Alabama to execute inmate who dropped appeals and asked for death
James Osgood, 55, will be executed by lethal injection on April 24, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey announced. Osgood was convicted of the 2010 killing of Tracy Lynn Brown in Chilton County. Prosecutors said Osgood cut her throat after he and his girlfriend sexually assaulted her.
Osgood over the summer dropped his appeals and asked the state to set an execution date for him.
'I know longer feel as if I'm even existing. I'm tired. I want to complete my sentence,' Osgood wrote in a letter to his attorney last July. The letter was included in court filings about his request to drop his appeal. He also thanked his attorney for her work on his case.
Osgood was convicted in 2014 and sentenced to death, but an appeals court threw out the sentence, ruling that a judge gave improper instructions to jurors. But at his resentencing in 2018, Osgood asked for a death sentence, telling the judge he believed in an 'eye for an eye.'
'A couple of years ago I really screwed up. I'm guilty and I deserve death. That's what I want,' Osgood told the judge, WSFA reported.
Osgood renewed his appeals after his sentencing until dropping them this summer.
Brown was found dead in her home on Oct. 23, 2010, after her employer became concerned when she did not show up for work. She had been stabbed and her throat cut, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said that Osgood told police that he and his girlfriend sexually assaulted and attacked Brown after discussing how they had fantasies about kidnapping and torturing someone.
In the 2018 sentencing order handing down the death sentence, a judge noted that Osgood had a difficult childhood that included sexual abuse, abandonment and a suicide attempt. His brain development was potentially hindered because of malnutrition he suffered as an infant, the judge found.
But the judge also said it was Osgood who cut Brown's neck and stabbed her during the attack in which Brown begged them not to hurt her.
Osgood's girlfriend, the other person charged in the murder, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
The execution authorization by Ivey comes two weeks after the Republican granted clemency to another death row inmate, commuting the death sentence of Robin 'Rocky' Myers to life in prison. The governor said there were enough questions about his guilt that she could not move forward with his execution.
It was the only time Ivey has granted clemency. The last time an Alabama governor commuted a death sentence was in 1999.
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