S. C. Court grants a stay
January 5, 2010
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- South Carolina's highest court has granted a stay to a death row inmate
who was just days away from his scheduled execution.
The state Supreme Court on Tuesday granted a request by defense
attorneys to stay Quincy Allen's execution, which was scheduled for
Jan. 8.
Attorney Robert Dudek filed the appeal last month, hours after state prison officials set the
execution date.
Allen had chosen to die in the electric chair. In South Carolina, inmates have the choice
between lethal injection and execution.
Allen killed four people across South Carolina and North Carolina in the summer of 2002.
He was moved from death row to South Carolina's supermax prison
last month after authorities said he tried to escape, stabbing a guard.
Quincy Allen
Dob 11/7/79 sentenced to death row 3/21/05
Convicted murderer Quincy Allen,30, is set to be executed January 8 after the S.C. Supreme Court issued an
order Thursday directing the state to carry out his death sentence.
However, Allen's attorneys filed a federal appeal seeking to halt the execution just hours after it was
ordered.
The execution order comes just weeks after Allen and another death-row inmate repeatedly stabbed a guard outside
the state's death-row compound at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia on December 2.
That stabbing took place two weeks after the state high court rejected Allen's final appeal November 16, which
cleared the way for his execution.
Allen plead guilty in 2005 to murdering Jedediah Harr, 22, at a Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Northeastern
Richland County in 2002 as well as killing and burning the body of Dale Hall, 45, on Two Notch Road. Allen also
shot James White, 51, in downtown Columbia's Finlay Park. White survived the shooting.
Allen then led police on a multi-state manhunt, including the killing of two more people at a N.C. convenience
store, before being captured in Texas.
Corrections department spokesman Josh Gelinas said Thursday that Allen has selected electrocution as the method
of execution
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