Hours before Alabama death row inmate Christopher Price was executed Thursday for the slaying of a minister 28 years ago, he apologized for that horrific crime in a statement to AL.com through his attorney.
“I’m terribly sorry for the victim of my crime and his family. Neither he nor his family deserve what happened to him. No one deserves that,” Price said.
Price, 46, was pronounced dead at 7:31 p.m. after being executed by lethal injection at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
Price was initially set to die by lethal injection on April 11, but the execution was called off just before midnight because the state said it didn’t have time to start the procedure before the death warrant expired.
The Alabama Supreme Court set Thursday as a new execution date for Price in late April.
Price was convicted in the 1991 robbery and slaying of Fayette County minister Bill Lynn, who was slain with a sword and dagger just days before Christmas that year, while he was wrapping presents for his grandchildren.
The curtains opened to the execution viewing rooms at 7:11 p.m. The following minute, the warden read Price’s death warrant. Price’s last words were, “A man is much more than his worst mistake.”
Twice at 7:15 p.m. Price lifted his head and looked down towards his feet. At 7:16 p.m., he opened and closed his eyes, before his stomach heaved 5 times.
His breathing slowed, and at 7:18 p.m. a corrections officer performed a consciousness check. Price did not respond.
The curtains closed to the viewing room at 7:26 p.m., and he was officially pronounced dead minutes later.
According to Alabama Department of Corrections spokesperson Bob Horton, Price was visited by his wife and a friend on Wednesday. Thursday, he was visited by his wife, his uncle, and his attorney Aaron Katz. Wednesday, he made three phone calls, one to his attorney and two to his wife.
Thursday, Price refused his breakfast but requested four pints of Turtle Pie ice cream for his final meal.
Horton said Price’s wife, 2 aunts, uncle, cousin, and attorney were scheduled to witness the execution; but, only Katz was present in the room where Price’s family was to sit along with members of the media.
Members of the victim’s family witnessed the execution, but their relationships to the victim were not disclosed due to a request from the family.
The execution was scheduled for 6 p.m. Members of the media were transported to the area of Holman prison where executions are carried out around 5:45 p.m. but, before exiting the media van, Horton said media needed to go back to the press center. Upon return to the center at approximately 6:20 p.m., Horton said the process to prepare Price for his execution took longer than expected. He said there were no reported problems with the preparation.
Following the execution, ADOC Chief of Staff Anne Hill said at the request of the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, the prison implemented the initial delay in order to allow the U.S. Supreme Court time to enter their order. At approximately 6:35 p.m. Thursday, the nation’s highest court denied the request for a stay.
As the media van was leaving the gates of Holman at that time, an ambulance was spotted entering the facility grounds. Horton said the ambulance was not related to Price, but was transporting an inmate who had been injured earlier in the day in an unrelated incident to an off-site medical facility. No other information on that incident or inmate were immediately available.
Hill delivered a statement from the victim’s family: “We would like to thank all of our friends and extended family for the love, prayers, and support through this long and difficult journey. Although this is not really closure, we are praying to finally have peace. Not only for us, but for the one we love and miss every day.”
AG Steve Marshall released a statement following the execution, stating Lynn’s family “has finally seen Lynn’s killer face justice.” He also added that Price was “fighting until the very end to avoid facing the consequences of his heinous crime.”
“…Lynn was ambushed, slashed, and stabbed with a sword and knife dozens of times. His killer, Christopher Price, dodged his death sentence for the better part of three decades by employing much the same strategy he has pursued today and tonight: desperately clinging to legal maneuverings to avoid facing his just punishment. In the end, justice got the last word. Tonight, Pastor Lynn’s family can finally begin to seek peace and closure.”
Late Wednesday, Price appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution. In a response to Price’s U.S. Supreme Court motion, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office said in a filing, “Price obtained a de facto stay in April not due to the merits of his case, but rather through eleventh-hour gamesmanship. The Court should not stay his lawful execution,” the AG’s office stated.
