Conviction
During the trial, Cherry smiled and looked amused. He could be seen joking with his lawyers and several supporters, not appearing to believe that the legal system which had protected him up to that point would ultimately send him to jail. He was convicted on four counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Cherry attempted to appeal, but in October 2004 the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously upheld his conviction. The court rejected Cherry's claim that a delay of 37 years between his commission of the crime and his indictment in 2000 had resulted in an inherently unfair trial.
During his prison sentence, Cherry repeatedly claimed to be the victim of a malicious false campaign against him and he said that he was a "political prisoner" who was denied proper treatment.
He was originally taken to the Kilby Correctional Facility in Montgomery County, Alabama for intake. He was later moved to Holman Correctional Facility in Escambia County, Alabama.
On Wednesday October 13, 2004, Cherry was transferred from Holman Prison to Atmore Community Hospital in Atmore. During the same day an ambulance transported him from the Atmore hospital to a hospital in Montgomery.
Cherry died in the Kilby prison's hospital unit, on November 18, 2004 at the age of 74. He was survived by his fifth wife, Myrtle Cherry, two sons Herman Cherry, Wesley Cherry, and three daughters Sue Crawford, Theresa Johnston, and Karen Sunderland
Read more about this topic: Bobby Frank Cherry
Famous quotes containing the word conviction:
“The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... the truth is hidden from us. Even if a mere piece of luck brings us straight to it, we shall have no grounded conviction of our success; there are so many similar objects, all claiming to be the real thing.”
—Lucian (c. 120–c. 180)