Although her son eventually confessed to the crime, her execution is scheduled to happen on Thursday.
If Mississippi executes Michelle Byrom, 57, on Thursday, she would be the first woman executed in the state since 1944. A motion to approve that execution date is pending before the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Jackson attorney David Voisin, a consultant for the defense, said the state is moving “to kill a horribly battered and abused woman who did not do what the state said she did.”
In her capital murder trial, her son, Edward Jr., testified against her, saying she hired his friend, Joey Gillis, as a “hit man” to kill his father, Edward Sr., in 1999 for $15,000 — money she would pay from life insurance proceeds.
Jurors never saw the two letters that Junior wrote his mother in which he detailed how he killed his father and never heard from a psychologist who says Junior described killing his father.
Junior, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit capital murder, is now free on earned supervised release.
