According to court documents Abdullah Hameen was on parole for murder when he would engage in a drug deal with Troy Hodges. When an argument would break out Abdullah Hameen would fatally shoot Troy Hodges
Abdullah Hameen would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Abdullah Hameen would be executed by lethal injection on May 25 2001
Abdullah Hameen Photos
Abdullah Hameen FAQ
When Was Abdullah Hameen Executed
Abdullah Hameen was executed on May 25 2001
Abdullah Hameen Case
Abdullah T. Hameen, a career criminal who killed 2 men before embracing Islam and preaching nonviolence while on death row, was executed early today. Hameen, born Cornelius Ferguson, received a lethal injection at Delaware Correctional Center just after 12 a.m. as punishment for the 1991 murder of Troy Hodges during a drug deal at a Claymont mall. Hameen, 37, was pronounced dead at 12:07 a.m. He was the 13th inmate executed by Delaware since the state resumed executions in 1992.
Hameen’s execution came after several appeals were filed Thursday by his attorneys and supporters seeking to have his death sentence commuted to life in prison. Those appeals were rejected by the state superior and supreme courts. Hameen and his supporters argued that society would have been better served by letting him spend the rest of his life in prison. They claimed Hameen had become a model inmate and mentor to other prisoners and at-risk youths. But prosecutors and some members of the state Board of Pardons were troubled by his long and violent criminal career, during which he killed 2 men and shot and seriously wounded 2 others. Some also doubted that his conversion from hardened criminal to peace-loving activist was genuine, noting prison writings in which he blasted the criminal justice system as racist and oppressive.
After 2 hearings and hours of deliberations over 4 days, the pardons board on Wednesday decided not to recommend that Gov. Ruth Ann Minner commute Hameen’s sentence to life in prison without parole. Board members concluded that Hameen had expressed true remorse for his crimes and had made genuine attempts at rehabilitating himself and others. But they did not find sufficient justification to overturn a jury’s unanimous recommendation that he be put to death. Late Thursday morning, Superior Court Judge Richard Gebelein, who followed the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Hameen to death in 1992, denied a defense motion asking him to reconsider. Also Thursday, Judge Gebelein and the state Supreme Court denied requests for a stay of execution filed by Hameen’s spiritual adviser, who claimed that Hameen’s religious rights were being violated. The Board of Pardons has never recommended clemency for a death row inmate but said Hameen’s argument could not be easily dismissed and there may come a day when a death penalty case merits a commutation.
Thursday afternoon, a handful of Hameen’s supporters held a protest rally outside Legislative Hall, vowing to hold the state responsible for his death. Also Thursday, Judge Gebelein denied a motion filed by the Wilmington- based North American Islamic Foundation to halt the execution. Ismaa’eel Hackett, director of the foundation and a spiritual adviser to Hameen, said Hameen’s religious rights were being violated. God states that a Muslim cannot be put to death for killing a disbeliever, Mr. Hackett said. Based on those premises, we have to say that Abdullah Hameen should not be put to death. Judge Gebelein ruled that the foundation had no standing to seek a stay of execution. Mr. Hackett filed a similar motion with the state Supreme Court, which affirmed Judge Gebelein’s denial.
Hameen becomes the 32nd condemned individual to be put to death this year in the USA, and the 715th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
David Dawson was executed by the State of Delaware for the murder of Madeline Kisner
According to court documents David Dawson had escaped from a Delaware prison and had broken into the home of Madeline Kisner. Once inside he would bound and gag Madeline Kisner before fatally stabbing her
David Dawson would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
David Dawson would be executed by lethal injection on April 26 2001
David Dawson Photos
David Dawson FAQ
When Was David Dawson Executed
David Dawson was executed on April 26 2001
David Dawson Case
David F. Dawson was put to death early today for the 1986 murder of a Kenton woman. Dawson, 46, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 12:05 a.m. at Delaware Correctional Center. He spent his last hours sleeping, eating, reading, writing letters, talking to Department of Correction staff and visiting with his family and friends and his spiritual adviser and attorney. On April 17, Dawson admitted to stabbing Madeline M. Kisner to death after he and 3 other inmates escaped from DCC in December 1986. The confession came during an unsuccessful commutation bid before the Board of Pardons and followed 14 years of denials and appeals.