Gov. Kay Ivey also released a statement. “Ensuring the safety of the people who call Alabama home is of the highest priority. When that safety is infringed upon, we must respond with punishment. Almost 30 years ago, a heinous and cruel act not only broke the laws of our state; that act of Christopher Lee Price took a life. Alabama does not and will not ever stand for that.”
She described the crime and said Price “brutally took the life of Pastor Lynn and robbed and beat Mrs. Lynn.” Ivey said, “After careful consideration of the horrendous nature of the crime, the jury’s decision and all factors surrounding the case, the state of Alabama carried out Mr. Price’s sentence this evening. Finally, the loved ones of Pastor Lynn can feel at ease knowing that justice has been administered. I pray that, after all these years later, his family can feel a sense of peace and comfort.”
The appeal to the nation’s highest court on Wednesday by the inmate’s attorneys, Katz and Jonathan Ference-Burke, came after they appealed to the Southern District Court of Alabama for a stay of execution. That was denied and Price appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals last week. That court also denied his request for a stay.
In an order issued by the federal appeals court, the judges ruled: “The fundamental problem for Price is the [United States] Supreme Court has already found his claim to be untimely and, therefore, unworthy of a stay of execution. And because that holding is the law of this case, both this Court and the district court are bound by the April 12, 2019, decision.”
Katz said he met with Price on Thursday. He relayed Price’s message to AL.com and, when asked about Price’s demeanor, said: “It’s hard. Imagine you’re a healthy body individual… strangers are going to be taking you out of your home, and they’re going to kill you. Its surreal.”
The lawyer described Price as a warm, friendly, and funny person who enjoys making art and reading, and is well respected on death row. Price enjoys giving his art away, often to his lawyers and their families. Katz also said Price wants the public to know his life and legacy is more than what happened on that December night in 1991.
“He’s managed to make something of his life,” Katz said.
Price was 19 years old when he went to prison for Lynn’s slaying, and 21 when he was sent to death row. According to his attorney, Price did not have a serious criminal record before the killing—only a vandalism violation. He became friends with a man named Kelvin Coleman about a year before the crime, and Coleman did have a record of run-ins with the law. Katz said Coleman convinced Price they could get money by robbing the Lynn home, where Coleman had previously done some work. The lawyer said Coleman warned Price that Lynn would probably put up a fight, so Price brought a sword. “This was not a planned killing. This was a robbery gone unbelievably, horribly wrong,” Katz said.
Katz called Lynn’s killing a “horrible, awful crime,” but said he doesn’t think his client is an evil person. “That doesn’t take away what he did, it doesn’t make anything less tragic or horrible. [But] I think it’s important people understand that what’s happening tonight is an intentional, personal killing….and some people are okay with that, some people are not.”
Price acknowledges he made horrible decisions both being involved with Lynn’s killing and in his life before the murder. “I think it’s important for people to understand that people in death row are real human beings,” Katz, who represents another inmate on Alabama’s death row, said. He said Price is a joking person with real emotions, thoughts, and feelings. “They actually do have real lives,” Katz said.
Tonight, Katz said, Price is scared. “From his perspective, he’s being murdered tonight. Not an illegal [killing], but one with all the trappings of a murder. He’s able-bodied and being killed against his will,” the attorney said. “We need to be honest with ourselves about what’s happening.”
Price met his now wife after interacting with her as a penpal for many years, Katz said. He said she “genuinely loves” Price and “appreciates everything he’s done for her.” Price has made his intentions clear that his belongings will be split between his wife and his uncle, with several other items going to other inmates on death row.
Katz said he wanted the public to know that the death row representation process is hard. He said he grieves for Price and his family, but also grieves for the victims and their families. “We can grieve for the victims, but [we] say we’re better than this. We don’t need to kill someone simply because they killed.”
The 1st execution date
On the day of his 1st scheduled execution in April, Price was the subject of several legal battles in federal courts.
About two hours before the scheduled execution, Southern District of Alabama Chief Judge Kristi DuBose issued a stay of execution for 60 days and ordered the state to submit evidence in contradiction to Price’s contention the 3-drug lethal injection protocol will cause or is likely to cause severe pain.
