Execution Watch

[Draggingtree]

Scheduled Execution

04/03/2014

Offender Information

 

Name

Tommy Lynn Sells

TDCJ Number

999367

Date of Birth

6/28/1964

Date Received

11/8/2000

Age (when Received)

36

Education Level (Highest Grade Completed)

8

Date of Offense

12/31/1999

 

 

 

Age (at the time of Offense)

35

 

Prior Prison Record

Missouri Department of Corrections on a 2 year sentence for felony theft. Confined 8 months and released on parole on 12/18/1985. Returned as a parole violator with a new conviction of driving under the influence. Confined 16 months and discharged. Wyoming Department of Corrections on a 2 year sentence for vehicle theft. Confined 16 months and discharged. Wyoming Department of Corrections on a 2-10 years sentence for malicious wounding. Released on parole.

 

Summary of Incident

On 12/31/1999, Sells entered a Del Rio residence occupied by a 13 year old white female and a 10 year old white female. Sells entered the residence with intent to sexually assault the 13 year old. Sells slashed her throat and stabbed her multiple times, resulting in her death. Sells then slashed the throat of the 10 year old. The 10 year old survived the attack.

[Draggingtree]

Supreme Court won't stop Texas execution over drug

 

By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press | April 3, 2014 | Updated: April 3, 2014 5:19pm

 

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court said Thursday that it won't stop the execution of a Texas serial killer whose attorneys want the state to release information about where it gets its lethal injection drug.

 

The plea to the high court from Tommy Lynn Sells' lawyers was rejected about an hour before his scheduled execution Thursday evening. They made it after a federal appeals court allowed the execution to remain on schedule. A lower court had stayed the execution Wednesday, ordering Texas to reveal more information about its drug supplier, but the ruling was quickly tossed on appeal.

 

"It is not in the public interest for the state to be allowed to be deceptive in its efforts to procure lethal injection drugs," Sells' attorneys told the high court.

 

The appeal was one of two that the justices rejected. Another before the court since last month asked for the punishment to be stopped to review whether Sells' legal help at his trial was deficient, and whether a court improperly denied him money to hire investigators to conduct a probe about his background.

 

Sells was sentenced to death for fatally stabbing a 13-year-old South Texas girl in 1999. Court records show he claims to have committed as many as 70 killings in states including Alabama, California, Arizona, Kentucky and Arkansas. http://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/Supreme-Court-won-t-stop-Texas-execution-over-drug-5372358.php?cmpid=hpbn

[clearvision]

This had nothing to do with the prisoner and everything to do with trying to attack the company supplying the chemicals.

[Rheo]

Really, the defense wants to know if the lethal drug contains GMO's or what? What a reach.

We aren't even talking about the crimes he committed and did he have adequate representation under the law, they ruled on that and rejected.

Go with the one bullet effect.

 

Questions about the source of execution drugs have arisen in several states in recent months as numerous drugmakers — particularly in Europe, where opposition to capital punishment is strongest — have refused to sell their products if they will be used in executions.

 

That's led several state prison systems to compounding pharmacies, which are not as heavily regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as more conventional pharmacies.

 

A batch of pentobarbital that Texas purchased from a compounding pharmacy in suburban Houston expired at the end of March. The pharmacy refused to sell the state any more drugs, citing threats it received after its name was made public.

 

That led Texas to its new, undisclosed supplier.