Dawson separated from his fellow escapees and entered Mrs. Kisner’s Kenton-area home, where he bound and gagged the 44-year-old bookkeeper before stabbing her 12 times in the chest and neck. When asked during the pardons hearing why he killed Mrs. Kisner, Dawson blamed drugs and alcohol. Using Mrs. Kisner’s car to flee, he spent that night drinking in 2 Milford-area bars. He was captured the next day near Lincoln after falling asleep in another stolen car. The other escapees – Mark McCoy, Richard Irwin and Larry Nave – were later arrested in St. George, Utah, and were not involved in murdering Mrs. Kisner.
The jury hearing the case in June 1988 spent three hours deliberating before finding Dawson guilty of 1st-degree murder. The 8 men and 4 women then took an hour and a half to unanimously recommend a death sentence. Calling Dawson a “depraved character,” Superior Court Judge Henry du Pont Ridgely followed that recommendation and originally sentenced him to die later that year. That date and 3 others -in 1993, 1994 and March -were postponed through a series of appeals. When Dawson and the 3 other inmates broke out of prison in 1986, he had 6 years left to serve on a 12-year sentence for theft and other charges. The escape from DCC was not Dawson’s 1st. He escaped 3 times from a maximum security juvenile facility before 1973. In July 1975, Dawson fled through a fence at the pretrial annex building near Prices Corner. In February 1983, he walked away from the Plummer Center in Wilmington, turning a one-day furlough into a 4-month excursion.
In his hearing with the Board of Pardons last week, Dawson said he had gone to school in Milford and Harrington. During the hearing, Deputy Attorney General John Williams said Dawson had an “extensive” criminal record. Mr. Williams said Dawson was jailed for burglary at age 11. He was committed to Ferris School at 13 in 1968, his 1st of 5 trips to the school. Before he was an adult, Dawson was charged with 3 escapes and 2 attempted escapes. His adult record, according to Mr. Williams, included 14 felony convictions and adult escapes.
There are 15 men on death row in Delaware. Dawson becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Delaware and the 12th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in1992. Dawson becomes the 27th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 710th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
According to court documents Brian Steckel met Sandra Long a week before the murder. He would go into her home and would sexually assault the woman before murdering her. After he was arrested Brian Steckel would confess to several other murders however it was later proven he could not have committed them
Brian Steckel would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Brian Steckel would be executed by lethal injection on November 4 2005
Brian Steckel Photos
Brian Steckel FAQ
When Was Brian Steckel Executed
Brian Steckel was executed on November 4 2005
Brian Steckel Case
Police and prosecutors say Brian “Red” Steckel was a serial killer who just never got the chance to kill again. Steckel apparently saw himself the same way. Before he raped Sandra Lee Long, then set fire to her apartment in 1994, he boasted to strangers that he’d killed people in other states and that his tattoos came from prison.
After his arrest, he confessed to several murders he had nothing to do with, even offering what appeared to be a signature detail — bite marks on the buttocks. Authorities, however, were never able to connect Steckel to any other killings and eliminated him as the killer in many of the cases. Steckel is set to die Friday by lethal injection for Long’s murder.
Former New Castle County detective John Downs, who investigated the case, said he believes Steckel “thought about committing a murder for a long time. We got him relatively early in his career. This was something he’d worked at.” In interviews with Steckel, Downs, who is now a prosecutor, said he detected “a sense of excitement that he had done what he dreamed about.” Even attorney Joseph Gabay, who defended Steckel at trial, said Steckel “had all the triggers, all the mechanisms” early in his life that turn a person violent. Gabay said Steckel seemed to like the attention his crimes brought, and his horrendous behavior was a twisted way of exercising control. “He liked people to be afraid of him.”
If Steckel had not been caught, Gabay believes he would have killed again. Hours after he tortured Long and set fire to her unit in the Driftwood Club apartments in Prices Corner, Steckel called The News Journal to brag, giving himself the name “The Driftwood Killer.” He also said he was going to kill again, and gave the newspaper a prospective victim’s name — which was given to police. Using that information, police focused on Steckel as the likely killer of Long and hours later, New Castle County police Patrolman Michael McGowan picked up Steckel, who was drunk, as he walked down Union Street in Wilmington.
