News reports published Monday that President Joe Biden has commuted the death sentences for 37 of 40 federal death row inmates are slightly incomplete.
These reports (and the White House announcement) did not include that there are four more federal defendants on the United States military’s death row. Three of the four on the military death row were convicted in courts-martial at Fort Liberty, back when the Army post was called Fort Bragg.
As of Monday morning, Biden had not commuted any of the military defendants’ sentences to life in prison. CityView emailed the White House to ask if the president had considered, or will consider, commuting the sentences of the four men on the military’s death row. As of noon the White House press office had not responded.
As summarized by the Death Penalty Information Center, the three men sentenced to death at Fort Liberty and awaiting execution are Ronald Gray, Hasan Akbar, and Timothy Hennis. The fourth person on the military’s death row is Nidal Hasan, who was sentenced to death at Fort Hood, Texas.
The most recent executions in the federal civilian criminal justice system were in January 2021. Biden put a moratorium on federal executions in July 2021, The Associated Press reported.
The U.S. military has not carried out an execution since 1961, the Death Penalty Information Center says.
Here are some details about the four military defendants’ crimes:
Ronald Gray, rapist and killer
In the 1980s, Ronald Adrin Gray was an Army specialist and a cook in the 82nd Airborne Division. He was convicted in 1987 by civilian authorities, and in 1988 by the military, of being a rapist and murderer, according to The Associated Press, The Fayetteville Observer, and The Fayetteville Times.
The news accounts say he killed four women and tried to kill at least one other.
In November 1987, Gray pleaded guilty in Cumberland County Superior Court to 22 felonies, including five counts of rape and two counts of murder, and received eight life sentences, the news accounts say. The homicides were of two civilian women who were his neighbors in a mobile home park.
In March 1988, the Army court-martialed Gray. He was convicted of 14 charges, including three counts of rape, two counts of murder, and one cout of attempted murder. He was sentenced to death.
The victims in Gray’s court-martial were a female soldier that he raped and killed, another female soldier that he raped and stabbed in the neck, and a female civilian cab driver that he raped and killed.
In 2018, the United States Supreme Court rejected a request to hear Gray’s appeal, The Fayetteville Observer reported.
Gray is the longest serving inmate on the military’s death row.
Hasan Akbar, killed officers in war zone
Hasan Akbar of the 101st Airborne Division was a sergeant stationed in Kuwait during the 2003 invasion of Iraq when he shot and killed an Army captain with a rifle, and killed an Air Force major with a grenade. He also wounded 14 others, The Fayetteville Observer reported.
Akbar acknowledged what he had done. His lawyers argued that he was mentally ill and unfit for Army service, The Observer reported.
Akbar was court-martialed and sentenced to death at Fort Liberty in April 2005.
Timothy Hennis, tried, tried and and tried again for rape, murders
Timothy Hennis is on the military’s death row for the murders of an Air Force officer’s wife and two of the couple’s three children in May 1985. At the time of the murders, Hennis was a sergeant in the Army at what is now Fort Liberty.
Civilian authorities arrested him several days later, and he was convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to death in Cumberland County Superior Court in 1986.
Hennis won a new trial on appeal, and was acquitted in 1989.
He resumed his life and his service in the Army, eventually retiring as a master sergeant. But in 2006 the Army began investigating after a cold-case detective in Cumberland County obtained a DNA test from the rape kit collected during the autopsy of the Air Force officer’s wife. The DNA matched Hennis. (Back in 1985, DNA testing was still experimental and was not available to Cumberland County investigators.)
The Army pulled Hennis out of retirement and court-martialed him at Fort Liberty. He was convicted and sentenced to death in April 2010.
Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter
Nidal Hasan was a major and psychiatrist at Fort Hood in November 2009 when he killed 13 people and injured 30 more in a shooting rampage in a medical clinic, The Associated Press reported.
Hasan acted as his own attorney at his court-martial at Fort Hood in 2013. The jury convicted him and sentenced him to death.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
Did you find this story useful or interesting? It was made possible by donations from readers like you to the CityView News Fund, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization committed to an informed democracy in Fayetteville and Cumberland County.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation so CityView can bring you more news and information like this.