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Main: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (Drew Angerer/Getty Images). Inset: Edward T. James (Florida Dept. of Corrections).
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas put the final nail in the proverbial coffin of a 63-year-old death row inmate in Florida who raped and murdered an 8-year-old girl before killing the victim’s grandmother. Thomas on Thursday declined to present the case of convicted double-murderer Edward T. James to the full court.
“The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied,” the brief order states. “The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.”
A writ of certiorari is an order directing a lower court to deliver a case record to a higher court for review.
The petition was a last-ditch effort by James to evade his execution by lethal injection, which is scheduled to take place at 6 p.m. on Thursday at the Florida State Prison in Bradford County known as “Raiford Prison.” James would become the second person executed in the state of Florida this year.
James was convicted in the 1993 rape and killing of 8-year-old Toni Neuner as well as the killing of 58-year-old Betty Dick. He pleaded guilty to charges of murder, kidnapping, and child abuse. A jury subsequently voted 11-1 in favor of the death penalty for both of the slayings.
James’ attorney sought to stay his execution until the Supreme Court decides the case Rivers v. Guerrero, which is scheduled for oral argument later this month, asserting that the high court’s resolution in that case would “directly impact” James’ case given the “substantially similar issues presented by him.” The Rivers case hinges on technicalities in the treatment of appellants who file multiple habeas petitions.
According to court documents reviewed by Law&Crime, on the evening of Sept. 19, 1993, Toni and her three siblings slept over at their grandmother’s home where James rented a room. Toni’s 9-year-old sister told authorities she awoke to her grandmother screaming “Stop, Eddie, stop, Eddie” and went to the bedroom where she witnessed James “choking and stabbing her grandmother.”
“She heard James say to Betty: ‘If you’re not dead in the count of three, I’m going to stab some more,’ so she wasn’t, and he started some more.” the little girl told police at the time.
Toni’s “completely nude” body was discovered in the room James rented. She was “lying on her back, wedged between the mattress and the wall” and had been covered with a large pillow. Her underwear had been placed in her mouth, police said. A medical examiner testified that she had been extensively sexually assaulted and then strangled, likely with a ligature.
In October 1993, James admitted to the murder in a taped interview with police, saying he remembered getting home that evening.
He told a detective, “I was pissed off and fed up and frustrated, just mad” because “he was tired of the kids always being there.” He also said he was high on crack and other drugs before he recounted how he heard the bones in Toni’s neck “popping and cracking and stuff”
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