A federal judge has denied an Alabama Death Row inmate’s claim of innocence less than two weeks before he is set to die.
The judge also rejected a plea to stay the inmate’s execution.
The lethal injection of Jamie Mills is set for May 30 at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. Mills, 50, has been fighting his execution in two separate federal lawsuits: One challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol and another claiming his former wife lied when testifying against him.
Mills and his then-wife, JoAnn Mills, were convicted in the June 2004 beating deaths of Floyd and Vera Hill. The elderly couple were beaten with a machete, a ball-peen hammer, and a tire iron at their Marion County home before, prosecutors said, the Mills stole cash and prescription medication.
The jury recommended by 11 to 1 that Mills be executed for the slayings.
In one of his lawsuits, Mills argued his wife who testified against him in 2007 only did so because of a prearranged plea agreement that would spare her the death penalty. He’s made that claim “unsuccessfully many times,” wrote U.S. District Judge Scott Coogler in his Friday order.
“However, Mills never offered any evidence in support of this claim.”
Coogler said in his order that Mills’ argument, supported by an affidavit of JoAnn Mills’ former attorney, was “untimely and meritless.”
“Mills has produced no documentary evidence of a plea deal prior to Mills’ trial. He has merely produced (the lawyer’s) affidavit, in which he makes vague references” to meetings with prosecutors.
“There is certainly no note from (the lawyer’s) files documenting the terms of this alleged plea deal for JoAnn’s testimony or anything signed by JoAnn or by the prosecution prior to JoAnn’s testimony.”
The judge also ruled that, even if JoAnn Mills had a plea agreement, it wouldn’t prove that she wasn’t telling the truth about the killings.
“Additionally, JoAnn’s testimony was but one part of the overwhelming evidence against Mills, including a second witness linking his vehicle to the crime scene, as well as the fact that a pair of his work pants (with his name on the inside tab) stained with the victims’ blood, murder weapons containing the victims’ DNA, and a concrete block were found in his trunk. In sum, even if JoAnn’s testimony been excluded at Mills’ trial, there was sufficient evidence to convict him for the murders,” wrote Coogler.
The judge also denied a stay of execution for Mills.
Mills, 50, still has a lawsuit pending in the Middle District of Alabama where he’s challenging Alabama’s process of lethal injection. In that case, his lawyers argued that he “is at imminent risk of being subjected to an unnecessarily prolonged and torturous execution process at the hands of State officials with unreviewable authority, without the presence of counsel or access to the courts.”