Alabama death row inmate’s lawyers drop effort to move him to Michigan

Lawyers for Demetrius Frazier, an Alabama inmate set to die in two weeks, said Friday they are no longer asking that he be sent back to a Michigan prison, where he could be spared from execution and serve the rest of his life sentences.

That’s after Michigan refused to take Frazier back.

But in refusing to do so, Frazier’s lawyers warned Michigan of the historical consequences of its decision to not seek and regain custody in their Friday court filing. By Michigan not asking for the return of the condemned man, Michigan could make history by having the first execution ever of one of it’s inmates.

Lawyers for Frazier, 52, asked a federal judge late Friday afternoon to dismiss their claim that Frazier should be transferred back to a Michigan lockup.

The lawyers had argued that a 2011 executive agreement between former Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, which allowed for Frazier to be brought to Alabama’s Death Row, was illegal.

But earlier this week, a lawyer for the Michigan Department of Corrections said the northern prison system didn’t want Frazier back.

“While Michigan takes no position on the imposition of the death penalty in this case, Michigan does not seek to return Frazier to a Michigan correctional facility,” the court filing from the Michigan prison system states.

On Friday, Frazier’s lawyers from the Federal Defenders for the Middle District of Alabama agreed the case could be dismissed, but said if Frazier is executed, it would be partially at the feet of Michigan for refusing to take him back.

By Michigan disclaiming any interest in bringing Frazier back, Frazier’s lawyers said Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and their client would make history: “He will be the first prisoner executed while in the State of Michigan’s custody,” the lawyers state in Friday’s dismissal.

Frazier’s lawyers noted that since it became a state Michigan hasn’t executed anyone and in 1846, that state became “the first government in the English-speaking world to abolish capital punishment for murder and lesser crimes.”

The lawyers also said Whitmer could still issue an executive order seeking his return.

Frazier has another pending lawsuit in federal court focusing on the state’s nitrogen gas execution process. There’s a hearing set for next week in that case.

Frazier is to be executed at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility, Atmore Alabama, sometime within a 30-hour-period starting at midnight on Thursday, Feb. 6 and ending at 6 a.m. on Feb. 7. Frazier is set to die by inhaling pure nitrogen gas.

He is to be put to death for the slaying of Pauline Brown, who was shot to death and raped in her Fountain Heights apartment in Birmingham, AL, more than 30 years ago. Frazier was also convicted in a separate killing in his home state of Michigan: The shooting death of a 14-year-old girl.

A court filing from the Alabama Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday called Frazier “a sexual predator.”

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Frazier was arrested in Michigan in 1992, when he was 19 years old.

In November 1991, Frazier, according to court records, broke into Brown’s apartment. He searched the home for money and when he couldn’t find much, woke up Brown. He raped her at gunpoint, and then shot her in the head.

Following the shooting, Frazier left the apartment to see if anyone heard the shot. When he didn’t think anyone heard, he returned and ate a snack in the victim’s kitchen before fleeing the scene with less than $100.

A few months later, in 1992, court records say Frazier was in his home city of Detroit and took 14-year-old Crystal Kendrick into a vacant house, preparing to rape her at gunpoint. But as he undid his pants, court records show, the teen fled. Frazier went after her and shot her in the head.

He was arrested days later in Detroit. According to the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, at the time of his arrest Frazier had a slew of pending charges including 15 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

During his talks with police in Michigan in 1992, he admitted to Brown’s slaying in Alabama.

Frazier was convicted in Michigan the next year for criminal sexual conduct, robbery, the teenager’s slaying. There, he was given three life sentences.

In 1995, Michigan authorities brought Frazier to Alabama, where he was tried for Brown’s killing, found guilty and sentenced to death. The Michigan authorities then brought him back north, where he was imprisoned.

But in 2011, then-Govs. Robert Bentley of Alabama and Rick Snyder of Michigan created an executive agreement to transfer Frazier to Alabama, according to documents signed by the governors and attached to Frazier’s lawsuit.

No explanation was provided in the documents as to why the transfer was initiated.

Before today’s voluntary dismissal, Frazier’s attorneys argued that executive agreement was unlawful, and asking the inmate to be sent back to Michigan. That state does not have the death penalty, and its state constitution banned it in 1963.

In their lawsuit, Frazier’s lawyers argued his “Michigan life sentences have not been commuted and he has not been pardoned.” And the northern state’s law says, according to Frazier’s lawyers, that an inmate like Frazier “shall not be eligible for custodial incarceration outside a state correctional facility or a county jail.”

n Wednesday, an attorney for the Michigan Department of Corrections asked the judge to dismiss Frazier’s case.

“While Michigan takes no position on the imposition of the death penalty in this case, Michigan does not seek to return Frazier to a Michigan correctional facility,” the court filing read.

Frazier cannot make the state take him back into custody, Michigan’s filing said. The inmate’s question about state custody, said Michigan lawyers, is one for state court and not federal court.

The lawyers said the executive agreement between Bentley and Snyder, which brought Frazier back to Alabama’s custody, “boils down to a priority-of-custody matter between sovereigns.”

Frazier “mistakenly relies on Michigan constitutional and statutory law” to bolster his case, said the Michigan lawyer. The state law “does not mean that no Michigan prisoner can ever be sent to another state, as Frazier avers,” said the court filing.

It called Frazier’s claim a “farfetched argument” and “decades too late.”

The Alabama Attorney General’s Office had also filed a request to the federal judge Wednesday asking him to dismiss the case. “Now, three weeks before his execution—and more than thirteen years after his return to Alabama— Frazier initiated the instant litigation challenging the legality of the agreement.”

“The only conclusion (the state) can draw is that this is yet another attempt to sandbag the State of Alabama with meritless litigation in an effort to stop an execution.”

The AG’s Office also argued that there was nothing wrong with the executive agreement and called the lawsuit a “blatant misuse of this Court to stop his execution.”