BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - A woman who once faced execution for the horrific1982 murder of a teenage girl she kidnapped from Georgia has renewed her fight for parole eligibility.
AL.com reports (https://bit.ly/2hXaVbX ) Judith Ann Neelley’s attorneys argued her case at the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week.
Neelley was convicted and sentenced to death for killing 13-year-old Lisa Ann Millican after kidnapping her in Georgia and bringing her to Alabama - where Neelley’s husband raped the girl.
In 1999, then-Gov. Fob James commuted Neelley’s death sentence to a life sentence, making her eligible for parole.
Neelley is challenging a 2003 Alabama law making anyone originally sentenced to death ineligible for parole. The Legislature made the law retroactive to 1998.
Her attorneys are appealing a federal judge’s ruling that Neelley’s 2014 challenge was filed too late.
James had commuted Neelley’s death sentence without explanation just before he left office,
According to a state parole board account cited by AL.com, Neelley kidnapped Lisa from the Riverbend Mall in Rome, Georgia, and took her to a motel room in north Alabama, where her husband, Alvin Neelley, raped the child multiple times over several days. for her husband Alvin to rape. Then, Neelley took Lisa to Little River Canyon outside Fort Payne where Neelley injected her with liquid drain cleaner in a botched attempt to kill her. After that didn’t work, Neelley shot the girl in the back and then shoved her into the canyon.
Alvin Neelley died while in prison in Georgia in 2005.
“Under the applicable statute of limitations, Neelley was required to bring her claims within two years after learning of her asserted injury,” according to an appeals court brief filed by the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, which represents the parole board. “Neelley had heard and read about Act 2003-300 by October 2003, but she did not challenge it on ex post facto or bill of attainder grounds until April 1, 2014 - more than ten years later.”
There was no indication when the 11th Circuit will rule.
“We continue to believe that the Legislature and the State Parole Board acted unconstitutionally in retroactively denying Ms. Neelley’s eligibility for parole and that the Judge erroneously found that her claims were filed too late,” Barry Ragsdale, an attorney for Neelley stated in an email to AL.com after last week’s arguments.
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Information from: The Birmingham News, https://www.al.com/birminghamnews
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