Harold McQueen Jr.

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Harold McQueen Jr.
Executed by electrocution
Conviction(s)Murder
Robbery
Criminal penaltyDeath
Details
VictimsRebecca O'Hearn, 22
DateJanuary 17, 1980
Imprisoned atKentucky State Penitentiary

Harold I. McQueen Jr. (July 25, 1952 – July 1, 1997) was an American man who was the first criminal executed by the state of Kentucky after the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States in 1976. McQueen was sentenced to death on April 8, 1981, for shooting and killing an unarmed store clerk, Rebecca O'Hearn, while robbing the store in which she worked in Richmond, committed on January 17, 1980.

Early life

Harold McQueen was born on July 25, 1952.[1] When McQueen was 10 years old, he drank alcohol for the first time. At his murder trial, a psychiatrist noted that although that was a "rather young" age to start drinking, McQueen claimed that he "never had anyone to tell him to stop drinking." McQueen also reported having been raised by older grandparents who did not support him or control his behavior.[2] By the time he was in high school, he had become an alcoholic and started failing out of school; by the time he was around 17 or 18, he began taking LSD, amphetamines, and cocaine.[2] At the age of 19, McQueen enlisted in the Army, citing an intention to "set [himself] straight" by avoiding alcohol and the other drugs to which he had become addicted; however, during his time in the army, he became addicted to heroin.[3] Shortly after his stint in the army, McQueen got married, but his wife left him after a brief period, shortly after which McQueen attempted suicide.[4]

Crime, apprehension, and trial

On January 17, 1980, McQueen entered a

surveillance camera and placed it in a bag, after which he and McQueen left the store with the surveillance camera, $1,500 in cash, and food stamps,[2] and disposed of the surveillance camera in a nearby pond.[5][4]

Shortly after the murder, McQueen and Linda Rose were arrested on charges related to an unrelated theft, leading police to search the trailer where they lived. There, police discovered evidence that tied McQueen to the murder, including the murder weapon and a bundle of cash and

death penalty for the murder because they believed him to have been the main party responsible for the murder.[2] The jury recommended against the death penalty for Burnell and sentenced him to two 20-year prison terms. Burnell was paroled in 1988.[5][6]

Death row, appeals, and execution

On June 13, 1997, weeks before McQueen's execution,

Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.[2] Amnesty alleged that McQueen's co-defendant received superior representation from a private attorney who Burnell's father, William Burnell, had hired. McQueen's court-appointed attorney, Jerome Fish, had practiced law since 1957[7] and only received $1,000 for representing his client, which Amnesty called "an insufficient figure to allow an attorney to conduct adequate preparations for trial." During an appeal court hearing in 1984, three years after McQueen was sentenced to death, his court-appointed attorney testified that he had never talked to McQueen's family "because they had a bad reputation in the community." He never presented evidence of McQueen's childhood neglect or childhood alcoholism as mitigating evidence, and he also never presented evidence that McQueen suffered from frontal lobe brain damage stemming from his long-term drug abuse that, in addition to his intoxication at the time of the murder, rendered him incapable of forming the intent to commit murder at the time of the crime.[6]

While on death row, McQueen became a devout Catholic. Three days prior to his execution, after accepting that it would be unlikely that he would receive a pardon, McQueen agreed to deliver a 19-minute videotaped message titled "It Could Happen to You," in which he discussed his childhood and his downward spiral during his young adulthood; he also encouraged children to stay away from drugs. The video was released about a year after McQueen's execution.[4]

On July 1, 1997, McQueen was executed in the electric chair at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville. In his final statement, McQueen stated, "I'd like to apologize one more time to the O'Hearn family. . . . I'd like to apologize to my family, because they're victims as well. I'd like to thank everybody that sent me cards and letters and prayers. Everybody that sent me that, tell them to keep fighting the death penalty."[8] McQueen was pronounced dead at 12:07 a.m.[9]

At the time of his death, McQueen was the first person executed in Kentucky since the electrocution of James Kelly Moss on March 2, 1962. As of May 2021, McQueen is the last person executed in the state's electric chair; he is also the only person since the reinstatement of the death penalty nationwide to have been executed in Kentucky involuntarily, meaning that he did not waive his appeals and request that the state execute him, unlike the other two men to have been executed in Kentucky, Eddie Lee Harper in 1999 and Marco Allen Chapman in 2008.[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ "United States Social Security Death Index". Family Search. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g "Harold McQueen Jr. v. Gene Scroggy, Warden, 99 F.3d 1302 (6th Cir. 1996)". CourtListener. 30 December 1996. Retrieved 14 May 2021.
  3. ^ "It Could Happen to You: The Harold McQueen Story (Pt. 1)". YouTube. June 1997. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  4. ^ a b c d Collins, Michael (13 January 1998). "Killer's Last Plea: Stay Off Drugs". Cincinnati Post. E.W. Scripps Company. Archived from the original on 27 January 2004. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  5. ^ a b c "Harold McQueen, Jr. - #399". Clark County Prosecuting Attorney. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  6. ^ a b "USA (Kentucky): Death Penalty/Legal Concern: Harold McQueen". Amnesty International. 13 June 1997. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  7. ^ "McQueen v. Commonwealth (1987)". Justia. 22 January 1987. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  8. Newspapers.com
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  9. ^ "It Could Happen to You: The Harold McQueen Story (Pt. 3)". YouTube. June 1997. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21. Retrieved 14 May 2021.
  10. ^ Williams, Chris (21 November 2018). "Kentucky Has Not Executed a Death Row Inmate in 10 Years, Here's Why". WHAS 11. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
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