State and Regional News

MOBILE — Attorneys attempting to delay Thomas Arthur's execution sent Gov. Bob Riley and court officials an affidavit Tuesday signed by another inmate who said he killed Troy Wicker Jr. in 1982, the crime that put Arthur on death row.

But Attorney General Troy King and the victim's wife both dismissed the affidavit as untrue.

The inmate's affidavit surfaced Tuesday within hours after the Alabama Supreme Court refused on a 6-2 vote to delay Arthur's execution, scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday. The delay was sought so that DNA testing of evidence could be conducted.

Bobby Ray Gilbert, who is serving life without parole in an unrelated murder, said in his handwritten affidavit, signed Monday, that he was a 17-year-old having a sexual relationship with Wicker's wife when she hired him to kill her husband for $2,000, because he was abusive.

Prosecutors contend Judy Wicker hired Arthur for the killing in an insurance scheme. She was given a life sentence for her part in the crime and paroled after 10 years behind bars.

In his affidavit, Gilbert, now 43, said he first admitted the killing to a friend only last year and attempted to contact Arthur's lawyers without immediate success.

In response, Judy Wicker, in a 3-page sworn statement to King's office, said "none of Gilbert's allegations are true." She said she didn't know Gilbert and never had a relationship with him.

"I hired and paid money to Thomas Arthur, not Bobby Gilbert, to kill Troy Wicker," she stated.

King dismissed Gilbert's statement, calling it a "smokescreen" and "simply another attempt" by Arthur to delay his execution. King said he has advised Riley not to delay the execution.

Arthur's attorneys, urging Riley to grant a stay, also filed for an emergency hearing in Jefferson County Circuit Court in Birmingham, where he was convicted, citing the affidavit as new evidence.

"Because someone else has confessed to committing the crime for which Mr. Arthur is about to be executed, there is simply no legitimate reason to deny Mr. Arthur's request for DNA testing or to execute Mr. Arthur before such testing has been completed," Arthur attorney Suhana S. Han wrote Riley.

Arthur has twice come within a day of execution before obtaining court delays. His attorney is still expected to pursue a U.S. Supreme Court stay of execution.

Last week, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also refused to delay the execution for DNA testing. His appeal last year challenging lethal injection as a form of execution was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court after granting a stay on the eve of his Dec. 6 execution date.

Arthur's execution would be the first in Alabama since the high court, in April, upheld the use of lethal injection.

Prosecutors point out that every court that has reviewed Arthur's case concluded that favorable DNA test results will not establish his innocence.

"Every court that has addressed this case has stated that DNA testing would not shed any further light on Arthur's guilt and that Arthur was convicted on the basis of overwhelming evidence," said Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw, who handles death penalty cases for the state prosecutor.

Riley last year refused to order DNA testing in Arthur's case.

Meanwhile, attorneys for the inmate claim DNA could clear Arthur and test Gilbert's claims in his affidavit, which includes details from the crime scene. He describes shooting Wicker with a ".22 sawed-off rifle" that he later threw into a lagoon and added he was paid by Judy Wicker in a Huntsville bar.

The New York-based Innocence Project, an international organization that specializes in DNA exonerations, also has supported Arthur's DNA request.

Arthur was tried three times for the Wicker killing, and the first two convictions were overturned on technicalities.

His appeal was marked by missed court filing deadlines. Arthur's attorneys contend he faces execution "without ever having received any state or federal substantive collateral review of his trial and death sentence." However, prosecutors say that's a false assertion, saying he delayed his filings until the last minute when an execution date was near.

Judy Wicker initially told police a burglar had raped her and killed Wicker, but later recanted, saying she had sex with Arthur and paid him $10,000 to kill her husband.

Prosecutors alleged that Arthur, a work-release inmate at the time, fatally shot Wicker while he slept so Judy Wicker could get $90,000 in life insurance. Arthur's lawyer, in a court filing, described her as an "admitted perjurer."