2 death row inmates executed in Florida, Alabama minutes apart for grisly murders
Two death row inmates were executed by a pair of southern states for their twisted murders minutes apart Tuesday evening.
Anthony Wainwright was put to death in Florida and Gregory Hunt was killed in Alabama four minutes later Tuesday evening. It's the fourth time this year there have been double-executions, according to USA Today.
3 Anthony Wainwright is scheduled to be killed in Florida.
AP
Wainwright, 54, was killed by lethal injection 30 years after he raped and fatally shot mother of two Carmen Gayheart, 23, in Lake City.
He was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. shortly after the execution got underway. His final words weren't inaudible from the witness room.
Wainwright and his co-defendant Richard Hamilton, broke out of North Carolina prison and while they were on the run carjacked Gayheart's blue Ford Bronco in April 1994.
The two men forced her into the car at gunpoint and then raped her in the backseat as they drove off.
Wainwright and Hamilton, who died on death row, then dragged her from the car and shot her twice in the back of the head.
3 Gregory Hunt will be executed in Alabama.
Alabama Department of Corrections/AFP via Getty Images
They were captured the next day and convicted in 1995.
Gayheart's sister, Maria David, has kept track of every court hearing and appeal since her loved one's murder.
'I'm looking forward to getting the last pieces of paperwork that say he's been executed to put into the book and never having to think about Anthony Wainwright ever again,' she said recently.
Wainwright's legal team tried to convince the US Supreme Court to stop his execution — to no avail — by arguing that his exposure to Agent Orange before he was born led to cognitive and behavioral problems throughout his life, according to CBS Miami.
Wainwright's father, who fought in the Vietnam War, was exposed to the herbicide and Wainwright was conceived six months after he came back from the war, his lawyers argued.
'Although Mr. Wainwright did not serve in the Vietnam War, and was not even a viable life at that point, he was catastrophically and immutably cognitively damaged from it,' part of the petition states, according to the station.
'Unlike veterans, who make knowing sacrifices for our country in the face of grave risks, Mr. Wainwright had no such choice.'
The argument was one of several appeals the Supreme Court shot down Monday. The highest court also rejected a final plea Tuesday morning.
3 One of the two men will be killed by lethal injection.
AP
Meanwhile Hunt's execution was by nitrogen gas about 35 years after he was convicted of bludgeoning a woman he had been dating, Karen Lane, to death inside an Cordova apartment she shared with Hunt's female cousin in 1988.
He was pronounced dead at 6:26 p.m.
Lane, 32, was so badly beaten that she had 60 injuries, including 20 to the head. She was also sexually abused by Hunt leading up to the fatal attack.
He was convicted in June 1990 of capital murder, as well as sexual abuse and burglary. Jurors then voted 11-1 that he be sentenced to death, which the judge signed off on.
Hunt claimed in an interview last month he was a changed man, and that the killing was fueled by booze, drugs and overwhelming jealousy after he saw Lane in a car with another man,
'Karen didn't deserve what happened to her,' Hunt said.
'You have your come-to-Jesus moment,' he added.
'Of course, after the fact, you can't believe what has happened. You can't believe you were part of it and did it.'
This was the sixth time a state has killed an inmate with nitrogen gas.
With Post wires.
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