Imposing size
Steckel is an imposing figure, standing 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighing a lean 195 pounds at the time of his arrest. He’d been a furniture mover and was quite strong. Several months before he killed Long, he got into a fight with a bartender on Union Street and flattened him with a single punch. Even though Steckel was clearly drunk, on Sept. 3, 1994, when the officer encountered him on Union Street, McGowan, now a lieutenant, said he was wary of approaching Steckel without backup. McGowan said he wasn’t sure the man was Steckel until he saw a distinctive tattoo on his left forearm — the name “Ashley” — and he knew he had his man. McGowan convinced Steckel he was giving him a break on a public drunkenness charge and would give him a ride home. Instead, McGowan drove him to police headquarters, where he was booked for murder.
Once in custody, Steckel mailed more than 75 letters, some confessing to murders in other states and others bragging about the Long murder or making threats. In one, to Long’s mother, Virginia Thomas, he included the autopsy report of his victim with a note in the margin, “Happy, Happy. Joy Joy. Read it and weep. She’s gone forever. Don’t cry over burnt flesh.” He threatened court personnel and frightened his first team of attorneys, from the Public Defender’s Office, off the case. He also spit on prosecutors.
Thomas Pedersen, who prosecuted Steckel and is now a private attorney, said it was “the most gruesome case I was ever involved with. … If the death penalty is ever justified, Brian’s case is probably the best candidate I can ever think of.”
Specifics of what happened that day are difficult to know with certainty because Steckel has constantly changed his story. On the night he was arrested, an apparently remorseful Steckel asked the officers interrogating him, “Don’t you get tired of dealing with people like me? … Can’t you see I’m worthless? I mean, why are you wasting time on me?” according to a transcript in court records. Downs responded, “We’ve got to find out what, what’s going on with you.” “I [expletive] killed somebody,” Steckel shot back. “What the [expletive] do you mean ‘What’s going on?’ “
Steckel then went on to say he met “Sandy” through a “sleazy thing in the neighborhood” and moments later objected to his own description saying, “She’s not sleazy, man. I took her [expletive] life, man. She didn’t deserve to die. … There is something wrong with me inside of me and I … I just go off the [expletive] handle man. And it’s just not right, you know what I mean? I guess now I finally got stopped.” During the interrogation, Steckel changed the details several times. At one point he said he killed Long because she refused to have sex with him. At another, he said they had had consensual sex several times in the days before the murder. Later, he said Long was pregnant, possibly with his child, and that she was demanding support payments.
Months later, in a prison interview with The News Journal, he denied he had any involvement at all. “I’m aware of what happened, but I’m not the one who committed the act,” Steckel said, alleging it was a drug-using married man with children who killed Long. He is still changing his story, according to prosecutors at his Board of Pardons hearing on Friday. In the most recent version, told to a prison official this month, Steckel alleges Long started the fight by accusing him of stealing drugs and then attacking him with a frying pan.
On the day he was arrested, Steckel confessed to six other killings, four in Delaware and two in Pennsylvania. He claimed one victim was a 15-year-old paper carrier. He later would confess to other killings in Maine, Las Vegas, Florida and California. He told police, “I’m an animal. … I hurt anybody, man. Been hurting people for a long time. If you let me walk out the door, I’d go do it again.” Police checked out Steckel’s stories and the next day confronted him with the fact that someone else had been arrested and convicted of killing the paper carrier. Steckel immediately recanted: “I was just shooting the breeze, man, and I was drunk … when I was saying that … I never killed anyone else,” according to court records.
Unsolved case
Pennsylvania State Police, however, are interested in talking to Steckel one last time before he is executed. One of the murders he confessed to — killing Fountain Hill, Pa., resident Frances Kiefer, a neighbor of his mother — remains an unsolved missing person case. Kiefer hasn’t been seen since 1994. At trial, prosecutors argued that Steckel didn’t know Long either at all or very well. In police interviews, Steckel said he picked Long, who had long, dark hair, because he thought she was pretty and had a nice body.
