Miss. Supreme Court votes 4-4 on execution stay request; tie goes to the state
The Mississippi Supreme Court has denied a request to stay Tuesday’s execution of a man convicted of killing his 3-year-old daughter, his ex-wife and her parents.
The court’s decision on Monday capped a round of legal briefs filed in the case of 34-year-old Jan Michael Brawner, who is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday at 6 p.m.
Brawner’s lawyer said he would file a petition Tuesday morning with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Brawner was sentenced to death for the April 25, 2001, shooting deaths of his daughter, Paige, his ex-wife, Barbara Craft, and her parents, Carl and Jane Craft. Brawner killed them in their in Tate County home, stole about $300 and used his former mother-in-law’s wedding ring to propose to his girlfriend the same day, according to court records.
Brawner admitted to the killings. During the sentencing phase of his trial, he declined to have anyone testify on his behalf with mitigating testimony, which could have been used to sway jurors to spare his life.
“As far as life, I don’t feel that I deserve life to live,” Brawner testified at the time.
Subsequent lawyers have argued that Brawner’s trial attorney did a poor job by not calling such mitigating witnesses as his mother and a psychiatrist, who could have testified about things that had happened to him in life.
Brawner’s lawyer, David Calder, had argued earlier Monday in a court filing that his client could be the first person executed in the U.S. on a tie vote of judges. The Mississippi Supreme Court voted 4-4 last week to deny a rehearing in the case. Justice Ann Lamar didn’t vote. She was district attorney in Tate County when the slayings occurred. By the time of the trial in April 2002, she was a circuit court judge, though she didn’t preside over the trial.
In court procedures, a tie vote usually means an earlier ruling stands. Brawner’s lawyer had argued that tie votes favor inmates in death penalty cases and that the tie vote had nothing to do with any lower court rulings.
AP
6/11
Magnolia Tribune
