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1994: Raymond Carl Kinnamon, filibusterer

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On this date in 1994 — the ten-year anniversary of the robbery-murder that earned him his death sentence — Raymond Carl Kinnamon died to lethal injection despite his loquacity.

A career criminal with 17 felony convictions and three prison stints previously to his name, Kinnamon robbed a Houston bar at gunpoint on December 11, 1984. The crime escalated to murder when one of the patrons, Raymond Charles Longmire, smacked the gunman’s hand away from his pocket.

On this unusual Sunday-morning execution, the death warrant specified the execution be completed before dawn. Kinnamon received a last-minute stay that was subsequently overturned by an appellate court, but the legal chicanery ate up most of the window. Seeing an angle, Kinnamon delivered a rambling, 30-minute last statement looking to run out the clock on his executioners. According to the Associated Press (here via the Paris News of Dec. 12, 1994), prison officials eventually forced the start of the lethal drugs while the prisoner was still mid-filibuster, to the complaints of Kinnamon’s family.

“I’ve got a few things to say,” Kinnamon said as witnesses filed into the death chamber about 5:15 a.m. CST.

Thirty minutes later, after thanking dozens of people, criticizing capital punishment, expressing love for his family and getting a drink of water from the prison warden, he was still talking.

“I can see no reason for my death,” he said, then began squirming, lifting his head and shoulders and tried sliding his right arm from a leather strap.

Warden Morris Jones and a prison chaplain, Alex Taylor, both stationed a few feet away at opposite corners of the gurney, stepped in to control the inmate and executioners behind a one-way mirror in an adjacent room began the lethal dose.

Kinnamon’s niece, standing with her mother and a friend behind a clear plastic shielded window, began sobbing loudly.

“They didn’t let him finish,” Natasha Fremin cried out. “I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

The dispatch notes that “it was not clear what would have happened if Kinnamon had continued to speak past sunrise.”

On this day..