Sedley Alley

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Sedley Alley
Born August 16, 1955
Died June 28, 2006 (aged 50)
Nashville, Tennessee
Penalty Guilty
Status Executed

Sedley Alley (August 16, 1955 – June 28, 2006) was convicted of abducting, raping, and murdering 19-year-old United States Marine Corps Lance Corporal Suzanne Marie Collins near Naval Air Station Memphis in Millington, Tennessee.

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[edit] The crime

Alley, a civilian married to a military officer, abducted Collins while she was jogging near the Millington base late in the evening of July 11, 1985. After beating Collins, repeatedly striking her on the head, strangling her, and raping her, he inserted a tree limb into her vagina with such force that it punctured a lung. Alley confessed the next morning, giving a lengthy description of his actions. 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.

[edit] The trial and sentence

Alley pleaded insanity, 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 United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Alley was executed by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee at 2:12 a.m. on June 28, 2006. The state had planned back-to-back executions of both Alley and serial killer Paul Dennis Reid, but Reid received a stay.

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