Tommy Arthur

This case ended up being way more interesting than I first believed going in. When it was all said and done I have to say I am not sure what happened for sure in this case and while Tommy Arthur was executed after a conviction for murdering a man named Troy Wicker Jr., even if he were innocent of that crime (which I cannot say for sure), an innocent man was not put to death.

I am unsure what surprised me the most in this case. There were three trials, with three convictions; there was a changing of stories; there were eight execution dates before it was followed through; and there was a system in place that let a known killer out on the streets freely. At the time of Troy Wicker's murder in February of 1982 Tommy Arthur had already been convicted of murder. Apparently, and admittedly, in 1977 Arthur killed is sister in law, Eloise West. By all accounts it appears that he was sentenced to life, which I cannot say what that entailed at that time in Alabama but sometime in 1981 he was sent to a facility that entailed a work release program meaning that he could leave the facility, unsupervised to go to work. That being said, it does not appear that the facility did a good job of keeping track of people. In fact on the February 1, 1982 Tommy Arthur signed out of the facility at six in the morning and did not return until 7:50 that night. Later it appears that his boss was “unable to say if he worked that day” and it was only looked into the following month when it was discovered that his pay did not match the hours in which he was gone from the facility. At that point Tommy Arthur was sent back to the county jail while an investigation into the situation was started. In the process his belongings were inventoried and $2,000 had been found.

In the meantime investigators in another part of Muscle Shoals Alabama were looking into the murder of Troy Wicker Jr.. Troy was a thirty-five year old man who had come home from working the overnight shift on the morning of February 1^st and went to bed. His wife would claim that she had taken their children to school and returned home to find an African American man in their home. She would tell authorities that the man had raped her, then knocked her unconscious before shooting Troy and leaving. Troy Wicker would die almost immediately. He was shot n the face with what appeared to be a .22 caliber rifle. The bullet had gone through his right eye and severed his brain stem. The following day Wicker's car would be found in the parking lot of a local college. Inside the car was Judy Wicker's wallet as well as a wig.

Investigators were apparently suspicious of Judy Wicker's story from the beginning. The crime scene just did not seem like one they would typically find and Judy did not seem as injured as she indicated she should have been. Why would someone come in the home and brutally murder someone and barely harm someone else? Just exactly how they were able to determine that Judy was involved is unclear. When you do a search about this case you come up with very little that does not involve Tommy Arthur, his trials and things surrounding his execution. Judy would apparently be arrested and convicted of murder prior to Tommy Arthur being taken to trial for the first time in 1983. I know this because it was stated that she did not testify at his first trial due to the fact that she was appealing her own conviction. But, by most accounts it seems that she had not fully admitted, or at least not in a courtroom that it was Tommy Arthur who had killed her husband at this point.

My research indicates that it was the fact that Tommy Arthur had already committed a murder (apparently, in a particular amount of time) that made him eligible for the death penalty in the case against Wicker. And yet after his first conviction in 1983 the courts overturned the verdict due to the fact that the murder of his sister in law had been mentioned in the trial. The courts obviously felt this tainted the jury in some way. I suppose my confusion lies with the fact if the previous murder gave the prosecution the right to go for the death penalty in the first place why they were forbidden from bringing it up. But the courts will be courts.

It appears that it was during the investigation into the issue involving his work release that investigators would learn that Tommy Arthur knew, and was friends with Judy Wicker and her sister. When investigators interrogated Tommy Arthur he denied knowing either of the women. When he was shown proof that he was lying it is said that he asked for an attorney and clammed up. I am unsure at what point in all of this that Tommy Arthur apparently confessed to the murder of Troy Wicker but apparently he only did it once and swore later that he only did so because he believed that it would help him later in any appeals. I know that sounds crazy but as the prosecutor told a jury at one of his trials, after Arthur asked them to give him the death penalty (again to help make appeals go faster, and have more), Arthur knew the system and how to use it. Despite this apparent one time confession, Arthur would never again admit guilt in this case and in fact continually denied it.

