Inmate Dies in Prison After Waiting 18 Years for Retrial in Ala. Murder
Alabama inmate Shep Wilson Jr. had his murder conviction overturned in 1990, but he was still in prison awaiting a retrial when he died last week from liver failure.
An Associated Press story attributes the delay to “a mental evaluation, a sick attorney, changes of judges and prosecutors, and a blizzard of legal papers.”
Wilson was convicted in 1986 of abducting, raping and murdering a woman who worked at a gas station food mart. Evidence showed he kept the body for two days, driving to work with it in his trunk, the Daily Home reports, and sleeping with the corpse at least once. Defense attorneys did not succeed in getting his taped confession thrown out.
But lawyers were able to get the conviction overturned by the Alabama Supreme Court in 1990 because a prosecutor had mentioned in closing arguments Wilson’s decision not to testify, the AP story says.
One retrial delay occurred when defense lawyers asked the judge to declare Wilson incompetent because he wouldn’t accept a plea deal that would have allowed him to escape the death penalty in exchange for a life sentence. The motion said Wilson was insisting he would be found innocent despite a large amount of evidence against him.
A mental evaluation found that Wilson was still competent to assist in his defense.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told AP that most overturned cases are retried within one or two years. “Eighteen years? I’ve never heard of anyone waiting that long,” he said.
“Sometimes in a death penalty case, they say delay is in favor of the defendant. This might be one of those cases,” he said.
