Just hours after Joshua Bishop was executed Thursday night, State Board of Pardons and Paroles announced it had denied parole to Bishop's co-defendant, Mark Braxley, and would not review his case again for eight years.
The board had denied Braxley parole in 2001 and 2009 and was planning to review his case again in June 2017. But based on information the five board members received when considering Bishop’s clemency petition, they decided to look at Braxley’s case now instead of next year.
“This is the strongest action we can take regarding Braxley. The board determined it was appropriate to set him off the maximum amount of time because of his involvement in the case,” said board Chairman Terry Barnard.
Bishop and Braxley murdered Leverett Morrison in 1994 in a dispute over car keys that came at the end of a day of drinking and smoking crack cocaine. The two men hit Morrison with a car battery and then beat him to death with a curtain rod. They left his body between two dumpsters and set fire to Morrison’s Jeep.
Both men confessed to the murder and they also told Baldwin County investigators they had killed another man, Ricky Lee Wills, two weeks earlier. Until then, no one knew Will was dead.
Braxley pleaded guilty to Leverett's murder and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Bishop, who was 19 at the time, went to trial and was sentenced to death.
In a recorded statement made about 4 1/2 hours before he died, Bishop apologized to the families of his victims just as he did once he was on the gurney in the death chamber.
“I hope that this right here can take away some of the pain and add to the peace of the victims’ families,” Bishop said.
Bishop, 41, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 9:27 p.m. Thursday.
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