Long was a divorced data-entry clerk who lived across the hall from the apartment where Steckel had been staying with friends for a few weeks. Long’s family would not give interviews before the execution, but at legal proceedings have described her as a loving person who was close to her family and friends. She was the youngest of four children and also had worked as a waitress and a saleswoman. At Friday’s Board of Pardons hearing, Long’s mother said her daughter was a giving person who would offer help to whomever needed it. And on Sept. 2, 1994, Steckel went to her door around lunchtime asking to use her phone, according to the most consistent version of his confession. Other tenants said Steckel regularly asked to use people’s phones, saying he needed a touch-tone phone to get his messages.
Prosecutors said Steckel knocked on Long’s door intending to rape and murder her. He was carrying nylon stockings and a tube sock to bind her and a screwdriver. Once inside, Steckel unplugged the phone so Long couldn’t call 911, then turned on the 29-year-old. He claimed to have punched her in the face and thrown her across the room. Long’s body had marks on it indicating she attempted to fend off Steckel’s attacks with the screwdriver and teeth marks on Steckel’s finger indicate she bit him, drawing blood. Steckel said he used the nylons and the tube sock to strangle Long into unconsciousness, then sexually assaulted her and raped her with the screwdriver.
‘I watched the flames’
Brian Steckel then set fire to the bedspread and curtains, he told police, for “something different, man … some excitement. … I watched the flames and I walked out.” Long woke up afterward, surrounded by flames and thick smoke, and cried out. Lane Randolph, a tree trimmer who was passing by and saw the flames, testified that when he arrived he heard weak calls of, “Help me, please.” He kicked out a window of the basement apartment and called to Long, briefly grabbing her hand. He had it for 30 to 40 seconds but flames were burning him. “The room was totally black with smoke. Smoke and heat were pouring out. I pulled with all my might but I just couldn’t pull her [to safety],” he said on the stand. A co-worker, John Hall, kicked in the apartment door, but flames also prevented him from getting to Long. “I felt like I was in total hell,” Hall testified. After the fire was put out, Hall said he went back to look through the window and saw Long’s body. “She was just folded like a flower in a microwave,” he said.
Died of burns, smoke The medical examiner said Long died from severe burns over 60 percent of her body and smoke inhalation. In his initial confession, Brian Steckel said he thought Long was pregnant. Long’s family also believed she was four to five months pregnant. An autopsy report at trial that included information on an examination of Long’s uterus showed no indication of pregnancy. Long’s family members, however, wonder if Steckel’s brutal attack and the fire eliminated evidence of a child. At trial, defense attorneys presented evidence that Steckel had suffered sexual abuse as a child and had emotional and mental problems as young as age 12. He’d also spent time in several juvenile facilities.
At Friday’s Board of Pardons hearings, relatives testified that Steckel was not a heartless monster. One aunt, Nancy Renniger said, “You could not find a more gentle child.” Steckel’s brother Robert recalled ripping open Christmas presents with his younger sibling and playing together. At the time of the murder, Brian Steckel had a daughter. Now 12, she left the Board of Pardons hearing in tears after her father spoke. While Steckel offered no excuses on Friday, relatives and attorneys Joseph Bernstein and John Deckers pointed to a history of mental problems. Gabay said Steckel was angry and had delusions of grandeur when he was young — such as believing he would one day own a professional basketball team, though he dropped out of school after not doing well, and never held a job for very long. In one of his confessions to police, Steckel said he was a messed-up person. “I was a redhead. People taunted me. People did [expletive] to me. You know what I mean? Pushing me aside. Step on me. I got tired of that, man. I just fought back. … My family loved me and now they’re … scared of me cause they made me this way. The family. The system. Society.”
Seemed to want death
Gabay said that before and during trial, Brian Steckel seemed intent on getting the death penalty. “You can explain some actions to a jury,” Gabay said. Others, such as Steckel’s taunting letters to the family of his victim, are impossible. Steckel also refused defense attorneys’ attempts to have him evaluated for mental health problems, and he resisted attempts to show evidence that he was sexually abused as a child, things attorneys hoped a jury would see as mitigating factors. The jury, which convicted him, ultimately voted 11-1 that he should be put to death.
After the trial, Virginia Thomas said the death penalty was “most justly deserved.” When Superior Court Judge William C. Carpenter Jr. sentenced Brian Steckel to death in 1997, calling his crime “exceedingly depraved, cruel and vicious,” Steckel smiled. Gabay said he believes Steckel isn’t a threat behind bars. “Outside, he is a dangerous guy. Very dangerous,” said Gabay. “He’s just good at being in jail.” Gabay said that outside, Steckel does not have the 24-hour-a-day structure that jail provides.
