16 March 2018 :

Michael Wayne Eggers was executed. Eggers (50, White) was convicted of the 2000 murder of 67-year-old Bennie Francis Murray. Walker County jurors in August 2002 voted 11-1 for the death penalty. On December 30, 2000, Eggers came looking for a job from the 67-year-old Murray, his former employer who ran a travelling carnival concessions business. She did not hire him, but offered to give him a ride and to help him find work elsewhere. After driving him around, she took him to a remote area where he said he had left his car after accidentally driving it off the road. He later told police that they had gotten into an argument during the ride. In a remote area, Eggers said, he pulled over the car and beat, kicked and choked Murray to death and left her body in the woods. More than a week later, Eggers was arrested in Florida. Murray's body was then discovered after Eggers told police where it was. At his sentencing after his conviction in 2002, he asked the jury to sentence him to death. His attorneys argue that Eggers is mentally ill, suffering from paranoid delusions since the 1980s. His older brother had similar symptoms and was diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized. He has repeatedly fired his lawyers at various levels of appeals and attempted to represent himself. He believes his lawyers are engaged in a conspiracy against him with the U.S. government and are not properly litigating his case. Thursday's execution is its first of 2018 after the execution of Doyle Lee Hamm was called off last month. An execution team on Feb. 22 (see) punctured Hamm’s legs and groin at least 11 times in an attempt to set an IV. Eggers was the 62nd person executed in Alabama since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983, the 4th of this year in the US, and the 1,470th person executed in the United States since 1977.