INDIANAPOLIS - The Indiana Supreme Court has set a Jan. 20 execution date for convicted serial killer Debra Denise Brown, who would become the first woman put to death in Indiana since the death penalty was reinstated.
Ms. Brown, 36, has been on Indiana's Death Row since June 23, 1986, for the murder of a 7-year-old Gary girl in 1984.
Ms. Brown is imprisoned at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, for the strangulation of Tonnie Storey, 15, of Over-the-Rhine. Ms. Brown's death sentence in Ohio was commuted to life without parole by former Gov. Richard Celeste when he left office in 1991, but her death penalty in Indiana still stands.
Justice Brent Dickson, who signed an order Friday setting the execution date, said Ms. Brown has exhausted her automatic appeals under state law. If she hopes to avoid being executed by lethal injection, she must appeal to the federal courts, Judge Dickson said.
Ms. Brown's public defender could not be reached for comment. If the state proceeds with her execution without intervention from the federal courts, Ms. Brown would be brought back from Marysville, said Pam Pattison, a spokeswoman for the Indiana Department of Correction.
Ms. Brown would become the first woman executed in Indiana since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976. She was convicted of murder and child molesting after going on a multi-state killing spree with Alton Coleman, her common-law husband whose death penalty appeal is still pending before the Indiana Supreme Court.
Attorneys for Ms. Brown have argued that the borderline mentally retarded, 21-year-old woman was acting under Mr. Coleman's domination at the time of the killings.
In sentencing her to death, Lake Superior Court Judge Richard Maroc cited her two prior murder convictions in Ohio and circumstances of the Indiana slaying as reasons not to spare her life.
Ms. Brown and Mr. Coleman's 1984 Midwest crime spree included up to eight killings - two in Cincinnati - seven rapes, three kidnappings and 14 armed robberies, according to Indiana prosecutors.
In June 1984, prosecutors say Mr. Coleman and Ms. Brown lured Tamika Turks, 7, and her niece, 9, into a wooded area as they left a candy store near their home. They then bound and gagged the girls. The pair choked the other girl until she was unconscious, but she survived to testify against them.
Tamika's killing occurred during a seven-week Midwest 1984 crime spree that began in May 1984 with the abduction and murder of a 9-year-old Wisconsin girl and ended eight murders later when Ms. Brown and Mr. Coleman were arrested July 20, 1984, in Evanston, Ill.
Also killed in Cincinnati during the 1984 crime spree was 44-year-old Marlene Walters of Norwood.
