Virginia Inmate Proves Why We Need Capital Punishment

A cold blooded killer in Virginia murdered his cellmate because he wouldn’t stop singing “Dixie.” He did it because his lawyers somehow got him out of a death sentence and to prove to them that they were wrong to have done that. He says he will murder his next cellmate too and the only way to stop him is to kill him.

From Channel3k here:

For seven days, Robert Gleason Jr. begged correctional officers and counselors at Wallens Ridge State Prison to move his new cellmate. The constant singing, screaming and obnoxious behavior were too much, and Gleason knew he was ready to snap.

On the eighth day — May 8, 2009 — correctional officers found 63-year-old Harvey Gray Watson Jr. bound, gagged, beaten and strangled.

Now, Gleason says he’ll kill again if he isn’t put to death for killing Watson. And he says his next victim won’t be an inmate.

“I murdered that man cold-bloodedly. I planned it, and I’m gonna do it again,” the 40-year-old Gleason told The Associated Press. “Someone needs to stop it. The only way to stop me is put me on death row.”

Gleason already is serving a life sentence for killing another man. He fired his lawyers last month — they were trying to work out a deal to keep him from getting the death penalty — so he could plead guilty to capital murder. He’s vowed not to appeal his sentence if the judge sentences him to death Aug. 31.

Gleason and Watson became cellmates on May 1, 2009.

In the days the two spent locked in an 8-by-10-foot cell, Watson would talk about how he had “drowned” two television sets because they “had voodoo in them,” Gleason said. He would also belt out “I wish I was in the land of cotton” from the song “Dixie” and other songs at all hours, scream profanities and masturbate. In the chow hall and in the recreation yard, Watson would get inmates to give him cigarettes for drinking his urine and clabbered milk.

Gleason said his requests to separate the two were met with mockery and indifference by correctional officers and prison counselors.

It was after midnight when Gleason used slivers of bed sheets to tie Watson’s hands and arms to his body and fashioned a gag out of two socks. He later removed the gag and gave Watson a cigarette, telling him it would be his last. Gleason said Watson spit in his face when he went to take the cigarette out of Watson’s mouth, so he jumped on his cellmate’s back and beat and strangled the man.

As a Virginian, I think we should grant Gleason his request and put him down. Either that or just keep giving him other prisoner that deserve to be his cellmate. And THEN put Gleason down.