Sean Sellers - Appeals and Execution

Appeals and Execution

During his 1999 appeal to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Sellers contended he was suffering from a multiple personality disorder. The appellate court ruled that there was "uncontroverted evidence" of Sellers's religious conversion and that he may indeed suffer from multiple personality disorder. The panel of judges concluded that while Sellers might have been insane at the time of his crimes, the claim was made too late to be raised on appeal. Psychiatric experts scoffed at Seller's claim, arguing that any true mental illness would have been diagnosed soon after Sellers' arrest and not seven years later. Prison officials also cast doubt on Sellers' mental illness by saying they saw Sellers rehearsing the evidence of mental illness and receiving coaching from his attorneys. Sellers made the same insanity claim to his clemency board, but the board refused to consider the issue. The board appeared to be swayed by prison officials' statements, the lengthy time delay in diagnosing the illness, and statements by Sellers' accomplice that he had seen no evidence of multiple personality. "The only thing that worried him was getting caught", Richard Howard wrote.

Sellers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court declined his appeal.

Two days before his execution, Sellers filed two more appeals. The first appeal, made in federal district court, accused the state Pardon and Parole Board of violating his civil rights. Sellers argued the pardon board's decisions were not impartial and capricious. The appeal was denied, the issue having been considered and rejected by state courts numerous times (and recently as well). A second appeal, filed with the state Court of Criminal Appeals, claimed the state appellate court made a mistake by ruling Sellers had waived his insanity claim at trial. The state appellate court admitted it used the wrong legal justification in deciding Sellers' waiver of mental illness, but nevertheless rejected Sellers' appeal after reconsidering the case on the merits raised by Sellers' defense team.

Sellers' imminent execution brought condemnation from a wide variety of sources, including the European Union, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the American Bar Association and Bianca Jagger. Nearly all raised issues about his age at the time of the crimes, and many argued that his religious work from prison outweighed the state's need to execute him.

Sellers was executed by lethal injection at 12:17 a.m. on February 4, 1999. He spoke to his step-siblings, saying, "All the people who are hating me right now and are here waiting to see me die, when you wake up in the morning, you aren't going to feel any different." Sellers did not mention his mother or apologize for what he had done. His statement outraged his step-siblings. Noelle Terry, his stepsister, later said, "He basically addressed the fact that we would still feel the same. It is very presumptuous that he would know how we would still feel." His last words were a modern Christian music song: "Set my spirit free that I might praise Thee. Set my spirit free that I might worship Thee."