Dead Pool 29th September 2024

A sad week as Dame Maggie Smith passes away. But we do have points to award to Gryffindor, er no, to Vic and Iwan, who both had her listed as their Woman, so 161 points each! Ceri had her listed too, so another 61 points to her tally. Well done all three of you!  

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Alan Eugene Miller, 59, American spree killer, execution by nitrogen hypoxia. 
• Chris Serle, 81, British television presenter (That’s Life!), stroke. 
• Cat Glover, 62, American choreographer and musician (“Alphabet St.“).
• Clive Everton, 87, British billiards and snooker player, commentator, and journalist, founder of Snooker Scene. 
• Dame Maggie Smith, 89, British actress (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Harry Potter, Downton Abbey). 

In Other News

Police in Switzerland say several people have been detained over the suspected death of an American woman, 64, inside a “suicide capsule”. A criminal investigation has been opened after prosecutors in Schaffhausen were informed by a law firm that an assisted suicide involving the Sarco capsule had taken place near a forest cabin in Merishausen. They said several people had been taken into custody with investigators looking at possible incitement and accessory to suicide. The pod, which had never been used before, is a 3D-printed device that cost more than $1m to develop. Exit International, the group behind the device, said in a statement that a 64-year-old woman from the US had died using it at approximately 4:01pm on Monday. It added that the woman “had been suffering for many years from a number of serious problems associated with severe immune compromise”. The group said the co-president of The Last Resort Association, a Swiss affiliate of Exit International, Dr Florian Willet, was the was the only person present. “The death took place in open air, under a canopy of trees, at a private forest retreat in the Canton of Schaffhausen close to the Swiss-German border,” the statement read. The group said it had followed legal advice from lawyers which, it said, showed the use of the capsule was lawful in Switzerland. Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no “external assistance” and those who help the person die do not do so for “any self-serving motive”, according to a government website. Switzerland is among the only countries in the world where foreigners can travel to legally end their lives, and is home to a number of organisations that are dedicated to helping people kill themselves.  

A mother-of-five has become the first person to die from a Brazilian Bum Lift procedure in the UK. Alice Webb, 33, passed away on Monday just hours after having the surgery, which is believed to have been performed in the West Country. Gloucestershire Police confirmed it is investigating the death and has arrested two people on suspicion of manslaughter. The practitioner alleged to have carried out the surgery is one of those who has been arrested. Alice was an advanced aesthetic practitioner at Crystal Clear in Wotton-under-Edge, a market town in Gloucestershire. A GoFundMe page set up by her pal Abigail Irwin revealed the tragedy. It said: ‘I am hoping to raise as many funds as we can to support Dane, the partner of Alice and their five beautiful children at this very difficult sad time. According to a report from Save Face published in July there has been an ‘alarming increase in the number of patient reported complaints relating to non-surgical breast augmentation and BBLs’. The report said that more than half have resulted in severe and life-threatening complications, including sepsis, abscesses and infections.   

The world’s longest-serving death row prisoner was acquitted by a Japanese court on Thursday, more than half a century after his 1968 murder conviction. The Shizuoka District Court ruled that 88-year-old Iwao Hakamada was not guilty in a retrial obtained by the former boxer and his supporters a decade ago. ‘The court finds the defendant innocent,’ judge Koshi Kunii said. Hakamada’s health is delicate and he was not present in court, but his 91-year-old sister Hideko, who often speaks for him, bowed deeply to Kunii several times. Until he was freed in 2014 pending retrial, Hakamada had been on death row for 46 years after being convicted of killing his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children. But over the years, questions arose over fabricated evidence and coerced confessions, sparking scrutiny of Japan’s justice system, which critics say holds suspects ‘hostage’. Hundreds of people had queued in the morning at the Shizuoka District Court, trying to secure a seat for the verdict in the murder saga that has gripped the nation. ‘For so long, we have fought a battle that has felt endless,’ Hideko had told reporters in July. ‘But this time, I believe it will be settled.’ Japan is the only major industrialised democracy other than the United States to retain capital punishment, a policy that has broad public support. Hakamada is the fifth death row inmate granted a retrial in Japan’s post-war history. All four previous cases also resulted in exoneration. After decades of detention, mostly in solitary confinement, Hakamada sometimes seems like he ‘lives in a world of fantasy’, according to his lead lawyer Hideyo Ogawa.

On This Day

• 1940 – Two Avro Ansons collide in mid-air over New South Wales, Australia, remain locked together, then land safely.
• 1957 – The Kyshtym disaster is the third-worst nuclear accident ever recorded.
• 1988 – NASA launches STS-26, the first Space Shuttle mission since the Challenger disaster.

Deaths

• 1902 – Émile Zola, French journalist, author, and playwright (b. 1840).
• 1981 – Bill Shankly, Scottish footballer and manager (b. 1913).
• 1997 – Roy Lichtenstein, American painter and sculptor (b. 1923).
• 2010 – Tony Curtis, American actor (b. 1925).

