Five times courts in the state of Arkansas have said that Jack Gordon Greene should die as his punishment for the murder of Johnson County County minister 69-year-old Sidney Jethro Burnett of Knoxville on July 23, 1991.
Five times his attorney’s have challenged that ruling. Greene, who is incarcerated at the Varner Supermax facility in Gould, recently turned 72 years old. His legal team is diligently to get him to his next birthday, but their options are starting to run out.
Greene was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in the Johnson County Circuit Court on October 15, 1993. The Arkansas Supreme Court remanded the Johnson County Circut Court for resentencing multiple times, however, each time Greene was sentenced to death.
Greene is set to be executed November 9 after Gov. Asa Hutchinson followed through on a request to set the date by state attorney general Leslie Rutledge in late August.
Greene legal representation has two more shots to change his fate. On Thursday, his attorney asked a state judge to spare Greene’s life and said the execution would violate the Constitution because the condemned killer suffers from a psychotic disorder. The other would be to be granted clemency by the governor.
“Mr. Burnett’s murder was vicious and clearly premeditated,” John M. Bynum, a former prosecutor who prosecuted Greene is his first trial. “I have seen nothing that convinces me Mr. Greene is unable to understand the crime he committed or the punishment he is about to receive.
“Greene showed no mercy to Mr. Burnett, and the state of Arkansas should not have mercy on Greene. I ask that you recommend to the governor that Greene’s application for executive clemency be denied.”
According to information from Rutledge’s office, Greene has exhausted all “appeals, collateral review of the conviction and sentence in the state courts, habeas corpus proceedings in federal court” in the murder.
Sidney, a retired preacher, was beaten, tied up, tortured, stabbed and shot.Greene, who was already wanted for the murder of his brother out of North Carolina at the time, invaded Burnett’s Johnson County home, committed the murder then stole Burnett’s truck and fled to Oklahoma.
His original sentence was officially upheld on appeal in July of 1999. On December 2, 1999 the Arkansas Supreme Court ordered a review all death penalty cases, regardless of whether defendants waive their rights to appeal.
Green had been scheduled to die the week that review was announced.
In January of 2002, Greene filed a petition for post-conviction relief that was denied. In 2004 Greene filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus, attacking the constitutionality of his capital murder conviction but again, he was denied.
The August 4 delivery to the state of a fresh batch of Midazolam, the execution drug that was the focus which was the focus of nationwide attention during a series of executions conducted in late April-early May of this year.
Greene and his girlfriend lived in Springdale from 1984 until 1991 when she took their daughter and left him. Greene returned to North Carolina and killed his brother Tommy with the same gun he later used in the murder of Burnett.
He also kidnapped a niece at the same time of his brother’s death, but she survived the ordeal. Prior to the conviction for capital murder, the only felony arrest on Greene’s record had been a five year stint in jail for a Wilkes County, North Carolina, breaking and entering.
Burnett and his wife had befriended the girlfriend and daughter after the girlfriend left Greene in 1991. He vowed to kill both Burnett’s upon his return to Arkansas, but Mrs. Burnett was not home the day of the slaying
Greene’s attorneys claim Greene suffers from a psychotic disorder and “his execution would violate the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment in the U.S. and Arkansas constitutions.”
According to Greene’s incarceration records on the Arkansas Department of Corrections website, he has been cited for 23 disciplinary violations since 1994 including threats of inflicting injury, possession or manufacture of contraband, disruptive behavior, insolence to a staff member, failure to keep his quarters and unnecessary noise or play.
