An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
Anyone Else See A MAJOR Problem Here?
State’s oldest death row inmate dies
The Tennessee Department of Correction says the state’s oldest and longest-serving death row inmate has died of natural causes.
Spokeswoman Dorinda Carter said 68-year-old Richard Austin was found dead in his cell Sunday at the DeBerry Special Needs Facility in Nashville. He spent 30 years on death row.
Austin was sentenced to death in 1978 after a conviction in Shelby County of accessory before the fact to murder.
Austin was found to have hired a fugitive from prison to kill undercover policeman Julian Watkins. Watkins was investigating illegal gambling operations at the Golden Cue, a Memphis establishment that Austin owned.
Austin was the first person sentenced to die under Tennessee’s current death penalty law, which was enacted in 1977.
Maybe they misunderstoond the concept of the “Death penalty”. Perhaps it was never explained that the State is actually supposed to execute those who are sentenced to death?
@Sean:
Ya might be on to something there. After all, we’re talking about gubmint bureaucrats, right? Hmmm….
The Article doesn’t say how old the murdered cop was, but i would like to know if they guy spent more years on death row, then the victim actually lived.
@Sean:
So far, all I’ve been able to find on this was:
(01/03/2000)
State Justices Deny Richard Austin Appeal
The Tennessee Supreme Court has denied an appeal by Richard Hale Austin, sentenced to death in 1977 and again this year for hiring an escaped convict to kill Julian Watkins, an undercover agent with the Memphis Police Department.
In 1997, the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Austin’s conviction but reversed his sentence based on ineffective legal representation during the sentencing phase of his trial. Another Memphis jury resentenced him to death in March 1999 for arranging the execution-style murder of Watkins.
In the appeal denied Monday by the Tennessee Supreme Court, Austin, 60, claimed he was entitled to reopen a previous post-conviction petition because no woman had served as grand jury foreperson in Shelby County between 1962 and 1977, when he was indicted. Austin, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision, alleged that the exclusion violated his constitutional rights.
Austin’s victim was a vice squad undercover agent when he was shot to death. Watkins was to be a key witness for the prosecution against Austin and others charged with involvement in an illegal gambling operation.
The conviction was upheld, so why the hell… dang… these people confuse me. How much money was spent on housing this piece of bovine manure, when one bullet would have saved a whole lot of bucks.