A man who asked to be put to death for the rape and murder of a woman will get his wish in April.
Alabama prisoner James Osgood will be executed by lethal injection on April 24, the state’s Governor Kay Ivey has announced.
Osgood, 55, was convicted in 2014 of the 2010 murder of Tracy Lynn Brown in Chilton County and sentenced to death.
Prosecutors said Osgood cut Brown’s throat after he and his girlfriend sexually assaulted her.
Over the summer, Osgood dropped his court appeals, asking the state to set a date for his execution.
“I no longer feel as if I’m even existing. I’m tired. I want to complete my sentence,” Osgood wrote in a letter to his attorney in July 2024.
An appeals court originally threw out Osgood’s 2014 sentence, ruling that a judge gave improper instructions to jurors.
But at his resentencing in 2018, Osgood asked for the death sentence to be imposed.
He believed in an “eye for an eye,” he told the judge.
“A couple of years ago I really screwed up. I’m guilty and I deserve death. That’s what I want,” Osgood said.
Osgood renewed his appeals after his sentencing until dropping them this summer.
Brown was found dead in her home on October 23, 2010, after her employer became concerned when she did not show up for work.
Prosecutors said that Osgood told police that he and his girlfriend sexually assaulted and attacked Brown after discussing how they had fantasies about kidnapping and torturing someone.
In the 2018 sentencing order handing down the death sentence, a judge noted that Osgood had a difficult childhood that included sexual abuse, abandonment and a suicide attempt.
His brain development was potentially hindered because of malnutrition he suffered as an infant, the judge found.
But the judge also said it was Osgood who cut Brown’s neck and stabbed her during the attack in which Brown begged them not to hurt her.
Osgood’s girlfriend, the other person charged in the murder, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
The execution authorization by Ivey comes two weeks after the Republican granted clemency to another death row inmate, commuting the death sentence of Robin “Rocky” Myers to life in prison. The governor said there were enough questions about his guilt that she could not move forward with his execution.
It was the only time Ivey has granted clemency. The last time an Alabama governor commuted a death sentence was in 1999.
