| Return to Freddie Lee Wrights Homepage |
Wright, 48, convicted of the murders
of a popular Mount Vernon couple in
their hardware store in December 1977,
was pronounced dead at 12:11 a.m.
He made no statement before his death.
Over 2 decades, Wright, a former cook
and dishwasher from Mobile, who
family members said grew up on the
streets, maintained his innocence. He
denied he was at the store the day
Warren Green, 40, and his wife, Lois,
37, were slain. According to trial
testimony, the Greens were each shot
once in the head as they sat tied back-to-back
in a rear room of their
Western Auto store in Mount Vernon,
about 30 miles north of Mobile.
Among the witnesses to Wright's execution
was Kim Green, daughter of
the slain couple. Other witnesses included
Wendy Sancher Wright, the
condemned man's wife, and Ryan Russell,
a private investigator who had
helped Wright through the years of
appeals.
Outside the prison gates, some 70 family
members and friends of the
Greens gathered to show support for
Kim Green and pay their respects to
her late parents. They stood in the
cold in a cordoned-off area alongside
the highway that runs in front of Holman,
about a half-mile from the
execution site.
"One of the officers said this is very
unusual to have this many people,"
said Kathy Simison, a friend of the
Greens from Mount Vernon. "He said it
was a testimony to them that this many
family and friends would be here."
Wright's journey through the appeals
process over the years was thwarted
at every level. And in the last week,
he saw his chances of surviving
Friday morning depleted one by one
as desperate appeals were turned down
by the Alabama Supreme Court, the Alabama
Court of Criminal Appeals and,
late Wednesday, Gov. Don Siegelman.
"It is clear to me that the death penalty
is appropriate in this case,"
Siegelman said in a prepared statement.
On Thursday, Wright spent time saying
goodbye to relatives, including his
wife Wendy Sancher, whom he married
in a ceremony at Holman on Friday,
said prison system spokesman John Hamm.
He also met with the prison
chaplain, Hamm said.
Just hours before Wright's scheduled
execution, McDonough had filed new
appeals with the Alabama Supreme Court
and the U.S. Supreme Court,
asking for stays of execution.
About 5 p.m., the state Supreme Court
voted 7-2 to deny Wright's appeal.
One of the dissenters was Justice Douglas
Johnstone of Mobile, who wrote:
"Whether Wright is electrocuted or
injected seems insignificant compared
to the likelihood that we are sending
an innocent man to his death."
At 9:30 p.m. the U.S. Supreme Court
rejected his appeal on a 5-4 vote,
sealing Wright's fate.
Wright's appeals over the years had
been based largely on his lawyers
argument that dying at the hands of
the state in the electric chair is
cruel and unusual punishment.
In a recent telephone interview with
a New York radio station, Wright
condemned capital punishment.
"The death penalty itself, it's not
about justice," Wright said. "It's
about vengeance. I mean, and the bad
part about vengeance is, most people
believe in the system so strongly,
even if it's an innocent man or when
it's been evidence presented to show
the person on death row is not the
person who committed that crime.
"We shouldn't have capital punishment,
period, the way the scales of
justice work," Wright told the radio
audience. "I mean, it's not fair.
It's not applied equally in no form
or fashion. I mean, the way our
system done changed now, a person,
innocent, doesn't even matter any
more."
The execution of another Alabama inmate,
Robert Lee Tarver, was blocked
last month by the U.S. Supreme Court
when he challenged the state's use
of the electric chair. But the court,
on a 5-4 vote, later decided not to
review the matter. Alabama's last execution
was carried out Jan. 7 when
David Ray Duren became the 20th person
put to death in the state since it
resumed executions in 1983.
Wright was convicted in Mobile County
Circuit Court of shooting the
Greens on Dec. 1, 1977, apparently
to eliminate witnesses following an
armed robbery.
His admitted accomplices, Roger McQueen,
Percy Craig and Reginald
Tinsley, all testified that Wright
fired the fatal shots. All 3
subsequently were convicted of murder.
Craig and Tinsley served their time
and are now believed to be living in
the Mobile area. McQueen is serving
time in a federal prison on an
unrelated kidnapping conviction. When
McQueen has finished the kidnapping
sentence, McDonough said, he will be
returned to Alabama to begin serving
the murder sentence for his part in
the hardware slayings.
Wright's 1st trial, before a mixed-race
jury ended with the panel
unable to reach a unanimous decision.
The vote was 11 to 1 for
acquittal.
At his retrial a month later, an all-white
jury convicted Wright, a black
man, of capital murder and sentenced
him to death.
According to court records, Doris Lacey
Lambert, Wright's former
girlfriend and the mother of his child,
testified at the second trial
that the day after the murders, Wright
told her "he had went out with
some of his friends ... to Mount Vernon
and that he killed two people
with a gun."
Lambert had not testified at the first trial.
McDonough said evidence of Lambert's
psychiatric history, in possession
of the Mobile County district attorney's
office during the trial, was
suppressed. According to McDonough,
Lambert suffered from hallucinations,
which included homicidal and suicidal
fantasies and conversations with
her father, who died when she was 7
years old.
The prosecutor in the case, Chris Galanos,
who later became a circuit
judge and retired last year to go into
private practice, said last week
that Lambert's testimony was key in
Wright's conviction.
Early in the investigation of the murders,
another man was implicated by
his girlfriend, and a gun linked to
the man was later labeled as the
murder weapon by a forensic expert,
according to McDonough.