At the Board of Pardons hearing, defense attorneys and relatives argued Brian Steckel had undergone a transformation, matured and was truly remorseful.
Sandra Jones, a death penalty opponent and an assistant professor of sociology at Rowan University, said she believes Brian Steckel could make a contribution even behind bars. Jones has worked with Steckel and other Delaware death-row inmates for the past year for a book she is writing. Jones said she could not explain Steckel’s crime or his early behavior, but said that now, “I think there is good reason to believe he could be OK on the outside,” adding that she would not mind having him as a neighbor. Jones said that when she met him, from press accounts she expected Hannibal Lecter, the cannibalistic killer in the movie “Silence of the Lambs,” but the reality “couldn’t have been further from the truth.” “He’s a really neat guy,” she said, adding that he was probably “the type of kid who tried too hard to get people to like him. A little awkward, sometimes obnoxious.” She said he has a “playful and fun” sense of humor and is humble.
The Board of Pardons nonetheless refused to commute Brian Steckel’s sentence. He has one appeal left, to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gabay said he believes Steckel is remorseful and wants to die for his crimes, judging by his surprise address to the jury at the end of his trial.
Brian Steckel told the jury, “I didn’t know how to say I’m sorry. How do you tell someone’s family you’re sorry for strangling them? … How do you do such a thing? I don’t know. I ask you people to hold me accountable for what I did. I’ve gotten away with so much in my life that I stand here today … I know I deserve to die for what I did to Sandy. … I’m prepared to give up my life because I deserve to.”
Robert Jackson was executed by the State of Delaware for the ax murder of Elizabeth Girardi
According to court documents Robert Jackson and Tony Lachette would break into the home of Elizabeth Girardi. When the woman discovered the robbers she would be brutally murdered with an ax
Robert Jackson would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Robert Jackson would be executed by lethal injection on July 28 2011
Robert Jackson Photos
Robert Jackson FAQ
When Was Robert Jackson Executed
Robert Jackson was executed on July 28 2011
Robert Jackson Case
While most of Delaware slept, a bleak chapter in the lives of a Hockessin family was finally put to rest after nearly two decades.
Robert W. Jackson III, the man convicted in the 1992 ax murder of 47-year-old Elizabeth Girardi during a botched robbery, was executed by lethal injection at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center north of Smyrna. He was pronounced dead at 12:12 a.m.
Jackson’s last meal consisted of steak, a baked potato, potato skins, corn and a soda. During his final days, he has been sleeping, eating, reading, writing letters, talking with staff, and visiting with family and his attorneys, according to the Department of Corrections.
Governor Jack Markell denied Jackson’s request for a reprieve, and two requests Wednesday by his lawyers to delay the execution went ungranted.
At 12:02 a.m. the execution began in the execution chamber. Witnesses watched Jackson, dressed in all white, strapped down to table with intravenous lines in each arm. James T. Vaughn Correctional Center Warden Perry Phelps asked Jackson if he had any last words.
Jackson at first directed his words to Christopher and Claudia – the victim’s surviving children.
“Are the Girardis in there? If you are in there, I’ve never faulted you for your anger. I would have been mad myself,” he said. “[But] I didn’t take your mother from you.”
Jackson then hinted that his accomplice, Tony Lachette, was actually the guilty party in the case. Indeed, his lawyers argues that Lachette privately confessed to the killing to a number of people, but those claims were never corroborated by investigators.
“Tony’s laughing his ass off right now because you’re about to watch an innocent man die,” Jackson said. “This isn’t justice.”
Following his statement, he put his head down, and his eyes never opened again. He breathed deeply a few times, and even began to snore. At 12:06 a.m. the curtain closed, signaling the consciousness check.
Warden Perry could be heard saying twice, “Inmate Jackson, can you hear me?”
No response came from Jackson
The curtain was then redrawn for another few minutes as witnesses watched Jackson lay still.
When the curtain closed a final time, Jackson was pronounced dead.
Correction officials would not say whether anyone Girardi’s family witnessed the execution.
