Sedley Alley
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Sedley Alley (August 16, 1955 – June 28, 2006) was convicted of abducting, raping, and murdering nineteen-year-old United States Marine Corps Lance Corporal Suzanne Marie Collins near Naval Air Station Memphis in Millington, Tennessee. Alley, a civilian married to a military person, abducted nineteen-year-old Collins while she was jogging near the Millington base late in the evening of July 11, 1985. After strangling Collins, raping her, and striking her with a screwdriver, his final act was to insert a tree limb into her vagina with such force that it punctured a lung. With over 100 separate injuries to Collins' body, her murder still stands as one of the most horrific crimes in the history of Shelby County, Tennessee. Alley confessed the next morning, giving a lengthy description of his actions, including the insertion of the tree limb. He then accompanied investigators on a tour of his route and correctly pointed out the tree where he left her body and from which he obtained the limb.
Alley claimed an insanity defense, but was convicted of aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, and capital murder. He maintained the insanity defense during his post-conviction appeals from 1985 until 2004, when he began to claim innocence. He filed a number of unsuccessful motions in state and federal courts to allow access to evidence for DNA tests which he asserted would prove his innocence. He also claimed that the lethal injection protocol would cause him pain and suffering and would therefore qualify as unconstitutional punishment.
Despite an 11th-hour barrage of petitions from his defense team and a last-minute stay of execution ordered by a senior judge of the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, Alley was executed by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee at 2:12 AM on June 28, 2006. The state had planned back-to-back executions of both Alley and convicted killer Paul Dennis Reid, but Reid received a stay.
[edit] Sources
- Tennessee Supreme Court's decision on Sedley Alley's appeals
- New York Times article on Alley's Execution
- Link to "Journey into Darkness" on Amazon.com. The book, by John Douglas, dedicates three chapters to the trial and conviction of Sedley Alley
- COMPLETE DOCUMENTATION OF THE CASE FROM THE CLARK COUNTY (TN) PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE
