Ky. death row inmate: “I’m ready and I’m sorry”
Ky. high court won’t rehear death row inmate case
By Brett Barrouquere
The Associated Press
LOUISVILLE, Ky.— A Kentucky man on death row for killing two children is urging the state to grant him a speedy execution in a move one attorney called “suicide by court.”
Marco Allen Chapman told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Friday that he doesn’t understand why his case is dragging on.
“I’m still too young to die of old age,” Chapman said. “The only thing I can do is ... tell the judges to do their job and end this now. Quit dragging this on for everybody.”
The Kentucky Supreme Court on Thursday declined to rehear his case, but Chapman’s court-appointed attorneys have 10 days to ask the justices to reconsider, with prosecutors having 10 days after that to respond.
Chapman said the delays merely “drag out the misery” for himself and the family of his victims.
Chapman, 36, pleaded guilty in 2004 to killing 7-year-old Chelbi Sharon and 6-year-old Cody Sharon, and attacking their mother, Carolyn Marksberry, and their older sister, Courtney Sharon, in the small town of Warsaw in northern Kentucky.
Chapman’s unusual case has gone on for more than three years, far short of the nearly 12 years or more that most death penalty cases take to play out. To Chapman, the wait has been too long.
“Everybody’s still got to suffer,” said Chapman, who spends 23 hours a day in a cell at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville. “My family suffers, the victim’s family suffers.”
Linda Talley Smith, who prosecuted Chapman and serves as a spokeswoman for the Marksberry family, said the survivors of the Aug. 23, 2002 attack are dealing with the rulings the best they can.
“This doesn’t make everything better, for sure,” Smith said.
Chapman’s attorneys with the Department of Public Advocacy have said their reluctant client is depressed and may not be competent to waive his appeals. They’ve said Chapman is trying to commit “suicide by court.” Before pleading guilty, Chapman was declared competent multiple times. He faces another competency exam as he pursues a lawsuit against the public defenders in which Chapman is asking a judge to order the lawyers to stop appealing his case.
“I was competent to represent myself then,” Chapman said. “Now, I’ve got to be competent enough to die?”
Police say Chapman, who had done work as a handyman for the Marksberry family, was coming off a two-day crack cocaine binge when he went to their home in Warsaw, a town of 1,800 about 65 miles northeast of Louisville. He tied up Marksberry and began stabbing her, then attacked the children.
Kentucky has executed two people since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.