This week in 2009

“To the Timbrook family, you definitely have the wrong person. The truth will come out one day. This here, killing me, there’s no justice about it.”

— Edward Nathaniel Bell, convicted of murder, lethal injection, Virginia.
Executed February 19, 2009

Bell, a native of Jamaica, was sent to death row for the shooting death of police officer Ricky Timbrook in 1999. Bell maintained his innocence throughout trial. The case became “a flash point in the debate over Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s views on the death penalty,” reported the Washington Post. “. . . The case had particular resonance for Kaine, a Catholic who personally opposes the death penalty but has said he will enforce the law.”