This week in 1991

“I’m disappointed with the almost total lack of fairness in the American criminal justice system. This is truly a sad time in our country’s history, when political concerns take on more importance than the fundamental rights of the individual.”

— Roy Allen Harich, convicted of rape and murder, electric chair, Florida.
Executed April 24, 1991

Harich was the first prisoner executed after the Supreme Court limited inmates to one federal appeal, a fact reflected in his last words. In 1981, according to court documents, Harich had offered a lift to Carlene Gayle Kelly, age eighteen, and her friend Deborah Miller, seventeen, then drove them to a remote area to smoke marijuana.

He slashed their throats and shot both in the head, but Miller survived to testify against him.