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| S.C. executes convicted killer |
| By The Sun News |
| Published: 03/22/2004 |
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David Clayton Hill neither apologized nor confessed before he was put to death at 6:17 p.m. Friday for the 1994 murder of Georgetown police Maj. Spencer Guerry. Hill, 39, glanced briefly at the witnesses, including Sally Guerry, Spencer Guerry's widow, and smiled. "He just smiled; I don't know who he was smiling at," Sally Guerry said. Last-ditch appeals to the state Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Mark Sanford on grounds that the state's lethal injection methods could be cruel and unusual punishment all failed Friday, and the execution was carried out as scheduled. Hill was sentenced to die for shooting Guerry, who had stopped him for an expired tag. The officer died two days after he was shot, never having regained consciousness. Torn about whether she wanted to see her husband's killer executed, Sally Guerry did not decide to watch it until she walked into the witness room, thinking she would go that far and could leave if she wished. "I know I made the right decision, I do," she said. She had to watch on behalf of her husband, she said. Her sons, Ryan, who will be 21 next week, and James, 18, chose not to attend and were in Columbia with friends. Hill, who worked in restaurants up and down the beach for years and knew good food and wine, asked only for a bottle of Dom Perignon, an expensive champagne, as his last meal. The state denied that request, said prisons spokesman John Barkley. So Hill's last meal was whatever prisoners had for supper, he said. Hill's witnesses were his brother, Jeff Scott, and a minister, identified only as Father Andrew. Both left without speaking to reporters. Before the execution, a small group of death penalty opponents picketed in front of Corrections Department headquarters on Broad River Road on Columbia's northwest edge. |
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