Last Meals

An Alabama death row inmate gave a chilling two sentence final statement in the moments before his execution by nitrogen hypoxia.

Alan Eugene Miller, 59, became the second person to die from the controversial method on Thursday night. He had been on death row for decades for killing three people in back-to-back workplace shootings in 1999.

Protesting his innocence until the end, his final words were: ‘I didn’t do anything to be in here. I didn’t do anything to be on death row.’

Alabama corrections officials then pumped nitrogen gas into a mask that covered Miller’s face from his forehead to his chin, forcing him to shake and tremble on the gurney for about two minutes. His left hand shook and clenched into a fist several times, and he was forced to lift his head from the gurney. That was followed by about six minutes of periodic gasping breaths before he finally went still.

Miller was finally pronounced dead at around 6.38pm, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said at an ensuing news conference, noting the two minutes of shaking was to be expected.

‘There’s going to be involuntary body movements as the body is depleted of oxygen, so that is nothing we did not expect,’ Hamm said. ‘Everything went according to plan and according to our protocol, so it went just as we had planned.’

But Hamm later admitted that a corrections officer had to adjust the inmate’s mask before the gas started to flow.  ‘That’s just making sure the mask is fitted,’ he said.

The execution was the second to use the new method Alabama first employed in January, when Kenneth Smith was put to death. The method involves placing a respirator gas mask over the inmate’s face to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death by lack of oxygen. 

Miller had selected the option to die by asphyxiation in a 2018 form distributed to Alabama death row inmates. But the state was still not prepared to use nitrogen hypoxia as a form of execution when officials received a warrant for Miller’s execution in September 22nd, and opted to instead try to execute him by lethal injection. That attempt was then called off when state officials said they could not access Miller’s veins before the execution warrant expired at midnight. The inmate later filed a lawsuit against the prison, claiming that prison workers poked him for ninety minutes while trying to start an IV and left him hanging vertically as he laid strapped into a gurney.  State prosecutors ultimately settled the suit, and agreed not to execute Miller using any method other than nitrogen hypoxia. 

Miller, a delivery truck driver, was convicted of capital murder in 2000 for the August 5th 1999 shootings that claimed three lives and shocked the city of Pelham, a suburban city just south of Birmingham.

He had worked with each of the three victims – Lee Holdbrooks, 32, Scott Yancy, 28, and Terry Lee Jarvis, 39 – and had accused them of spreading rumours about him.

Police say he entered Ferguson Enterprises and fatally shot Yancy three times, leaving him unable to move after the first shot ‘traveled through his  groin and into his spine, paralysing him.’ Holdbrooks was also shot about six times and tried to crawl down a hallway to escape before Miller shot him in the head ‘causing him to die in a pool of blood,’ according to court documents. Miller then headed to his previous employer Post Airgas, where Jarvis worked. He walked in and said, ‘Hey I hear you’ve been spreading rumours about me.’ Jarvis replied that he had not been spreading any rumours, a witness said, but just moments later Miller shot Jarvis ‘a number of times.’ He was later captured on the highway with a Glock pistol with one round in the chamber and 11 rounds in an ammunition magazine, police said.

Miller had initially pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity but later withdrew the plea. A psychiatrist hired by the defence said that Miller was mentally ill but his condition wasn’t severe enough to use as a basis for an insanity defence, according to court documents. Jurors convicted Miller after 20 minutes of deliberation and recommended by a vote of 10-2 that he receive the death penalty. 

‘Just as Alan Miller cowardly fled after he maliciously committed three calculated murders in 1999, he has attempted to escape justice for two decades,’ Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement Thursday. ‘Tonight, justice was finally served for these three victims through the execution method elected by the inmate. His acts were not that of insanity, but pure evil,’ the governor said. ‘Three families were forever changed by his heinous crimes and I pray that they can find comfort all these years later.’

Family members of the three victims did not witness the execution and did not issue a statement to be read to reporters, state officials said. Miller’ last meal was of a hamburger steak, baked potato and French fries. 

Last Week’s Birthdays

Zachary Levi (44), Erika Eleniak (55), Ian McShane (82), Luke Goss (56), Mackenzie Crook (53), Halsey (30), James Lance (49), Jeffrey Jones (78), Naomi Watts (56), Mira Sorvino (57), Hilary Duff (37), Brigitte Bardot (90), Dita Von Teese (52), Jenna Ortega (22), Indira Varma (51), Gwyneth Paltrow (52), Avril Lavigne (40), Linda Hamilton (68), Bella Ramsey (21), Will Smith (56), Catherine Zeta-Jones (55), Michael Madsen (67), Michael Douglas (80), Mark Hamill (73), Donald Glover (41), Heather Locklear (63), Beth Toussaint (62), Felicity Kendal (78), Kevin Sorbo (66), Kimberley Nixon (39), Sven-Ole Thorsen (80), Jack Dee (63), Rosalind Chao (67), Bruce Springsteen (75), and Karl Pilkington (52).