An Alabama man who was found guilty of killing an old couple in a small town will be put to death on Thursday, after being on death row for almost 20 years.
This week, the 11th Circuit Court of Criminal Appeals turned down two requests from Jamie Ray Mills’s lawyers to delay his execution. Mills is being put to death for beating Floyd and Vera Hill in 2004. The defense can still ask the U.S. Supreme Court to put the case on hold.
Mills has said in many appeals that he was wrongfully convicted because his wife, JoAnn Mills, “lied” when she said she saw the attack.
According to court papers filed last month, Jamie Mills, 50, says that prosecutors broke his constitutional rights by not telling him about a deal they made with JoAnn Mills. He also says that the deal harmed the fairness of the trial and verdict.
In court papers, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm says that JoAnn Mills gave “graphic testimony” of what her husband did to the victims and what they did “afterward in an effort to cover their tracks.”
Court papers show that Mills used drugs again, lost his job, went to jail for not paying child support, and his parents were dying.
During the trial, it was said that Jamie and JoAnn Mills wanted to get more money for drugs and chose to rob the Hills because they were known to have a lot of cash hidden at home.
Vera Hill told JoAnn that they had some things for sale and insisted that she check out the things they had in their shed. Court records show that JoAnn Mills and Vera Hill were walking back to the front of the house toward the porch when they heard a big noise coming from the shed. That’s where they had left Jamie Mills and Floyd Hill to look at the things.
Court records show that when JoAnne Mills looked, she saw her husband holding something over his shoulder “with both hands as if he were swinging something.” As the women ran to the shed, they saw Floyd Hill lying on the ground.
The sentence order says that Jamie Mills hit Vera Hill in the back of the head with a ball-peen hammer as soon as the woman walked in. He hit her again when she tried to get up. JoAnn Mills said in court that she was in the corner with her eyes closed, listening to the sound of the hammer hitting the couple over and over again.
The hammer, tire tool, and machete were given by Mills to his wife. The couple then locked the shed and went back into the Hills’ home, where they stole a locked tackle box, Vera Hill’s purse, a phone, and a police radio, according to the document.
The Mills got back to their own house after getting $140 and some medicine from the tackle box. People then called a friend named Benjie Howe, who came to their house to buy some of the pain pills they had stolen, according to court records.