Who is Murray Hooper? Arizona to Execute Man for 1980 Double Killing
Arizona #Arizona
The state of Arizona is set to execute a man for the killing of two people almost 40 years ago.
Murray Hooper, 76, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday.
Hooper was among three men convicted of murdering Patrick Redmond and his mother-in-law, Helen Phelps, after forcing their way into the Redmond home in Phoenix while the family was preparing for a New Year’s Eve party on December 31, 1980.
Prosecutors said Hooper and two other men, William Bracy and Edward McCall, were hired by a Chicago crime organization to murder Redmond to gain control of his printing business.
They said the men bound and gagged the victims before shooting them in the head and slashing Redmond’s throat.
Redmond’s wife, Marilyn, survived the attack and identified all three men. They were all convicted and sentenced to death, but Bracy and McCall died in prison before their sentences could be carried out.
Hooper has maintained his innocence. His lawyers say no physical evidence ties him to the killings and that testing could exonerate him.
But Arizona’s clemency board unanimously declined to recommend that the state’s governor commute Hooper’s death sentence earlier this month.
On Monday, a judge on Monday refused to delay Hooper’s execution, rejecting a bid to allow fingerprint and DNA testing on the evidence in the case. State courts have previously rejected Hooper’s request for testing.
“For 40 years, Mr. Hooper has maintained that he was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, based on corrupt police practices and unreliable witness testimony,” assistant federal public defender Kelly Culshaw told The Arizona Republic.
Culshaw said that in Hooper’s case, there were examples of immunity and other extensive benefits given to co-conspirators, including “money, and illegal perks such as sex and drugs” in exchange for their testimony against Hooper.
Newsweek has reached out to Culshaw for further comment.
In a statement after filing a motion for an execution warrant for Hooper in August, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said: “It is my solemn obligation to ensure that court-ordered capital sentences are carried out. Those who commit the ultimate crimes deserve the ultimate punishment.”
If Hooper’s execution goes ahead on Thursday, he will be the third inmate put to death in Arizona this year after the state resumed executions after an 8-year pause.
The state executed Clarence Dixon, who was blind and in declining health, in May and Frank Atwood in June.
Dixon’s execution was the first carried out by the state since the 2014 execution of Joseph Wood, who was given 15 doses of a two-drug combination over nearly two hours in an execution that was described as botched.
There are 111 inmates on Arizona’s death row, and 22 have exhausted their appeals, according to Brnovich’s office.
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