The botched execution of Christa Pike has granted another death row inmate — who bailed a pal out of jail just to kill him and then his sister in 1992 — several more weeks to live before his date with death.
After Pike failed to die when injected with two rounds of lethal drugs last week, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee paused all remaining executions scheduled before the end of the year — which was just one.
Convicted killer Gary Wayne Sutton was scheduled to be executed on Dec. 3, but will now dodge death, at least for a bit longer.
Sutton has sat on death row since being convicted of the February 1992 murders of siblings Tommy Griffin and Connie Branam in two separate trials.
Sutton, his uncle James Dellinger and Griffin had gone out for a debauched night of drinking on Feb. 21, which turned nasty when a fight broke out, according to court records obtained by Fox News.
Griffin was left shirtless and scratched up on the side of the road and was picked up by cops who brought him to jail for public intoxication, the records show.
Sutton and Dellinger bailed him out and roughly a half hour later, witnesses reported hearing three gunshots near where Griffin was later found dead with a shotgun blast to the head, according to records.
Branam then went looking for her brother with Sutton and Dellinger the next day at the bar they’d patronized the night before, prosecutors said.
Soon after, her badly burned body was found in a scorched car, according to court records.
Dellinger, who was a co-defendant with Sutton, was sentenced to death, but died of natural causes on death row before he could be executed.
Sutton – who has maintained his innocence – does not have a new execution date in the new year, and it is unclear when the state of Tennessee will resume executions.
