FRIDAY April 25, 2025 |
By thenewsdesk.ng
A United States, US, inmate who waived his legal appeals and admitted guilt in a 2010 rape and murder is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Thursday evening in Alabama, FirstNEWS reports.
James Osgood, 55, is set to die at 6 p.m. CDT at the William Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
His execution would make him one of a small but notable number of U.S. death row inmates who have voluntarily dropped their appeals, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Osgood was convicted in the 2010 killing of Tracy Lynn Brown in Chilton County.
Prosecutors said he and his girlfriend, Brown’s cousin, sexually assaulted the victim before Osgood cut her throat. The girlfriend was sentenced to life in prison.
“I took a life, so mine was forfeited,” Osgood told the Associated Press ahead of the execution. “I don’t believe in sitting here and wasting everybody’s time and money.”
Osgood wrote to his attorney asking for an execution date, citing emotional exhaustion and expressing remorse for the pain he caused. “I’m tired. I don’t even feel like I’m existing anymore,” he said.
Brown was found dead in her home on Oct. 23, 2010. During trial proceedings, prosecutors detailed how Osgood and his girlfriend had acted out a shared fantasy involving kidnapping and torture.
At sentencing, the judge acknowledged Osgood’s traumatic childhood, which included abandonment, sexual abuse, and suicide attempts.
However, the court noted the brutal nature of the crime and the fact that Brown pleaded for her life before being killed.
Osgood’s original death sentence was overturned due to juror instruction errors.
At his resentencing in 2018, he again asked for the death penalty to be imposed, saying he did not want to subject the families to another trial.
The Death Penalty Information Center reports that over 165 inmates have been executed in the U.S. since 1977 after waiving their appeals, most with documented histories of mental illness or suicidal behavior.
In a rare move earlier this year, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey commuted the death sentence of Robin “Rocky” Myers, citing doubts about his conviction.
It was her first act of clemency and the state’s first death sentence commutation since 1999.
