Vigils, protests precede execution of Tennessee death-row inmate

Published: 2007-05-09

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (CNS) -- Philip Workman, convicted of killing a police officer in Memphis, was executed in Nashville on the morning of May 9 despite a wave of last-minute court appeals and efforts by anti-death penalty activists to spare his life. Workman, 53, had received five previous stays of execution, and advocates on his behalf thought he might be granted another stay but instead he became the third person in Tennessee to be put to death by lethal injection since 1960. One of the final appeals by his lawyers argued that the state's revised procedures for lethal injection could not ensure that his death would be painless. The Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing sponsored a prayer vigil May 8 at Holy Name Catholic Church in Nashville the night before the execution. Another prayer vigil was held later that evening at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the prison where Workman was executed. Workman was sentenced to death more than two decades ago for killing Memphis Police Lt. Ronald Oliver in 1981 during a botched robbery at a Wendy's restaurant.

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