Rusk County man scheduled to be put to death for baby's exorcism beating death
A man who was convicted of beating a child during an “exorcism” is scheduled to be the 1st Texas inmate executed in 2019.
Unless there is a stay, 29-year-old Blaine Milam will be put to death by lethal injection Tuesday evening at the Huntsville “Walls” Unit. He received the death sentence in 2010 for killing his girlfriend’s 13-month-old child Amora Carson.
According to court records, Milam’s attorneys have multiple appeals with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in an attempt to halt the execution. One of the appeals focused on bite mark evidence, which was used as part of the prosecution. The appeal argued that the bite mark evidence has been discredited, calling it "junk science."
Milam’s lawyer is also appealing his conviction under the law of parties and is arguing the defendant had a psychotic illness at the time of the murder.
Milam lost a United States Supreme Court appeal in August 2018.
Milam, a Rusk County native, was found guilty of beating Amora Carson to his December 2008 death in his trailer. Court testimony states that Milam and his girlfriend, Jessica Carson, were trying to perform an exorcism of the child seeking to “cast out the demons.”
Carson received life in prison without the possibility of parole with a capital murder conviction in April 2011.
Both Milam and Carson were 18-years-old when the crime occured. Court records say that they told police that they left Amora in their trailer so they could walk up the road and speak with a man about clearing out some trees for them.
The duo initially said when they came back to the trailer to notice that someone had broken in and attacked Amora.
When law enforcement arrived at the trailer, Amroa was entirely “stiff and in rigor.” The child’s death was ruled as a homicide by the medical examiner, due to multiple blunt-force injuries and possible strangulation.
Court records say that the child had facial abrasions and bruises, human bite marks along with scrapes, bruises and abrasions from head to toe. The medical examiner also stated that the child was bleeding underneath the scalp with fractures to the back of the skull and lacerations to the brain tissue. He also testified that the child had bleeding in the eyes and around the jugular vein along with rib fractures, a tear to the liver and extensive injuries to the genitals.
During her trial, Carson admitted that she was in the couples trailer when Milam performed an "exorcism" on the child to “rid the baby of the demons in her body.” As a result of the “exorcism” conducted by Milam, Amora suffered innumerable injuries that led to her death.
Millam was sentenced in Montgomery County, due to the notoriety of the case in Rusk County. During his trial, attorneys focused on Carson as the murderer.
Carson is serving out her life sentence at the Crain Unit in Gatesville.
Unless a stay or the governor intervenes, Milam will be the 1st man put to death by the state of Texas this year, and the 559th inmate executed in Texas since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Source: Huntsville Item, January 13, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
