said Floyd, who witnessed the execution.
After the execution, 10 relatives and friends of Tracie McBride, wearing badges with her picture on them, addressed the media. “The tears we have shed today are not for Louis Jones,” said Tracie’s sister, Stacie McBride. “They are for Tracie and for Tracie alone.” Stacie McBride, 24, who hopes to become a criminal prosecutor, said she was shocked that Jones did not apologize to the family. “He did not even acknowledge us,” she said. “The whole thing was very self-serving. It was unbelievable.”
In a statement later read by his attorney, Jones said: “I accept full responsibility for the pain, anguish and the suffering I caused the McBrides for having taken Tracie from them.” Jones served in the Army for 22 years before retiring with the rank of master sergeant in 1993. In 2000, the Pentagon sent Jones a letter telling him he had been exposed to chemical agents when the Army demolished a munitions plant in Khamisiyah, Iraq. Jones’ family will claim his body after the Vigo County coroner releases it.
Barred from burial in a veterans cemetery, Jones will be buried in a Chicago cemetery instead. Fears that McVeigh, a fellow Gulf War veteran, might be buried in a military cemetery led to a 1997 law prohibiting the honor for people convicted of capital crimes. “Now another family has been devastated,” said Jones’ minister, the Rev. J. Jason Fry, an execution witness. “A daughter has lost her father. Grandchildren will never know their grandfather.”
The McBride family said their healing has just begun. “Today was a day of justice for Tracie,” said her mother, Irene McBride, Centerville, Minn. “It’s been a long eight years, and the healing process is not over.”
http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/0/029881-8680-009.html
