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Showing posts from March, 2019

State-Sanctioned Sadism, Part II

On a warm Alabama summer’s evening on July 15, 1995, Domineque Ray and Marcus Owden went looking for fifteen-year-old Tiffany Harville with one thought in mind: have sex with her. Owden did not know the young teenager, but Ray did. They agreed that they would ask her for sex first, but if she refused, they would take it. They drove to her home in Selma and picked her up before driving to Sardis, a community just under nine miles from her home. There they raped and brutally murdered her, taking the $6 she had in her purse, and leaving her body in a cotton field adjacent to the highway. After a number of years during which the crime was unsolved, Owden came forward and confessed his part in the crime and implicated Ray. Owden pled guilty, and was sentenced to life, but Ray went to trial and on July 29, 1999—four years after the crime was committed—Ray was found guilty of robbery, rape, and murder. By a vote of eleven to one, the jury recommended a sentence of death, which the t