Death row inmate eats cheesesteak, quotes Bible before being electrocuted
A Tennessee inmate convicted of the 1986 murders of a mother and her 15-year-old daughter was executed on Thursday night — marking the third time the state has used the electric chair since November.
Stephen Michael West, 56, who maintained his innocence until his death, scarfed down a Philly cheesesteak and french fries as his final meal and quoted from the bible in his last words.
“In the beginning God created man,” he said, crying, according to the Nashville Tennessean. “And Jesus wept. That’s all.”
West was pronounced dead at 7:27 p.m. at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
He was put on death row for kidnapping and stabbing 51-year-old Wanda Romines more than 40 times and for raping and slaying her teenage daughter Sheila Romines.
At the time, West was a 23-year-old McDonald’s employee who had spent three years in the US Army.
In a clemency plea to Gov. Bill Lee, West’s attorneys claimed his then-17-year-old accomplice Ronnie Martin was actually the one who killed the mom and daughter.
While West was sentenced to death, Martin pleaded guilty as a juvenile and received a life sentence with the possibility of parole in 2030.
An expert at the trial concluded that two people were involved in stabbing the teen.
Either way, Tennessee is one of 27 states that allows executions of “non-triggermen” — or people convicted of involvement in a felony resulting in a victim’s death — even if they didn’t kill anyone themselves.
The governor denied West’s clemency application, which also detailed the convicted killer’s childhood abuse and stated that he had been taking powerful medication in prison to treat mental illness caused or exacerbated by that abuse.
Eddie Campbell, a family member of the victims, said that: “Our family has suffered very deeply over the last 33 years through all of the appeals.”
West was one of four death row inmates who sued last year for permission to use a firing squad as an execution method.
He then asked for the electric chair, with his lawyers saying that method would be less painful then the default state’s preference of a three-drug lethal injection. Two other inmates, David Miller and Edmund Zagorski, also chose to die by electric chair.
With Post wires
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