Price also was asking to be executed by the newly approved method, nitrogen hypoxia. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the stay based on jurisdictional issues, and the Alabama Attorney General’s Office appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled the execution could go forward, but their ruling came after the Alabama Attorney General’s Office had already called it off for the night.
Following the SCOTUS ruling, the AG’s Office asked the Alabama Supreme Court for a new execution date. Late last month, DuBose set Price’s case for a non-jury trial on June 10 at 9:00 a.m. Her order on the trial date did not prevent the Alabama Supreme Court from setting a new execution date for Price, however, and the judge wrote she would not stay the execution if a new date was set.
The new execution date was set days later.
In his Wednesday motion to the U.S. Supreme Court, Price’s attorneys asked for a “brief, time-limited stay of his execution” for DuBose to rule on Price’s bench trial on June 10. The motion stated, “Only 12 days away, Mr. Price’s federal civil rights trial concerns a single issue: whether the first drug in Alabama’s lethal injection protocol, midazolam hydrochloride, will put Mr. Price into a state of deep anesthesia sufficient to protect him from feeling the severe, excruciating pain of his execution.”
As a last request, according to an Alabama Department of Corrections spokesperson on the day of the first scheduled execution, Price and his fiancée were married in the Holman visitation yard on April 10. Price was visited by his wife the day he was set to be executed.
Early last year, Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill giving inmates the option to choose execution by nitrogen hypoxia. According to the law, inmates waiting to be executed were allowed to opt into the nitrogen method if they wished, but had to do so within a 30-day period in June 2018. Of the 177 inmates on Alabama’s death row, more than 50 inmates chose to die by the new method. The law had no requirement for the AG’s Office to notify death row inmates’ attorneys, many who are located in other states, of the law change and the 30-day election period.
Federal Defender for the Middle District of Alabama John Palombi-- who represents several death row inmates-- said, “The statute adding nitrogen hypoxia as an authorized method of execution for the state did not expressly require the state to notify death row inmates (or their attorneys) of the change, or that there was a time limit on opting in, or the legal effects of opting in. This meant that the attorneys had the responsibility of keeping up with these changes."
The election for nitrogen had to be written and signed by the inmate during the month of June, but there was no official form issued by the state for the inmates to fill out. According to an affidavit by Palombi, his office made a form with blanks for their clients to sign and turn into the prison warden as notification of their elections. He said that on June 26, he and Federal Defender Spencer Hahn went to Holman to meet with their clients.
On that visit, Palombi said he and his colleague presented their drafted forms to their clients. He said he did not direct or encourage any of those clients to convey any of those conversations to inmates not represented by the Federal Defenders Office.
“The Federal Defenders Office has never represented Mr. Price. I was also generally aware that Mr. Price was represented by other counsel, and so the Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct would have prohibited me from making any attempt to speak with him,” Palombi said in the affidavit.
No Alabama inmates have been executed by the new method, and a state protocol for the nitrogen hypoxia executions has not yet been developed. While a few other states have also adopted nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, it has yet to be used. Hill said the department is prepared to carry out more lethal injection executions this year, if the state supreme court sets additional dates.
The AG’s Office has argued Price missed the June 2018 deadline for opting into the nitrogen hypoxia method; but Katz said the state’s claim that Price and his legal team knew about the nitrogen hypoxia opt-in period last summer but didn’t act on it is “nonsense.”
The execution was set for 6 p.m. at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, but the state called it off just after 11:30 p.m. The U.S. Supreme Court a few hours later ruled the execution could go forward but the decision came too late.
In the U.S. Supreme Court opinion issued May 13, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that Price brought his claims decades years after his conviction and death sentence were final.
“20 years later, after multiple unsuccessful attempts to obtain postconviction relief, [Price] brought … an action under [legal rule] attacking the constitutionality of the State’s lethal injection protocol,” Thomas wrote.
