Tennessee completes execution of Stephen West using electric chair

Following the denial of his last legal appeals by the US Supreme Court, Stephen West was executed tonight by the state of Tennessee.  This local article provides these details:

Tennessee executed death row inmate Stephen Michael West Thursday night, marking the third time the state has used the electric chair in less than a year.  He was pronounced dead at 7:27 p.m. CDT, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.  He was 56.

West was sentenced to death for the 1986 stabbing deaths of Wanda Romines, 51, and her 15-year-old daughter, Sheila Romines, in their East Tennessee home.  He also was convicted of raping Sheila.  Experts said the women had been tortured in front of one another before they died.

West was the 137th person put to death in Tennessee since 1916, and the fifth inmate executed since August 2018.

West’s legal team had pleaded to spare his life in the weeks before the execution.  They said his co-defendant Ronnie Martin had committed the murders while West stood by, hobbled by a history of childhood abuse and untreated mental illnesses.  Martin was 17 when the murders took place.  He remains in an East Tennessee prison and will be eligible for parole in 2030. Because he was a minor at the time of the crime, Martin was not eligible for the death penalty.

In a clemency application sent to Gov. Bill Lee, West’s lawyers said he had reformed himself after receiving mental health treatment in prison.  They stressed his Christian faith and his work with other inmates behind bars.  Days before the execution, Lee said he would not intervene.  Within hours, West asked to die by electrocution instead of lethal injection, the state’s default execution method.

He was the third inmate to make that choice since Tennessee resumed executions a year ago.  Each inmate who chose the electric chair had participated in lawsuits challenging Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol.