THE DARK SIDE OF FLORIDA
James Henry
#D020380
photo courtesy Historical Crime Detective
Full Name: James Dupree Henry
Date of birth: 1950
Conviction: 1st-degree murder
County: Orange
City: Orlando
Current Location: Executed
Date of crime: March 23, 1974
Execution date: September 20, 1984
Victim(s): Zellie Riley
Date of birth: 1950
Conviction: 1st-degree murder
County: Orange
City: Orlando
Current Location: Executed
Date of crime: March 23, 1974
Execution date: September 20, 1984
Victim(s): Zellie Riley
On March 23, 1973, James Dupree Henry broke into the home of 81-year-old Orlando civil rights leader, Zellie Riley, with the intention of robbing him. After finding just $64 and some credit cards, Henry bound Riley, who was his next door neighbor, to a chair and beat him with a pistol, slit his throat with a razor and stuffed a gag in his mouth and left him to die. Riley suffocated to death on the gag in his mouth.
After he was caught and charged with first-degree murder, Henry turned down a deal that would have given him a life sentence. At his 1974 trial, the jury convicted him and recommended the death penalty.
Ten years later, in a last bid appeal, new evidence and testimony from a psychiatrist suggested that Henry was “an intellectually limited, brain-damaged individual with very poor judgment, and a propensity to impulsive action and violence.”
On the day before he was executed, the US Court of Appeals rejected his medical hypothesis as just cause to grant a stay of execution stated: “We therefore agree with the district judge that this claim constitutes an abuse of the write and, that the ends of justice do not require its further consideration.”
The 34-year-old was executed on September 20, 1984. When asked if he had any last words, trembling, he stated: “My final words are – I am innocent.” Henry bade his mother and girlfriend farewell and ate raw oysters with hot sauce and crackers for the first time before he was put to death in the oak electric chair. He was pronounced dead at 7:09 a.m.
After he was caught and charged with first-degree murder, Henry turned down a deal that would have given him a life sentence. At his 1974 trial, the jury convicted him and recommended the death penalty.
Ten years later, in a last bid appeal, new evidence and testimony from a psychiatrist suggested that Henry was “an intellectually limited, brain-damaged individual with very poor judgment, and a propensity to impulsive action and violence.”
On the day before he was executed, the US Court of Appeals rejected his medical hypothesis as just cause to grant a stay of execution stated: “We therefore agree with the district judge that this claim constitutes an abuse of the write and, that the ends of justice do not require its further consideration.”
The 34-year-old was executed on September 20, 1984. When asked if he had any last words, trembling, he stated: “My final words are – I am innocent.” Henry bade his mother and girlfriend farewell and ate raw oysters with hot sauce and crackers for the first time before he was put to death in the oak electric chair. He was pronounced dead at 7:09 a.m.
Source: Historical Crime Detective