Prosecutors would come to believe, and apparently Judy Wicker would all but confirm later, that Judy Wicker and Tommy Arthur had begun an affair at some point. Both Judy and her sister had known Tommy Arthur for many years. Judy would claim at some point that Troy was abusive to her throughout their marriage at that she, her sister and her sister's boyfriend had discussed possibly murdering Troy. At this point it is hard to know what to believe about the story Judy would go on to tell. Authorities believed her story and said that enough of it was collaborated by evidence and other witnesses but rarely does someone tell a story such as this and not make themselves appear less guilty than they were, or for that matter make someone else look more guilty.

Judy would later say that she all but received a phone call from her sister at some point that she found someone to kill Troy for her. On the day of the murder Judy would meet both her sister and Tommy Arthur at the airport. She would claim that Arthur had painted his face black, and had on an “afro” wig and black gloves. She also stated he had a black trash bag with him. She would transport Arthur back to her home but has insisted over the years that at this point she did not want her husband killed and all but “begged” Arthur not to do it. The supposed prearranged plan was that Arthur would received $10,000 of the more than $90,000 Judy would receive from Troy's life insurance. She claims that she told Arthur that she would still work on getting the money to him but not to kill her husband. She would state that Arthur did not agree and was going through with the plan. Judy then told the responding officers that morning the story they had agreed on about coming home and finding an African American man in the home.

Prosecutors would claim that the $2,000 they found in Arthur's belongings at the work release facility was the down payment that Judy had given him. Over the years there seemed to be an argument over DNA testing. Most information leads you to believe that nothing was ever tested despite Arthur and his lawyers making many filings with the court asking. The big thing mentioned was always the wig that was found in Troy Wicker's abandoned vehicle. However, when you dig a little deeper you learn that the wig itself had been tested at some point, using the methods available at the time and that no human hairs or DNA were found. The prosecution argued that continued testing of this evidence would be useless and delay matters when there was nothing to test. The defense argued that methods had evolved over the years and there was a chance. In the end it was never re-tested. It seems the other thing the defense wanted tested was results from the rape kit that was taken from Judy Wicker at the time of the murder. It is unclear if like the wig it had previously been tested. In later years the defense was arguing that Judy Wicker was lying about her story and was framing Arthur solely to lessen her own sentence. For her part Judy says that was not true, that she simply had not testified at Arthur's first trial because her own case was under appeal, but she was offered no deal for her testimony in his two later trials. Now, of course she can say that, and the state “conferred” with this but in reality Judy received a life sentence for hiring Tommy Arthur to kill her husband and in the end was released on parole after serving only ten years.

So as far as court proceedings we are up to the point in which the first conviction was overturned in 1985. In January of 1986 Arthur was being held in the county jail awaiting his next trial when he escaped custody by shooting the jailer in the neck with a .25 caliber pistol (I have no idea how or where he got the gun). For the next month Arthur was on the run until he was caught by the FBI in Knoxville Tennessee after robbing a bank.

In 1987 Arthur went on trial for the second time. Once again he was convicted but once again it was overturned. The reasoning is unclear. In 1991 he was tried for a third time. This was the second time that Judy Wicker would testify against him claiming they had a relationship and that she had continued to have sex with Arthur both before and after the murder and that she had agreed to pay him $10,000. This was the trial in which after his conviction, but before his sentencing that Arthur asked for the death penalty saying it gave him more access to appeals. Once again the jury recommended death and the judge obliged them.

