ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — Danny Joe Bradley was executed Thursday for the rape and strangulation of his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Rhonda Hardin.
The 49-year-old Bradley was given a lethal injection at 6:15 p.m. Central Time at Holman prison after spending 25 years on Alabama's death row.
Bradley was caring for Rhonda Hardin and her 11-year-old brother on Jan. 24, 1983, in Piedmont when the girl was slain.
Bradley, 49, had no final statement. He stared at the ceiling without looking at witnesses. The prison chaplain held his left hand and knelt beside him in prayer during the procedure.
Rhonda Hardin's mother, Judy Bennett of Piedmont, and her father, Gary Hardin Sr. of Kingston, Ga., were on hand to watch Bradley die. Watching from a separate viewing room was Bradley's sister, Patricia Fielder, who sobbed most of the time in the arms of Bradley's attorney, Theodore Howard.
Janette Carr, a victim's advocate with the attorney general's office, was on hand to provide support to Rhonda Hardin's family. After the execution, Carr said "relief" would be a good way to describe what they felt.
Bradley's attorneys had asked the Supreme Court to put his execution on hold until it decided whether an Alaska inmate could have DNA testing done on some of the evidence collected against him in a 1993 rape and kidnapping case.
Bradley wanted to DNA-test some of the evidence - now missing - from his case, but the state had argued that he had access to other evidence and that DNA testing of some of those items had proved his guilt.
Bradley was the second Alabama Death Row inmate to be executed in a month.
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