Samuel Flippen was executed by the State of North Carolina for the murder of two year old Britnie Hutton
According to court documents Samuel Flippen would call 911 and report that Britnie Hutton was not breathing well and he believed he had fallen out of her chair. Unfortunately the little girl would pass away and an autopsy would reveal that her pancreas had been cut in half and her liver was torn which doctors believed could not be the result of a fall but of someone striking her in the abdomen
Samuel Flippen would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Samuel Flippen would be executed by lethal injection on August 18 2006
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When Was Samuel Flippen Executed
Samuel Flippen was executed on August 18 2006
Samuel Flippen Case
When the curtains opened, Samuel Flippen smiled at his parents through a thick glass window as he lay on a bed inside the death chamber. He mouthed the words “I love you” three times before closing his eyes. “He’s at peace,” father Carl Flippen said as he hugged his wife. Minutes later, Flippen’s face tightened and his chest convulsed before his body went limp under a blue sheet. He was pronounced dead at 2:11 a.m. Friday.
After spending years on death row for beating his 2-year-old stepdaughter to death, Flippen died as his parents and a dozen other people watched from a small room inside the maximum security prison in Raleigh. He made no final statement, and his parents left without comment.
Tina Gibson, the victim’s mother, also witnessed her former husband’s execution. She said in a written statement that there was no such thing as closure but she would try to move on.
Hours earlier, a flurry of last-minute court fights ended when state judges and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected arguments to stop the execution. A lawsuit filed by 45 members of his family also failed to stall the case, and Gov. Mike Easley declined to grant clemency. A former prosecutor and attorney general, Easley has granted clemency only twice during his two terms in office. “At some time, I think there will be a day when we’ll all agree that the death penalty is not a proper form of punishment,” defense attorney Richard Greene said shortly after the execution. “The death of a child is tragic. This tragedy has been compounded by the execution of Sam Flippen.”
Flippen was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1994 beating death of Britnie Nichole Hutton. Prosecutors said the toddler had extensive bruising and died after Flippen hit her in the abdomen. Flippen said the child fell from a chair.
In its final refusal early Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court turned away a petition by Flippen’s attorneys raising what they said was new evidence in the case. Defense lawyers wanted courts to review whether it was possible that Gibson abused her children. They based their claims on an affidavit from a woman who baby-sat Gibson’s son in 1999 and said the boy was severely bruised from a beating he blamed on his mother. Gibson said the allegations were false and aimed at shifting attention away from Flippen. The high court also declined to stay the execution until courts could hear a separate lawsuit challenging lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment.
The execution brought out Flippen’s family and friends, who stood on one side of the street outside Central Prison with death penalty opponents, and relatives of the victim, who stood on the other side. The two groups did not exchange words. “We came tonight to make sure that everyone knows Britnie is the victim here. Sammy chose to do what he did,” Ben Streett, the girl’s uncle, said as he stood on a street corner blocked by about a dozen prison guards. “He took from our family a precious, precious child.”
