While Mississippi plans Wednesday for the first time since 2012 to execute an inmate, death penalty opponents criticized “atrocious” conditions at the prison under federal investigation where David Neal Cox is expected to die from lethal injection.
Cox, 50, was sentenced to death for the 2010 fatal shooting of his estranged wife, Kim Kirk Cox. He will be killed at 6 p.m. CST at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said Wednesday.
Cox pleaded guilty in 2012 to capital murder. He also pleaded guilty to multiple other charges, including sexual assault. A jury handed down the death sentence.
Prosecutors said Cox shot his wife and let her bleed to death over several hours while he sexually assaulted his stepdaughter three times in front of her dying mother. Cox has exhausted appeals and filed court papers calling himself “worthy of death.”
The U.S. Department of Justice in February 2020 opened a civil rights investigation into the Mississippi prison system after a string of inmate deaths over the previous months. Federal prosecutors said they would look into the conditions at four state prisons following the deaths of at least 15 inmates since December 2019. The probe is examining whether state corrections officials are adequately protecting prisoners from physical harm and whether there are adequate healthcare and suicide prevention services.
The investigation will specifically focus on conditions at Parchman, Southern Mississippi Correctional Institute, Central Mississippi Correctional Facility and the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, the Justice Department said. A DOJ spokesperson said Wednesday the investigation is ongoing.
“Parchman Farm is under investigation by the Department of Justice for prison conditions that are atrocious,” Abraham Bonowitz, with Death Penalty Action, said Tuesday while gathered with other activists at the state capital in Jackson. “Brown drinking water. David Cox and other prisoners report being bitten by rats. So, when somebody gets the point of saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got an easy way out, I’m going to take it.’ You have to ask why?”
Death Penalty action has petitioned Gov. Reeves to intervene in Cox’s execution.
Bonowitz and others who want to abolish the death penalty, including some religious leaders, acknowledged Cox’s guilt on Tuesday. But they said if Cox is killed, and the state resumes executing inmates, his death will continue systemic issues around the death penalty, such as disproportionally killing people of color and sometimes innocent inmates.
“While tomorrow’s execution is not one of possible innocence, resuming executions in Mississippi, brings us closer to the risk of killing the innocent,” said Lea Campbell, with Mississippi Rising Coalition.
Reeves, who is a Republican, has no intention of granting clemency or delaying the execution, his spokesman, Bailey Martin, said Wednesday in a statement.
“The Governor has reviewed the facts of this case and there is no question that David Cox committed these horrific crimes. Mr. Cox has admitted his guilt on multiple occasions and has been found competent by both the Circuit Court and Mississippi Supreme Court,” Martin said. “Further, Mr. Cox himself filed a motion requesting that all appeals be dismissed and his execution date be set. In light of this, the Governor has no intention at this time of granting clemency or delaying this execution.”
Inmates at Parchman have alleged chronic staff shortages and rampant violence have led some prisoners to insert their own catheters, treat their own stab wounds and suffer through seizures without medication. A federal lawsuit filed in February 2020, said in many instances, there was only one guard for every 160 inmates.
The lawsuit was the second filed in consecutive months with the help of rappers Jay-Z, real name Shawn Carter, and Yo Gotti, real name Mario Mims, who have been protesting the “inhumane and dangerous conditions of confinement” in prisons. The pair also released an open letter to Gov. Reeves calling for him to shut down the facility, which they write has become “a shameful symbol of society’s moral decay.”
The complaint was filed on behalf of 152 inmates who say that they are under “constant peril” at Parchman and that the environment is “so barbaric, the deprivation of health and mental health care so extreme, and the defects in security so severe, that the people confined at Parchman live a miserable and hopeless existence confronted daily by imminent risk of substantial harm in violation of their rights under the U.S. Constitution.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