But some time later, McQueen contacted
authorities from a Mississippi
prison, telling them he was a participant
in the store robbery and knew
who the killer was.
When Wright was arrested at his home,
McDonough said, police found a gun
that was later identified by the same
forensic expert as "consistent"
with the murder weapon.
Wright always denied he was at the store
that day but was inconsistent in
accounting for his whereabouts. He
told one investigator he was at a
basketball game when the Greens were
killed. He told police he was at a
private club. A handful of witnesses
at the trials corroborated Wright's
claims.
During Wright's trials, McQueen testified
that Craig told Wright to "make
sure the people were taken care of"
because "the people would have
identified the car."
McQueen testified that Wright was the
last to leave the store and when he
returned to the car the others "asked
him what took place and he said
that he had took care of both people."
McQueen said he challenged Wright to
prove it and Wright handed him "2
empty cartridges from the gun."
At a 1996 federal hearing in Mobile,
however, McQueen recanted his trial
testimony and said that he had lied
when he identified Wright as the
killer.
McQueen looked over at Wright from the
witness stand and said: "I'm
sorry, dude."
(source: Mobile Register)
Freddie Lee Wright, 48, a former dishwasher
and cook, was sentenced to
death for killing Warren and Lois Green.
They were bound together with an
electrical cord and shot in the head
in their store in Mount Vernon,
north of Mobile.
Wright made no final statement.
He had based his final appeal on the
claim that the electric chair is
inhumane, but it was rejected by the
state Supreme Court, 7-2. State
officials said Wright also raised the
issue on appeal in 1985.
In a 5-4 decision Thursday night, the
U.S. Supreme Court denied Wright's
last chance for a stay of execution.
Wright was black and his victims were
white, and his appeals also raised
the issue of racial discrimination.
His lawyers said a biracial jury
voted 11-1 to acquit Wright, leading
to a mistrial, before an all-white
jury convicted him.
Alabama, Georgia and Nebraska are the
only states that use the electric
chair as their sole means of execution.
Florida recently amended its laws
to give inmates the option of lethal
injection.
Wright becomes the 2nd condemned inmate
to be put to death this year
in Alabama and the 21st overal since
the state resumed capital
punishment in 1983.
Wright also becomes the 20th condemned
inmate to be put to death this
year in the USA and the 618th overall
since America resumed executions
on Jan. 17, 1977.
(sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin)
Freddie Lee Wright, 48, a former dishwasher
and cook from Mobile, was
convicted and sentenced to death in
1979 for the fatal shootings of
Warren Green and wife Lois Green. The
couple were bound together with an
electrical cord and shot in the head
during a robbery at their hardware
store in Mount Vernon, north of Mobile.
Gov. Don Siegelman on Wednesday denied
Wright's petition for clemency as
the case headed for the Alabama Supreme
Court and then the U.S. Supreme
Court.
"It is clear to me that the death penalty
is appropriate in this case,"
Siegelman said in a statement.
Wright was scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. (CDT) Friday at Holman Prison.
Wright's case has had at least 14 post-trial
reviews, one of the judges
reviewing the conviction said this
week in refusing to stop the
execution.
Wright's attorney, Brian McDonough of
New York, took his challenge to use
of the electric chair as inhumane to
the state Supreme Court on Thursday
after being turned down by the Alabama
Court of Criminal Appeals.
The appeal says Alabama's electric chair,
which delivers 2,000 volts, is
"nearly an antique." It claims the
headgear is poorly designed and that
the structure, built in the 1920s,
is now a torturous means of execution.
Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw
said Thursday that the state
hasn't responded to Wright's electric
chair challenge because it's
procedurally barred at this point in
the case. But he said the chair is
not an antique
"All the electronic equipment on the
electric chair was replaced in 1991,
so it's not antiquated," Crenshaw said.
He said Wright raised this issue on appeal in 1985.
The Dec. 1, 1977 killings that put Wright
on death row came on Warren
Green's 40th birthday. His wife was
37.
The Greens were survived by an only
child, who planned to witness the
execution at Holman Prison with 2 uncles.
Now married and a mother of 3, daughter
Kim Green testified before a
legislative panel Wednesday in opposition
to use of lethal injection as
an alternative to the electric chair.
"I don't feel that a convicted killer
has a right to choose what form of
execution they should have," Green
told lawmakers who took no action on the lethal injection proposal.
Alabama, Georgia and Nebraska are the only states that use the electric chair as their sole means of execution.
3 co-defendants testified against Wright at his 2nd trial in Mobile.
During his appeal, Wright's attorney
raised the issue of racial
discrimination, saying an all-white
jury convicted the black man of
killing the white victims. The 1st
trial ended with a mistrial with an
11-1 vote for acquittal from the biracial
jury.
The accomplices later were convicted,
but only Wright received the death
sentence.
The store robbery netted a stereo set, a television and a gold watch,which was Lois Green's birthday present for her husband.
The execution of another Alabama death
row inmate, Robert Lee Tarver, was
blocked last month by the U.S. Supreme
Court when he challenged the
state's use of the electric chair.
But the court, on a 5-4 vote, later
decided not to review the matter, clearing
the way for Wright's
electrocution.
Attorneys for Wright say that, unlike
Tarver, Wright raised the challenge
to the electric chair both during his
direct appeal and his federal
proceedings, and that state court rules
allow it to be reviewed again
based on new evidence.
Alabama's last execution was Jan. 7
when David Ray Duren was put to
death.
(source: Associated Press)
| Return to Freddie Lee Wrights Homepage |