Now, I mentioned earlier about the later arguments about DNA testing but the question I always ask myself in these cases is what kind of evidence did the prosecution have or show to prove their case. I was concerned a bit early on when I heard that there seemed to be no forensics in this case. In the beginning of my research I was left wondering if all they had was the word of Judy Wicker, a wife who confessed to hiring a man to kill her husband and really had nothing to lose by pointing the finger at Tommy Arthur. I mean really, if prosecutors believed this to be the person she hired, which obviously did since they charged him and he was already on trial before she ever seemed to talk, then the defense could have been right in the fact that she did it to have a better chance at parole. But like so many other things in this case it took some more digging to find out more information. Prosecutors had said that after Judy did tell her story to them they had collaborated it with what they had and what they could determine. Now, there was apparently a man who claimed to have seen Judy after she drop her children off head in the direction of the airport (where she claimed to have met Arthur and her sister) and the same witness said he saw her coming back from that direction a short time later, but he could not say if she had someone with her or not. But, then there were two other women who testified. One was a waitress who was apparently a friend of Arthurs who testified that the day before the murder he had asked her to send a friend to buy some .22 caliber long rifle bullets. This was the same caliber as used in the murder. Another woman, named Debra Tynes testified that on the day of the murder she had lunch with Arthur (amazing isn't since the man supposed to be on work release for murder??) and when they crossed a bridge over the Tennessee River he had stopped the car and dropped a black trash bag in the river. She could not say what was in the bag but testified that he told her he wanted to “get rid of old memories.” Apparently the prosecution theorized that the gun was in that bag. It does not seem to be clear if the gun was ever found. Also cannot tell you several other things, like was the supposed confession he made at one point used against him or if he faced any charges for the crimes committed during and after his escape from county jail in 1986.

Throughout the appeals process the courts continued to uphold Arthurs conviction and sentence. His first date with the execution chamber was set for April of 2001. He came within seven hours before there was a stay of execution. His second was in September of 2007 when it was said he came again within a few hours of execution before there was a stay granted. In the end Arthur had eight execution dates and was nicknamed the “Houdini of Death Row.” The early appeals revolved around the trial and testimony. Later appeals were efforts to have DNA testing done and arguing against not just the death penalty itself, as so many do, but against the method being used in Alabama.

All across the country there have been issues made about the chemicals, or medicine used and the combination of them in executions. There was a huge lull in them for a while because one of the chemicals used came from another country and that country decided they were not going to send it anymore because they were not going to be a “party” to executions. So, the states had to find something else. One of the drugs that is now used is called midazolam. It is a sedative that is supposed to be given to the inmate before the combination of the two other drugs are placed in the body to cause the death itself. Basically the midazolam in essence is to numb the body so the inmate does not feel their death and simply falls asleep. As with so many other things in life there have been a few missteps it seems and most defense attorneys argue that midazolam is not tested properly or not sufficient to prevent the inmate from suffering. In the end while the defense attorneys were still arguing this with the courts to prevent the execution but saw that it was not working in their favor, the other last resort was to argue for a phone in the death chamber. They argued that Tommy Arthur's rights were being violated the moment he stepped into the chamber because his attorney's would not have access to call the courts.

One of Arthur's executions was delayed because in July of 2008, three days before his scheduled execution, an inmate named Bobby Ray Gilbert confessed to the crime. According to Gilbert, who was serving multiple life sentences himself, claimed that he was the man having the affair with Judy Wicker and that she had paid him $2,000 for the job. Keep in mind and remember that $2,000 was what Arthur had on hand at the work release facility. Apparently the investigators did not have enough time to confirm or deny his story, at least not to the satisfaction of the courts. But, first, Judy Wicker denied ever knowing Gilbert. Putting that aside and knowing that you can never rely simply on an admitted convicts word, investigators decided that Gilbert's story made no sense. First, it went against much of the evidence they already had and knew but most importantly Gilbert claimed that he and Judy had sex sometime between nine and eleven the morning of the murder. It is unclear where he may have stated that they had sex because no matter where it was Judy would have had to have been with him obviously if he was claiming he had sex with her. The problem was that Judy had called 911 just after eight that morning so the police were swarming the Wicker house between nine and eleven and Judy was in their presence. The theory on his confession was with the multiple life sentences he was already facing adding another charge to him would mean nothing to him. It would have been unlikely that had they suspected his story to be true that he would have taken the case to trial so he would not have gotten the death penalty but who knows, considering he was going to die in prison anyway he may have welcomed the death penalty. In the end though everyone considered Gilberts confession nothing more than one more delay tactic in the execution of Arthur.

