by Dave Bryan, The Associated Press
ATMORE, Ala. - A political extremist convicted of murdering a policeman in 1993 was put to death in the electric chair today, becoming the first woman executed in Alabama in 45 years.
Lynda Lyon Block declined to pursue final appeals late yesterday, claiming the courts were corrupt and lacked jurisdiction.
Block, 54, may be the last person forced to die in the state’s electric chair. Under a law that goes into effect this summer, condemned inmates in Alabama will be executed by injection unless they choose the electric chair.
Block and her common-law husband, George Sibley, were sentenced to death for killing Opelika police Officer Roger Motley Jr. in a burst of gunfire in a parking lot. The couple said Motley was reaching for his gun.
Block and Sibley, who decried government controls over individuals, were on the run at the time to avoid being sentenced in the stabbing of Block’s former husband in Orlando, Fla.
Alabama’s electric chair, built in 1927, has been used 176 times since it replaced hanging as the state’s primary mode of execution.