Atmore, wing. – A man convicted of hitting a woman until death almost 37 years ago is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday in Alabama in what will be the sixth execution of the nation with nitrogen gas.
Gregory Hunt is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday night in a prison in southern Alabama. Hunt was convicted of killing Karen Lane, a woman with whom she had been dating for approximately one month, according to judicial records.
Alabama’s execution is one of the four that had been scheduled this week in the United States. Executions are also scheduled in Florida and South Carolina. A judge in Oklahoma on Monday issued a temporary stay for an execution in that state, but the State Attorney is trying to lift it.
Lane was 32 when she was killed on August 2, 1988 in the apartment in Córdoba who shared with a woman who was Hunt’s cousin.
Prosecutors said Hunt broke into his department and killed her after sexually abusing her. A doctor who performed an autopsy testified that he died of a blunt force of force and that Lane had suffered about 60 injuries, including 20 for the head.
A jury on June 19, 1990 found Hunt guilty of capital murder during sexual abuse and theft. Jurors recommended by an 11-1 vote that receives a death sentence, which a judge imposed.
The final request of Hunt for a stay of execution, which he presented, focused on the claims that prosecutors made false statements to jurors about evidence of sexual abuse. The element of sexual abuse is what raised crime to a crime of death penalty.
In a presentation before the United States Supreme Court, Hunt, acting as his own lawyer, wrote that a prosecutor told the jury that Cervical Mucus was in a broom near Hunt’s body. However, the victim did not have a cervix due to an anterior hysterectomy. The Alabama Attorney General’s Office described the claim without merit and said that even if the prosecutor made an error in that statement, he did not throw the conviction in doubt.
Hunt, speaking last month from the prison, did not play killing Lane, but said he did not sexually assault her. He also described himself as someone who was changed by prison.
“Karen didn’t deserve what happened to him,” said Hunt.
Hunt said he had been drinking and taking drugs on the night of the crime and became jealous when he saw Lane in a car with another man.
“You have your moment of arrival at Jesus. Of course, after the fact, you cannot believe what has happened. You cannot believe that you were part of that and did it,” said Hunt.
Hunt, who was born in 1960 and reached the death corridor in 1990, is now among the oldest inmates in the Alabama death corridor. He said the prison became his “hospital” to cure his broken mind. He said that since 1988, he has been leading a biblical class attended by two dozen or more inmates.
“Just trying to be a light in a dark place, trying to tell people if I can change, they can also … become people of love instead of hate,” he said.
Lane’s sister declined to comment when she contacted by phone. The family is expected to give a statement written Tuesday night.
“The way she was killed is simply devastating,” said Denise Gurganus, Lane’s sister, to WBRC television station in a 2014 vigil for crime victims. “It is quite difficult to lose a family member to death, but when it is so horrible.”
The Alabama Attorney General’s Office, by asking the judges to reject Hunt’s request for an execution stay, wrote that Hunt has now been in the death corridor for longer than Lane was alive.
Alabama last year became the first state to carry out an execution with nitrogen gas. Nitrogen has now been used in five executions: four in Alabama and one in Louisiana. The method implies the use of a gas mask to force an inmate to breathe pure nitrogen gas, depriving the necessary oxygen to stay alive.
Hunt had named Nitrogen as his preferred execution method. He made the selection before Alabama developed procedures for using gas. Alabama also allows inmates to choose lethal injection or the electric chair.
