Mario Centobie was executed by the State of Alabama for the murder of a police officer during a prison escape
According to court documents Mario Centobie was serving a forty year sentence for kidnapping his wife and son when he and Jeremy Granberry would escape during a prison transfer. The pair would shoot and injure a police officer during their escape and the following day Centobie would shoot and kill Moody Alabama Officer Keith Turner.
Mario Centobie would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Mario Centobie would be executed by lethal injection on April 28 2005
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Mario Centobie was executed on April 28 2005
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Mario Centobie had no final statement before his execution Thursday for the 1998 murder of a Moody police officer.
Centobie, 39, of Biloxi, Miss., was executed at 6:22 p.m. CST. He stared at the ceiling throughout the execution process, never looking toward the witnesses _ which included the victim’s friends and family, eight uniformed Moody police officers and Centobie’s mother and brother. ”He chose his path,” said St. Clair County District Attorney Richard Minor. ”Under the laws of the state of Alabama, he got his just punishment.”
Centobie’s mother, Tracy Centobie, sat directly in front of the viewing window with another of her sons, who kept one arm around his mother as her body trembled slightly. They refused to comment on the execution. Retired Moody Police Chief Bobby Clements, who was among the witnesses, said he was glad that the ”antiseptic, professional execution” was over. Clements said he hoped it would bring closure to the families involved.
Centobie spent his final day with his own family, meeting with his mother, two brothers and a sister until 4:30 p.m., along with two members of Kairos, a prison ministry group, said Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett. He said Centobie ordered a final meal of barbeque chicken, turnip greens, candied sweet potatoes, egg noodles with butter and cornbread. Centobie left his television and radio to other death row inmates. Centobie earlier rejected an unsolicited attempt to block his execution, saying in an affidavit he preferred death over a life in prison.
Centobie was convicted and sentenced to death for killing Moody police officer Keith Turner in 1998 while a fugitive from Mississippi. The fatal shooting made him the focus of a huge manhunt; he was captured on the Mississippi coast but escaped again from an Alabama jail before being recaptured in Atlanta. At his trial, he admitted shooting the Moody policeman. One shot was to the back of the victim’s head.
In his affidavit rejecting any appeal, Centobie said it was a ”luxury” knowing when he would die because it gave him time to prepare. On death row since Jan. 8, 1999, Centobie in the affidavit said the unsolicited appeal by federal defender Katherine Puzone was adding ”torture and stress” to his final days.
U.S. District Judge David Proctor rejected Puzone’s petition to halt the execution. The Montgomery lawyer, who did not immediately return a phone message Thursday for comment, claimed Centobie was mentally incompetent and unable to make his own decisions and that the state’s lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.
Puzone’s next appeal was rejected Wednesday night by 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. A final appeal was filed Thursday with the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied to stay the execution. Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw responded to Puzone’s attempt by saying that she did not represent Centobie. In the affidavit taken by Crenshaw, Centobie agreed. ”I told her that I did not want her to represent me. I have told my family not to talk to Ms. Puzone because I don’t want her to represent me,” Centobie said.
Centobie took issue with Puzone’s claim that he was mentally ill. ”The only kind of mental condition that I may be suffering from is depression” as a result of being on death row and his crimes, Centobie said.
A year before his turn to crime, Centobie won accolades in Mobile County from sheriff’s officials as a diver for helping rescue victims of the Amtrak disaster on Bayou Canot in 1993 that killed 47 passengers and crew. But Centobie, a former firefighter at Pearl, Miss., and Harrison County, Miss., began serving a 40-year sentence in 1996 for kidnapping his estranged wife and 6-year-old son. He escaped in June 1998 with fellow inmate Jeremy Granberry after overpowering two law officers taking them to a court appearance in Laurel, Miss.
The two officers were found the next day unharmed and shackled to posts at a dilapidated barn. Centobie and Granberry, 19, had fled in their patrol car. After shooting and wounding a Tuscaloosa police officer, Centobie made it to Moody, near Birmingham’s eastern border. When the Moody police officer stopped to investigate a suspicious vehicle on a dead-end street, he was shot to death about 10:30 p.m. on June 27, 1998.
Centobie was caught July 5, 1998, near Biloxi. He escaped again about three months later, with help from a female guard he had charmed at the Etowah County Jail. But he was recaptured in Atlanta with the help of love letters he sent to the guard, Donna Hawkins, who got 18 months in prison for her role.
Centobie was also given three life sentences for wounding the Tuscaloosa police officer _ now-retired Capt. Cecil Lancaster. Lancaster witnessed the execution at the request of the slain officer’s family, including Turner’s widow, Brandy Phillips of Ragland, who was also present. ”We believe this to be a just execution,” Lancaster said. But, he added, ”It won’t bring back the young officer.”