An Alabama man has been put to death by lethal injection for bludgeoning an elderly couple to death 20 years ago in an effort to steal prescription drugs and $140 from their home.
Jamie Ray Mills, 50, spent nearly two decades on death row and was executed on Thursday evening. He was pronounced dead at 6:26 p.m. after a three-drug injection at the William C. Holman Correctional Faciilty in southwest Alabama, authorities said. Lethal injection remains Alabama's default method of execution unless an inmate requests nitrogen gas or the electric chair to carry out the death sentence.
It was Alabama's first execution since January, when state officials made the controversial decision the state conducted the nation's first using nitrogen gas in January. Mills had been convicted of the capital murders of Floyd Hill, 87, and his wife Vera Hill in Guin, 72, in Alabama in 2004.
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He was put to death on Thursday (AFP via Getty Images)Mills was convicted of capital murder at trial in the killings of Floyd Hill, 87, and his wife Vera, 72. Prosecutors said the victims were attacked with a hammer, machete and a tire tool at their home in a small community about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of Birmingham.
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Hours earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court declined without comment to block Thursday's execution. Attorneys for Mills, who maintained his innocence at his 2007 trial, had argued that newly obtained evidence showed the prosecution lied about having a plea agreement with Mills' wife to spare her from seeking the death penalty against her if she testified against her husband.
They also argued Alabama has a history of problematic executions. But Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall's office asked the justices to let the execution proceed, with the state writing there was much incriminating evidence against him.
Floyd Hill was the primary caregiver for his wife, who was diabetic and in poor health. He kept her medications in a tackle box in the couple's kitchen. The Hills regularly held yard sales to supplement their income. When the couple's granddaughter couldn't reach them, responding officers arrived to find them in pools of blood in the backyard shed where they stored items for yard sales.
Floyd Hill died from blunt- and sharp-force wounds to the head and neck and Vera Hill died about 12 weeks later from complications of head trauma, the attorney general's office wrote in a court filing.
At the time, Mills had recently quit a job as an auto mechanic at a gas station where his boss described him as a "hard worker." He was over $10,000 behind in child support for his two sons, was upset over his parents' failing health and had relapsed into drug use, according to court documents.
The jury in 2007 convicted Jamie Mills of capital murder and voted 11-1 for the death sentence, which a judge imposed. JoAnn Mills had also been charged with capital murder, but after testifying against her husband, she pleaded to a reduced charge of murder and received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. She remains incarcerated.
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