Execution for Miss. woman looms
Woman's death sentence appalling, ex-justice says
Michelle Byrom is scheduled to be executed on Thursday for the June 1999 killing of husband Edward Byrom Sr. in Iuka. She would be the first woman executed in the state of Mississippi since 1944.
IUKA — Unless courts or the governor intervene, the state of Mississippi will execute a woman whose son repeatedly confessed to the killing she is slated to die for — evidence the jury never heard.
If Mississippi executes Michelle Byrom, 57, on Thursday, she would be the first woman executed in the state since 1944. A motion to approve that execution date is pending before the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Jackson attorney David Voisin, a consultant for the defense, said the state is moving “to kill a horribly battered and abused woman who did not do what the state said she did.”
In her capital murder trial, her son, Edward Jr., testified against her, saying she hired his friend, Joey Gillis, as a “hit man” to kill his father, Edward Sr., in 1999 for $15,000 — money she would pay from life insurance proceeds.
Jurors never saw the two letters that Junior wrote his mother in which he detailed how he killed his father and never heard from a psychologist who says Junior described killing his father.
Junior, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit capital murder, is now free on earned supervised release.
Since leaving prison in August, the 34-year-old inmate has gotten married. That marriage ended two months later. “She is Satan’s problem now,” he wrote on Facebook.
He talked of starting a new band and leaving behind a job in Tupelo: “Here’s to new beginning … again!”
In a telephone interview, Junior told The Clarion-Ledger he knew his mother would be executed but didn’t know a motion was pending for that to happen Thursday.
Asked how he felt about her execution, he replied, “I’m not going to comment on it.”
Asked who shot his father, he replied, “It’s a matter of public record.”
Asked if he shot his father, he replied, “No, sir.”
Asked about a psychologist’s statement that he admitted killing his father, Junior hung up.
On the day of the killing, June 4, 1999, Byrom was in the hospital with pneumonia and other ailments after ingesting rat poison — something she had reportedly done for three years because of a mental disorder.
If Mississippi executes Michelle Byrom, 57, on Thursday, she would be the first woman executed in the state since 1944. A motion to approve that execution date is pending before the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Jackson attorney David Voisin, a consultant for the defense, said the state is moving “to kill a horribly battered and abused woman who did not do what the state said she did.”
In her capital murder trial, her son, Edward Jr., testified against her, saying she hired his friend, Joey Gillis, as a “hit man” to kill his father, Edward Sr., in 1999 for $15,000 — money she would pay from life insurance proceeds.
Jurors never saw the two letters that Junior wrote his mother in which he detailed how he killed his father and never heard from a psychologist who says Junior described killing his father.
Junior, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit capital murder, is now free on earned supervised release.
Since leaving prison in August, the 34-year-old inmate has gotten married. That marriage ended two months later. “She is Satan’s problem now,” he wrote on Facebook.
He talked of starting a new band and leaving behind a job in Tupelo: “Here’s to new beginning … again!”
In a telephone interview, Junior told The Clarion-Ledger he knew his mother would be executed but didn’t know a motion was pending for that to happen Thursday.
Asked how he felt about her execution, he replied, “I’m not going to comment on it.”
Asked who shot his father, he replied, “It’s a matter of public record.”
Asked if he shot his father, he replied, “No, sir.”
Asked about a psychologist’s statement that he admitted killing his father, Junior hung up.
On the day of the killing, June 4, 1999, Byrom was in the hospital with pneumonia and other ailments after ingesting rat poison — something she had reportedly done for three years because of a mental disorder.
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That same day, Tishomingo County deputies told Byrom her son said she hired someone to kill her husband.
“After being warned three times that if she didn’t name someone, her son would ‘take the rap,’ ” wrote her lawyer on appeal, David Calder of Oxford, “Byrom said she … spoke with Gillis about killing her husband.”
Former Assistant District Attorney Arch Bullard said he believes Junior talked of killing his father to “muddle the case.”
When the defense tried to introduce Junior’s two letters at trial, prosecutors objected, saying the defense wrongly failed to share the evidence in advance of the trial.
Prosecutors told the judge that if they had had this evidence, “it very well may have been that we would not have cut a deal with this individual (Junior), much less put him on the stand in this case.”
