RIH Emmanuel Hammond

[silverscreenselect]

I'm not a fan of capital punishment but I'm not going to lose any sleep over this guy.

This was one of the biggest missing person/murder cases in Atlanta history, probably second only to the Wayne Williams case as a big story since I've been in Atlanta. In 1988, an attractive 27-year-old fitness instructor named Julie Love disappeared. Her car was found three days later near her house, out of gas. Her fiance and parents organized an extensive search, putting up missing person posters and even hiring a psychic, but there was no trace of her for over a year. To make matters worse, police considered the fiance the prime suspect.

Eleven months later, police cracked the case when Hammond's girlfriend told the police where the body was located, in an abandoned dump site in another part of Atlanta. She was afraid Hammond was going to have her killed as well because she knew too much. Apparently, after Love's car ran out of gas, Hammond, the girlfriend and another man spotted her walking. Hammond pulled a shotgun on her and forced her into their car. Hammond wanted to get money from Love to buy drugs, so they took her ATM card and tried to get money from an ATM machine. They entered the wrong password and didn't get the money and the machine kept the ATM card. Shortly thereafter, Hammond killed her.

Ironically, although police checked to see if Love had made any ATM withdrawals after her disappearance, they didn't check to see if anyone had tried unsuccessfully to use her card (ATM technology wasn't that well advanced in 1988). Had they done so, they would have found out about the unsuccessful transaction (and recovered the card) which occurred far from where Love was taken but only a couple of blocks from Hammond's grandmother's house and would probably have solved the case much quicker.

To make things worse, apparently Hammond had done virtually the same robbery abduction rape beating with another woman a year earlier, but the other woman fortunately survived. Hammond's co-defendant, Maurice Porter (who was Hammond's cousin), is serving two life sentences. Hammond's girlfriend who turned him in also turned state's witness and was not prosecuted.

http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-man-exe ... 15827.html

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/julie-l ... 14366.html

Usually, when an appellate court reviews a criminal case, it describes the facts in a very dry, legalistic manner. The decision of the US Court of Appeals that turned down Hammond's appeal in 2009 contains a lengthy, gruesomely compelling description of the facts of the case that reads nothing like any appellate decision I've ever read, but more like a true crime novel.

http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/200811108.pdf

A truly disgusting, revolting excuse for a human being.

[BackInTex]

I don't see anything more revolting with what this guy did than any other person who has been convicted of Capital Murder (nothwithstanding all the folks who actually may be wrongly convicted).

Actually, this case seems pretty benign for a capital case.