Killer's execution on hold

High court refuses to overturn stay

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Court refuses to stay execution (10/20) Killer set to die Tuesday (10/19)

By Jerry Nachtigal
The Associated Press
Oct. 21, 1998

FLORENCE -- Condemned killer Michael Poland got a stay Tuesday, just hours before he was scheduled to be executed for the 1977 killing of two armored van drivers.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to override the stay issued by U.S. District Judge Samuel P. King in Hawaii in the final hours before Poland was scheduled to die by injection.

Attorney General Grant Woods said it likely will be at least a year before another execution date is set for Poland.

"This highlights how ridiculous the death-penalty system has become in the United States," he said.

King issued the stay based on Poland's claim that a procedural mistake was made when other courts refused to hear his claim that he is mentally incompetent to be executed. In earlier appeals, courts ruled that it was too late for Poland to raise the issue of competency.

Poland's lawyers, however, argued that his incompetency was not discovered until Friday, meaning the claim could not have been filed earlier. As late as last month, a psychiatrist said Poland was competent to be executed, his lawyers argued, but last week, the psychiatrist found that Poland was delusional.

Poland, 58, a Prescott native, and his brother Patrick were sentenced to die for robbing a Purolator Inc. van filled with bank cash as it made a run to northern Arizona from Phoenix on May 24, 1977.

The brothers wore fake Highway Patrol uniforms complete with arm patches sewn by their wives, and outfitted their car with emergency lights. They stopped the armored van on a lonely stretch of Interstate 17 near the Bumble Bee exit and kidnapped guards Cecil Newkirk, 52, and Russell Dempsey, 57.

The Polands drove 250 miles to Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada line, where they rented a boat. The guards were tied up, placed in canvas bags weighted with rocks, and thrown overboard in 50 feet of water. Autopsies showed that the men drowned, and that Dempsey apparently had a heart attack before he died.

A tow-truck driver who pulled the brothers' vehicle out of sand at the lake provided key testimony against the Polands. A Phoenix businessman testified that he had sold canvas bags to Patrick Poland.

And the Polands drew attention to themselves by going on a spending spree after the heist, buying a bar and video arcade in Prescott.

The brothers were sentenced to 100 years in prison on federal kidnapping and robbery charges in 1979. They were twice convicted of first-degree murder in state court, in 1979 and 1982. The verdict in the first murder case was overturned on appeal.

No execution date has been set for Patrick Poland, 48, who has an appeal pending.

Poland's Tuesday appeal was assigned to a judge in Hawaii because the original trial judge on the Poland case is now on the U.S. District bench in Phoenix. The entire court recused itself, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reassigned the case to King.