March 6 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court lifted a temporary stay of execution for an Alabama man scheduled to receive a lethal injection Thursday.
The high court earlier halted Nathanial Woods’ scheduled 6 p.m. execution pending further order from the justices. The court lifted the stay just before 8 p.m.
The opinion came after before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Woods’ attorney’s motion for a 90-day stay.
Wood’s execution could still go forward Thursday evening.
The document filed in the 11th Circuit asked for a limited, 90-day stay of execution so that Woods, 44, can obtain new legal counsel. If granted, he would’ve be allowed to have a new attorney investigate claims of previous ineffective counsel.
“Over the past 15 years, Mr. Woods has been denied constitutionally adequate legal representation and has been abandoned by counsel or represented by counsel with an actual conflict of interest compromising the representation, resulting in numerous potentially meritorious claims for relief having been waived, defaulted or insufficiently pled,” the court filing said.
Woods, 44, was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. at the Holman Correctional Facility near Atmore.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said the request was “untimely” and called it “an eleventh-hour exercise in gamesmanship.” He said Woods also failed to establish that he’s entitled to a stay.
Woods’ request comes less than a day after the 11th Circuit denied an earlier request for a stay.
The defense sought that stay on the grounds that other death row inmates in Alabama who chose nitrogen hypoxia (gas asphyxiation) as their method of execution received temporary reprieves, but not those who selected lethal injection. The state has delayed setting execution dates for those who chose the former as officials review the protocol for the new method.
The 11th U.S. Circuit on Wednesday declined to intervene in the case, saying “the last-minute nature” of his request for a stay was “unjustified.” The panel also said Woods had the opportunity to select nitrogen hypoxia as his method of execution like other inmates.
“That the state has chosen to offer an alternative method of execution and to honor the wishes of inmates who make that selection does not eliminate its interest in carrying out the sentences of inmates who did not elect that method,” the opinion said.
Woods was convicted in 2005 of multiple counts of capital murder and attempted murder for the deaths of officers Carlos Owen, Harley Chisholm III and Charles Bennett. A fourth officer also was shot but survived.
Woods’ roommate at the time, Kerry Spencer, admitted to shooting the officers after they responded to their Birmingham home. Prosecutors said Woods set up an ambush of the officers, but Spencer said he shot the officers in self-defense because they were assaulting Woods.
The Appeal reported in February that two of the officers — Chisholm and Owen — were known for “corruption and violence” and had a reputation for collecting money from known drug dealers in the city in exchange for protection.
Activists and supporters appealed to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to stop the execution. Martin Luther King III sent her a letter asking her to intervene.
“Killing this African American man, whose case appears to have been strongly mishandled by the courts, could produce an irreversible injustice,” he wrote. “Are you willing to allow a potentially innocent man to be executed?”
If his lethal injection is carried out Thursday, Woods would be the fifth person executed in the United States this year and the first in Alabama.
