Supreme Court sets 2 execution dates

Published 12:00 am Friday, July 2, 2010

MONTGOMERY (AP) — The Alabama Supreme Court has set execution dates for two inmates, including a mentally impaired man convicted in the 1993 killing of his former girlfriend.

The state’s high court said Thursday that it has scheduled the execution of Michael Jeffrey Land for Aug. 12 and of Holly Wood for Sept. 2.

Land was convicted in the May 1992 killing of 30-year-old Candace Brown. Hikers found her body in an abandoned limestone quarry on Birmingham’s Ruffner Mountain.

The U.S. Supreme Court in January upheld the death sentence of Wood, who was convicted in the shooting death of Ruby Lois Gosha as she slept at her home in Troy.

A federal judge had tossed out the death sentence because Wood’s lawyer didn’t tell jurors at sentencing that Wood had an IQ of less than 70 and was classified as mentally retarded.