There was an incident just after Gilbert had come out with his confession that I found quite interesting. Judy Wicker had been released from prison but had kept a low profile. She granted an interview with the media during this time, apparently to clear things up about the Gilbert issue. She would claim that she continued to fear for her life and would continue to fight to keep Arthur in jail. She would refuse to allow the media to know what state she even lived in or what her last name was at the time. She would not allow her current image to be shown on camera. When she made appearances for the court or parole hearings she avoided the cameras and continued to insist being called Judy Wicker. In fairness Judy was not even really her name at all. She had always gone by that name even though her name was Mary Jewell. So it is possible no one in her new life even knew her by the name Judy. At any rate in the interview Judy brought up the fact that one of Arthur's children had come to visit her at some point after her release from prison. Judy's version of things was that Arthur's daughter had asked her to change her story, and lie, and was told that once released Arthur could sue the state for wrongful conviction and would get a multi-million dollar settlement, of which they would be willing to share with her. Arthur's daughter was asked about this and insisted that she did not ask Judy to lie. “What I told her was if she would tell the truth if it's money she wanted we would try to help her.” What??? Over the years it appears that Tommy Arthur's daughter went back and forth as to whether she believed her father had murdered Troy Wicker. She was quoted as saying sometimes she believed him to be guilty of the crime and other times believed him to be guilty.

Tommy Arthur's eighth and final execution date was set for May 25, 2017 at six in the evening. As is the case in just about every execution there were several last minute appeals filed by the defense. Once again these surrounded issues with the midazolam and the defense still insisting a phone be in the death chamber. It was nearly 10:30 that night before the appeals were settled and denied. According to the death warrant the execution had to begin before midnight or a new date would have to be set. They made it just under the wire, starting the execution at 11:50 pm. Tommy Arthur was officially declared dead at 12:15 am on May 26, 2017. He was 75 years old and had been on death row (officially from his last conviction) over twenty-seven years. But hey, there were two other inmates who had been there longer. The prison, as well as the state, insisted that the execution went clearly as planned without any issues. Per usual there were those who disagreed.

So did Tommy Arthur murder Troy Wicker Jr.? That seems to be a debate among people. In my opinion the likelihood of Tommy Arthur being guilty of this is high. I do not know that I believe the true story was, or ever will be truly revealed. By the sounds of things Judy Wicker's sister may have been more involved than has been eluded to also. I found nothing stating she ever faced any charges for her role, but I could be wrong since so much I found simply surrounded Tommy Arthur and his execution. The long and short of it was that Tommy Arthur was a killer. He killed his sister in law and severely wounded another woman in 1977. At his execution he admitted to this all but blaming it on alcoholism. Keep in mind in his 1986 escape he shot a jailer, who apparently lived, but could have obviously died. He also apparently committed a bank robbery during his time on the run. Now, there are those who will say it seems he was not charged for shooting the jailer or the bank robbery and they should play no role in accessing his behavior, once again I disagree. Then there will be those who will say that he was not sentenced to death in the murder of his sister in law, which would be true and hence that crime had no bearing on whether he killed Troy Wicker, the crime in which he was sentenced to death.

This is not a case of Todd Willingham or Ruben Cantu, two men who at most had minor infractions with the law and were executed with way too many questions of their innocence. Could there have been more tests done? I am unsure since it appears it was less about if things were tested than if they were using the most up to date method that it would not have continually been used as a delay tactic. But, court after court had denied those efforts... right .. or wrong they felt that the evidence was sufficient as it stood. The case of Roger Coleman comes to mind. He was executed amid his claims of innocence and arguments for DNA. There was a huge uproar about his execution as many had believed his claims. After his death the evidence was tested for DNA and all it did was reaffirm that he was guilty. I feel as if that would have been the case here. Tommy Arthur and his attorney's used these tactics to delay his execution and to garner sympathy and likely support from the anti-death penalty groups. It is true that at the age of seventy-five Tommy Arthur's worse behavior was likely behind him, but age is not an excuse for reprieve.