“According to Justice [Stephen] Breyer, the warden may not have given [Price] an election form until ’72 hours’ before the June 30 deadline. That ‘possibil[ity],’ even if true, is irrelevant. As an initial matter, [Price] (like all other individuals) is presumed to be aware of the law and thus the June 30 deadline. Moreover, the Alabama statute neither required special notice to inmates nor mandated the use of a particular form... Cynthia Stewart, the warden at Holman Correctional Facility, went beyond what the statute required by affirmatively providing death-row inmates at Holman a written election form and an envelope in which they could return it to her. No fewer than 48 other inmates took advantage of this election. [Price] did not, even though he was represented throughout this time period by a wellheeled Boston law firm. It was not until January 27, 2019—two weeks after the State sought to set an execution date and six months after [Price] declined to elect nitrogen hypoxia—that [Price’s] counsel asked the warden, for the first time, that petitioner be executed through nitrogen hypoxia instead of lethal injection.”
Breyer had issued his dissent at the time the nation’s highest court lifted the stay of execution in the early morning hours of April 12. He admonished court conservatives for overruling two lower court stays “in the middle of the night” without discussing it further at a morning conference.
“What is at stake in this case is the right of a condemned inmate not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” Breyer wrote.
Lynn’s slaying
In Thomas’ opinion, he wrote that Breyer’s dissent “omitted any discussion of the murder that warranted [Price’s] sentence of death and the extensive procedural protections afforded to him before his last minute, dilatory filings.” Thomas began with the details of Lynn’s slaying.
Lynn was killed with a sword and a dagger on the evening of December 22, 1991, outside of his home in the Bazemore community. Lynn was a minister at the Natural Springs Church of Christ, and had returned home with his wife Bessie Lynn after leading a church service that evening.
According to court records, Lynn was assembling Christmas toys for his grandchildren when the electricity suddenly went out. The minister went outside to check the power box, when his wife heard a noise and then saw a person outside holding a sword. Bessie Lynn testified that her husband yelled for her to call the police, but she realized the telephone lines had been cut when she tried to use the phone.
Bessie Lynn armed herself with a pistol and testified that she went outside and fired a gunshot into the air. She found her husband and handed him the gun, but there were no bullets left. She was then beaten by two men and ultimately gave them her jewelry, money, and guns that were in the house.
When the men left, Bessie Lynn ran to her father’s house nearby and called for help.
Bessie Lynn was treated for several wounds but survived the attack; her husband died en route to the hospital with dozens of inches-deep wounds and his arm nearly severed. She and five other relatives were present in Atmore last month prepared to witness Price’s execution, but the ADOC did not release the identities of the victim’s family members who witnessed the Thursday execution.
According to Thomas’ opinion, Price admitted to the killing before a jury convicted him of capital murder and first-degree robbery and sentenced him to death.
Katz said previously that Price is remorseful for the slaying.
Price becomes the 3rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Alabama and the 66th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983.
Price becomes the 9th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,499th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
The next execution in the USA is tentatively set for July 31, in Texas.
Sources: al.com, Rick Halperin, May 30, 2019
USA: Countdown to nation's 1500th execution
With the execution of Christopher Price in Alabama on May 30, the USA has now executed 1,499 condemned individuals since the death penalty was re-legalized on July 2, 1976 in the US Supreme Court Gregg v Georgia decision.
Gary Gilmore was the 1st person executed, in Utah, on January 17, 1977. Below is a list of scheduled executions as the nation approaches a terrible milestone of 1500 executions in the modern era.
NOTE: The list is likely to change over the coming months as new execution dates are added and possible stays of execution occur.
1500------July 31-------------Ruben Gutierrez----------Texas
1501------Aug. 15-------------Dexter Johnson-----------Texas
1502-------Aug. 15------------Stephen West-------------Tennessee
1503-------Aug. 21------------Larry Swearingen---------Texas
1504-------Sept. 4------------Billy Crutsinger------------Texas
1505-------Sept. 10-----------Mark Anthony Soliz-------Texas
1506-------Sept. 12-----------Warren Henness-------------Ohio
1507-------Oct. 2-------------Stephen Barbee--------------Texas
Learn more about efforts to #StopThe1500th Execution and how you can be involved at
http://deathpenaltyaction.org/1500th [deathpenaltyaction.org]
Source: Rick Halperin, May 30, 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
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde