Crime & Punishment
Date set for Simpson execution
By PAUL STONE
H-P Associate Editor
Condemned killer Danielle Simpson is scheduled to die in November after a local state district judge set his execution date late last week.
On Thursday, 87th State District Judge Deborah Oakes Evans signed an order setting Simpson’s execution date for Nov. 18 in Huntsville, according to Anderson County District Attorney Doug Lowe.
The door was opened for the setting of Simpson’s execution date after the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled he had the legal right to waive further review of his case.
Earlier this year, the 29-year-old Simpson expressed a desire to expedite his execution rather than exhaust his entire range of appeals.
In June, Dr. Randall Price, a psychiatrist who examined the Palestine native, testified during a hearing in Beaumont that Simpson had reported to him that he looked “forward to a life after death” and wanted to “drop his appeals”, describing conditions on Death Row as pitiful.
Following that hearing, U.S. District Judge Ron Clark ruled that Simpson was mentally competent to waive further review of his case.
Simpson was one of four local youths found guilty of murdering 84-year-old Geraldine Davidson, a retired Palestine school teacher and organist at Grace United Methodist Church, in January 2000.
Davidson’s body was found floating face down in the Neches River on U.S. 79 between Palestine and Jacksonville by a passing motorist on Jan. 27, 2000. She had been tossed into the frigid river with her hands tied behind her back and a cinder block attached to her ankles, according to authorities.
Testimony during the defendants’ trials indicated that Simpson and the others were burglarizing Davidson’s residence on South Sycamore Street when she returned home and discovered them.
Other testimony showed that Simpson and his co-defendants paraded Davidson around in the trunk of a vehicle, displaying her to multiple persons, before murdering her on the night of Jan. 26, 2000.
Simpson’s trial was held in Henderson County in December 2000 after a motion was granted for a change of venue.
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Paul Stone may be contacted via e-mail at pstone@palestineherald.com
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