The judge barred the letters as evidence but did permit the defense to ask Junior about admitting to killing his father. He said he had, but that it was because he wanted to take the blame, not because he pulled the trigger.
The jury convicted Byrom.
Convinced the case would be reversed, her defense lawyers put up no mitigating evidence on her behalf. Such evidence would have shown she had “suffered a lifetime of physical, sexual and emotional abuse,” Calder wrote.
Her stepfather abused her and, by age 15, she was working as a stripper, Voisin said. Edward Sr., who had a special darkened room to watch pornography, reportedly forced her to have sex with other men, which he videotaped.
In his dissent calling for her conviction to be tossed out, state Supreme Court Justice Jess Dickinson wrote, “I have attempted to conjure up in my imagination a more egregious case of ineffective assistance of counsel during the sentencing phase of a capital case. I cannot.”
Without any mitigating evidence, the judge sentenced Byrom to death.
Dickinson and two other justices concluded Byrom deserved a new trial because Junior’s letters admitting he killed his father were wrongly barred, but five justices upheld her conviction.
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Bullard said Byrom deserves her punishment, explaining, “She unequivocally was the instigator and came up with the idea to have him killed.”
But Junior’s letters tell a different story. He described coming in drunk at 1:45 a.m., and having his father slap him and shove him up against a bookcase, declaring, “You were a f---king mistake to begin with.”
The next day, he said his father entered his bedroom, “going off on me, calling me bastard, no good, mistake and telling me I’m inconciderate (sic)” before slapping him and leaving.
“As I sat on my bed, tears of rage flowing, remembering my childhood, my anger building and building. I went to my car, got the 9mm and walked to his room and peeked in, and he was asleep.”
He walked in the door, screamed and shut his eyes, he wrote. “When I heard him move, I started firing.”
He grabbed the casings and threw them in the bushes and gave the gun to his friend, Gillis, to hide, he wrote. “My mind was going 1 million different ways at once.”
He later called 911 and when questioned, “I was so scared, confused and high, I just started spitting the first thought out.”
He wrote that Gillis “didn’t do anything and neither did my mother.”
In a second letter, Junior told his mother, “You are all I have, and they’re trying to take that away from me now, but Mom I’m gonna tell you right now who killed Dad ’cause I’m sick and tired of all the lies. I did, and it wasn’t for money, it wasn’t for all the abuse, it was because I can’t kill myself.”
The Clarion-Ledger shared Junior’s letters with two jurors in the case. After one read them, she remarked that it was obvious he was “very disturbed.”
She said she doesn’t believe it would have changed the jury’s verdict in 2000.
Months before that trial, the judge appointed Dr. Criss Lott to examine the three charged in the case — Byrom, Junior and Gillis — to see if they were mentally competent to stand trial.
During those examinations, Junior admitted shooting his father, according to Lott. Junior denied a murder-for-hire scheme, and so did Gillis. Because the two statements were so factually similar, Lott said he believed both men were telling the truth.
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Lott shared this information with the judge, but the judge never shared the information with Byrom’s defense lawyers.
Months after her conviction, Gillis’ attorney learned about Junior’s statement to Lott and challenged the accusations against his client. Gillis wound up pleading to accessory after the fact.
Bullard said Gillis admitted to authorities carrying out the murder but that Miranda problems kept them from using his statement.
When authorities arrived at the murder scene on June 4, 1999, Junior had bloody knuckles, and there were holes he had reportedly knocked in the doors. Junior led deputies to both the murder weapon and a T-shirt he said Gillis had worn during the murder.
In testing, authorities found gunpowder residue on Junior but none on Gillis.
In 2009, Gillis walked free from prison, and he has since given the defense a sworn statement, saying he did not shoot Edward Byrom Sr.
As for Junior, he wrote his mother yet another letter, this one years after the trial: “Do you remember the last question your attorney asked me? If I did it? Yes, I did, and Joey helped (in a way), but in so doing I released a chaotic chain of events that are still unraveling.”
Former state Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., who favored a new trial for Michelle Byrom when he was on the bench, is appalled the state is executing her.
“There’s no way justice was done in this case,” he said. “If an execution is allowed to proceed, we all are complicit in it in Mississippi.”
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