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| Image is similar, if not identical, to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation patch. Made with Photoshop. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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LOS ANGELES – District Attorney Steve Cooley asked the Los Angeles Superior Court today to order the execution of two long-time Death Row inmates with a court-approved single-drug protocol currently used in other parts of the country.
In motions filed by Deputy District Attorney Michele Hanisee of the Major Crimes Division, the court was asked to order the executions of Mitchell Carleton Sims, 52, and Tiequon Aundray Cox, 46, each of whom have been on San Quentin’s Death Row for a quarter of a century. “Mitchell Sims and Tiequon Cox were tried and convicted of first-degree murder by juries.
The jurors in each case also found the special circumstances alleged against each defendant to be true. The same juries recommended that each die for their crimes. Judges reviewed the jury recommendations and agreed, formally sentencing each man to death. Each killer appealed the conviction and sentence. Every appellate court turned them down,” the District Attorney said in a written statement.
“It is time Sims and Cox pay for their crimes,” he added. “I am joining with the California District Attorneys Association and other District Attorneys throughout California in asking the Superior Courts throughout the state to hold these killers responsible for the innocent lives they took so many years ago.” Ventura County District Attorney and President of the California District Attorneys Association Greg Totten applauded District Attorney Cooley for the dedicated work it took to prepare and file these petitions.
“These cases are the most serious and dangerous murderers whose executions have been delayed far too long after juries and courts have imposed the death penalty,” Totten said. In the motions filed with the court, Hanisee asked that the executions be ordered using a single-drug method or that the warden at San Quentin show cause why the death penalty by lethal injection should not be imposed.
Executions in California have been on hold for years. The most recent stay was granted by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals after the Riverside County District Attorney obtained an execution date for condemned inmate Albert Greenwood Brown. The stay was based on allegations that a three-drug protocol that California used for executions put the condemned at risk of pain and suffering. Meanwhile, the states of Ohio, Washington and Arizona began using a one-drug protocol, eliminating two of the drugs that allegedly put the condemned at risk.
Since adopting the one-drug protocol in 2009, Ohio has carried out 15 successful executions, according to the briefs filed by Hanisee. During legal challenges to its three-drug protocol, Washington adopted the single-drug protocol in March 2010. Cal Coburn Brown was executed using the single-drug method in Washington on Sept. 10, 2010. Sims was sentenced to death on May 7, 1986, after being convicted of murdering a pizza deliveryman in Glendale on Dec. 8, 1985.
Sims, a disgruntled pizza delivery driver, had fled the restaurant where he worked in Hanahan, S.C., after murdering two co-workers. He fled to California with his girlfriend, who also was convicted and is serving a life sentence. Besides the California death sentence, Sims faces a death sentence in South Carolina. Cox, a Rollin 60s gang member, slaughtered a grandmother, her daughter and two grandchildren – one 8 and the other 13 – on Aug. 31, 1984. Armed with a .30 caliber military rifle,
Cox shot the grandmother three times in the head and went on to execute her grandsons as they slept in their beds. The 24-year-old mother of the two boys woke up and screamed before Cox shot her dead. A 14-year-old male cousin hid in a closet, which saved his life.
Hanisee noted in her motions filed today with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has acknowledged at various court hearings – one as recent as Feb. 14 of this year – that it is fully capable of performing a single-drug execution.
In a letter to Attorney General Kamala Harris in March of this year, the District Attorney urged that she, as well as the Governor and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, take “all necessary steps to reinstitute executions of condemned inmates in California” and review its execution protocol. “The death penalty was voted into law by the citizens of this state and continues to be supported by a majority of the citizens,” Cooley said. He noted that it has been six years since the last California execution.
“It is time to enforce the law of the state and carry out the death sentences that have been returned by juries, imposed by trial judges and affirmed by our appellate court system,” he said.
3 comments:
I posted this on another site in regards to Mitchell Sims:
Where to begin???? I was on one of the juries for Mitchell Sims and it angers me that my service meant nothing. We, as a jury had the very difficult task of deciding whether or not this man should get the death penalty, and although I do support the death penalty, it was not an easy decision. Sims was after all a son, brother, and father. But bottom line, his victims (plural) were also sons, brothers, husbands (someday), and fathers (someday). Their families had all the joys of a life taken away from them without any regard at all. Sims is evil and that kind of evil doesn’t leave, no matter how many bible verses he reads. He laughed at one of the victims mom on the first day of the trial. He didn’t seem to care about the lives he took or the family members he affected because of his actions; there are more victims in a murder than just the murder victim. There are many people who suffered abuse as a child and didn’t turn to murder; heck, he has brothers and sisters who didn’t commit murder and they suffered the same horrible abuse that he did. He deserves to die. Finally, for all you bleeding heart liberals, think about this…if Sims victims had been your son, brother, father, nephew, cousin, would you being saying the same thing about the death penalty???
There are many inhumane humans out there who are just plain EVIL. This is one of them. He should have been executed a long time ago. The State wasted money on a jury and all the crap that went with it. Now, they need to man up and get it done. A can of gas and a match is a lot cheaper. Why have any remorse for this scum bag? He had none.
Anonymous said...
If ever there was a case of putting to death an evil unrepentant bastard ..this is it. Do what is right !!!!!!!
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