Nov. 4 DELAWARE----execution Steckel dies Brian D. Steckel was put to death early Friday after a final plea to delay his execution was refused Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court. Steckel, 36, was sentenced to death for raping Sandra Lee Long 11 years ago in Prices Corner, and then killing her by setting fire to her apartment as he left. Despite requests for mercy by his family, Steckel said he was ready to die. Some members of Long's family, who have said Steckel's execution would bring them peace, wore T-shirts on Thursday night depicting the scales of justice with an eye on each side - a reference to the Old Testament edict "an eye for an eye." On their way to the Delaware Correctional Center near Smyrna, where some of them planned to witness Steckel's execution, they stopped at Long's grave in St. Georges cemetery. With flashlights illuminating her headstone, they listened to Carole King's "Way Over Yonder" on a car stereo. Steckel, who grew up in Fountain Hill, Pa., was sentenced to death in 1997 for the 1994 murder of Sandra Lee Long in her apartment near Wilmington. Long was burned to death in a fire Steckel set after strangling her into unconsciousness and raping and sodomizing her. Steckel was arrested within hours of the killing after making several telephone calls to a local newspaper to brag about the vicious killing, and to identify another woman as his next victim. While awaiting trial in prison, Steckel sent more than 75 taunting and threatening letters to prosecutors, a judge and others involved in the case. In one of seven letters sent to Long's mother, Virginia Thomas, he enclosed a copy of an autopsy report on which he had scribbled, "Happy, happy, joy, joy ... Read it and weep. She is gone forever. Don't cry over burnt flesh." Attorneys for Steckel asked the court last week to issue a stay of execution and to review the Delaware Supreme Court's refusal in September to overturn his death sentence. Defense attorneys argued unsuccessfully in state courts that the jury in Steckel's trial was misled into believing that its decision on whether he was eligible for the death penalty would be only a recommendation to the judge during the penalty phase of the trial, instead of a final determination. During the guilt phase of the trial, the jury convicted Steckel on 3 counts of 1st-degree murder, including 2 counts of murder during the commission of another felony, which itself is a statutory aggravating circumstance, making him eligible for the death penalty. Steckel becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Delaware, and the 14th since Delaware resumed executions in 1992. Steckel becomes the 47th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 991st overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977. There are 10 more executions currently scheduled in America this month, and if all are carried out, the USA will execute its 1000th condemned inmate on November 29, in Ohio. The death penalty was re-legalized in the USA on July 2, 1976. (sources: The News Journal, Associated Press & Rick Halperin)
