Judge Andy Cromer on the North Carolina Superior Court has ordered that Steven McHone's execution scheduled for Friday be stayed until he considers new evidence from a paramedic that heard his mother's dying words asking for forgiveness for her son, who had just shot her. Judge Cromer's statement before issuing the order was:
"Someone unconnected to the family, the paramedic has been living with the last words of Mildred (Adams). From a perspective of how I am to review all of this. it's almost simply that. What effect does something that was not connected to the family have on the jury?"
For only the second time in state history the NC Academy of Trial Lawyers is intervening to seek clemency for a prisoner on death row. As I have chronicled here, there are three individuals schedule to be executed in the next month and all three have received calls for clemency for their own families and the families of the victims, which happen to be the same in all three cases.
McHone was convicted for a string of petty crimes prior to the murder. Then he was convicted of shooting his mother and father because they would not give him money to pay off restitution that he owed on a previous criminal conviction. He is sentenced to be executed on Friday.
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