William Sallie, scheduled to be executed Tuesday for murdering his father-in-law 26 years ago, has put in his request for his last meal: pizza with sausage and pepperoni, chicken wings with buffalo sauce and a large soda.
The man Georgia executed most recently, Steven Spears, also requested pizza as his last meal before he was put to death on Nov. 16.
Sallie murdered John Moore as animosities intensified between Sallie and his wife’s family after she filed for divorce. Robin Sallie moved out of their house in December 1989 following an argument during which William Sallie struck her with a belt, prompting her to take their 2-year-old son to live with her parents, her sister and her brother.
Hostilities between the two were aggravated when William Sallie picked up his son one day under the pretense of visiting with him but instead took the child to Illinois. An Illinois judge ruled in March 1990 that Robin Sallie could take her son back to Alma in South Georgia.
William Sallie also returned to Georgia and used a fake name to rent a mobile home near Hinesville. He had a friend buy him a handgun.
In the early morning hours of March 28, 1990, William Sallie, dressed in green camouflage and carrying duct tape and four pairs of handcuffs, broke into his in-laws’ home, where his wife, their son and her family were sleeping.
First he shot John Moore six times. Then he wounded his mother-in-law Linda Moore in the thumb, the shoulder and both thighs. He handcuffed his mother-in-law and her 9-year-old son, Justin, to each other and to a bed rail, and then took his estranged wife and her 17-year-old sister, April, to his mobile home in Liberty County. Sallie released the sisters that night after they promised not to seek criminal charges against him.
Sallie’s lawyers have argued in appeals that he deserves a new trial because one of the jurors who sentenced him to die had experienced domestic violence and had been involved in highly contentious divorces and child custody court battles. The lawyers wrote the woman would not have been allowed to sit on the jury with that history, but she lied when asked about her past.
So far, the courts have declined to hear that claim because his appeal was filed after a crucial deadline passed.
Sallie’s lawyers, and those who want to see his lethal injection carried out, will meet with the State Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday.
If Sallie, now 50, is executed, he will be the ninth murderer in Georgia to die by lethal injection in 2016, more than in any other year since 1957, when 16 people were put to death. Georgia also has executed more people this year than any other state.
There are 58 men on Georgia’s Death Row, including William Sallie.
VIDEO: Unusual last meal requests
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