Among the ten official witnesses was New Castle County Public Safety Director Scott McLaren. The ax murder was McLaren’s first-ever murder investigation with the county police.
“To have that be your first homicide, an ax murder in the middle of Hockessin, was a lot of stress, but the suspect was in custody in seven days,” he told the Community News in a 2009 interview.
Following Jackson’s execution, Govenor Markell issued this statement: “The State of Delaware this morning carried out the penalty for Robert W. Jackson III for the brutal murder of Elizabeth Girardi. Mr. Jackson’s death sentence was recommended by a jury, imposed by a judge, and reviewed by state and federal appellate courts at all levels. It is my prayer that his victim rests in peace and her family finds some closure. May God have mercy on Mr. Jackson.”
About a dozen protesters stood outside the prison in the beating rain to oppose the death penalty, while a single woman – Townsend’s Rose Wilson – stood on the opposite of the street and showed her support for the death penalty.
Geoff Sawyer, 66, from Wilmington believes that capital punishment needs to be stopped
“The United States and Delaware condones this act of barbarism,” Sawyer said. “I think Jackson should get life in prison without parole.”
Wilson said Jackson deserved his fate.
“I live three miles from here and I pass here every single day,” she said. “Mercy was not shown to that woman.”
According to court documents Shannon Johnson would see his ex girlfriend sitting in a car with Cameron Hamlin. Johnson would open fire killing Hamlin and injuring the woman
Shannon Johnson would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Shannon Johnson would be executed by lethal injection on April 20 2012. This would be the last execution in Delaware
Shannon Johnson Photos
Shannon Johnson FAQ
When Was Shannon Johnson Executed
Shannon Johnson was executed by April 20 2012
Shannon Johnson Case
After hours of court activity, a 28-year-old man has been put to death in Delaware for a man’s shooting death in Wilmington six years ago.
Shannon Johnson had given up his appeals and was ready to die. However, the Federal Public Defender intervened in the case, and twice on Thursday obtained a stay of Johnson’s execution. A federal appeals court had the final say, overturning a federal judge’s decision to put the execution on hold in order to hear further arguments about Johnson’s competency.
As the legal arguments were playing out, demonstrators showed their passions on both sides of the capital punishment issues as they carried picket signs outside the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center near Smyrna.
“We’re here out here for the victims. Somebody has to speak up for the victims,” Sherry Steller of Smyrna said.
“Anytime that we kill somebody in the name of justice, it is not a good thing,” Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty member Kevin O’Connell said. “We’re hopeful this is going to end sometime soon.”
Several members of the media who were selected to witness the execution said Johnson mumbled when offered the opportunity to speak. According to the Department of Correction, Johnson said “loyalty is important. Without loyalty you have nothing. Death before dishonor.” Johnson also spoke some Arabic. The Department of Corrections released details of his final meal, chicken lo mein, and his final activities. Those included talking to his attorney, writing letters, and watching TV.
Witnesses said after his few words, Johnson remained silent as his breathing began to labor and he closed his eyes. He was pronounced dead at 2:55 a.m. Friday.
Johnson was found guilty of shooting Cameron Hamlin to death in Wilmington in 2006 as Hamlin sat in a car with Johnson’s ex-girlfriend. She also was shot, but survived.
“Now it’s time to focus on getting our lives back together, have some closure in our lives,” Cameron’s father Vandrick Hamlin said. “Because, it’s been a long road.”
The office of Governor Jack Markell (D-Del) released a statement shortly after the execution took place: “The State of Delaware this morning carried out the sentence imposed for Shannon Johnson’s brutal murder of Cameron Hamelin. Mr. Johnson’s death sentence was recommended unanimously by a jury, imposed by a judge, and reviewed thoroughly on appeal. Mr. Johnson’s decision to forgo further challenges to his sentence was extensively reviewed by the Superior Court, and the Third Circuit agreed tonight that it had “no reason to question the Delaware Superior Court’s conclusion” that Mr. Johnson voluntarily and competently made that decision. The Third Circuit’s decision put an end to further federal challenges to the sentence. Our thoughts tonight are with the Hamlin family, Lakeisha Truitt and her family, and all of those who have suffered from Mr. Johnson’s callous crimes. (May) God rest his soul.”
This was the second execution carried out in Delaware in the past nine months.
