A death row prisoner was refused his last request because it could be ‘harmful to his health’.
Yeah, seems like a rather ironic thing to claim for someone who was going to be execute just hours later.
Nicholas Lee Ingram was sentenced to death for abducting a man from his home in Atlanta, US, in 1983 before robbing him of $60, tying him to a tree and then shooting him in the head. He also shot the man’s wife, but she survived and identified him as the murderer.
The British native held dual citizenship and many people in the UK had pled for leniency for him, with capital punishment not particularly being a thing here.
However, after the US Supreme Court rejected a last-minute request for a stay, and Ingram was executed by the electric chair in April 1995 at the age of 31.
Human rights lawyer Cliff Stafford Smith had represented the man, who was born in the same hospital as him in Cambridge.
“I had to watch him die, and I liked Nicky – we’d been friends for 12 years when they killed him,” he recently told LADbible TV.
Nicholas Lee Ingram was executed in 1995 (DAVID MURRAY JR/AFP via Getty Images)
Smith went on to explain just what the Brit’s last request was.
“They go through all that nonsense about last meals and Nicky said, ‘I don’t want a last meal ‘cause you’re about to kill me’,” recalled the lawyer.
“And he said, ‘I want a last cigarette’. So I ask if they would give him a last cigarette.”
But apparently, he was told: “No, ‘cause it’s bad for his health’.”
Cliff Stafford Smith in 1995 following the execution ( DAVID MURRAY JR/AFP via Getty Images)
Smith was left baffled by this response as he said: “You’ve gotta be kidding me, you’re planning to kill this poor guy.”
So, the lawyer decided to go out and tell the media, leaving the wardens ‘humiliated.
“So they give him a last cigarette,” he said. “But then they shaved his head and shaved his leg and put 2,400 volts through him. It’s just disgusting.”
The lawyer went on to explain how it’s ‘not easy’ since his ‘friend’s’ execution as he admitted he still has ‘PTSD from that’, nearly three decades later.
“If I close my eyes right now, I can see the black and white of him being electrocuted right in front of me,” he added. “It’s horrible.”
When Ingram was strapped into the chair, he reportedly spat at a warden when they asked if he wanted to make a final statement.
And when he was asked if he would like a last prayer, the inmate simply just closed his eyes.