Killer's request nixed

Child killer Patrick Ronald Russell will not have his death wish granted — at least not by a judge.

During a hearing Wednesday, Douglas County District Judge J Russell Derr told Russell he had no authority to consider Russell's request to be executed for the November 1973 killing of 8-year-old Joseph Edmonds.

Only the Nebraska Board of Pardons can commute Russell's life sentence, the judge said. But the pardons board would have no authority to sentence someone to death.

“I'm going to have to overrule your motion because I don't have jurisdiction,” Derr told Russell.

With the ruling, Russell will continue serving life in prison for strangling Joseph by knotting a phone cord around the child's neck. The boy's body was left in a vacant Omaha apartment in Russell's building, where it remained for days.

Russell told police he was mad at Joseph, saying the boy called his grandmother a name.

Noting that he has been in prison for nearly 36 years, Russell, now 53, filed a motion in June asking to be executed “at the earliest possible date.”

“Defendant would wather be excuted then to live the remainder of his life in protective custody,” Russell wrote in a motion filled with misspellings.

While Russell's death wish was rare, it read like little more than a grievance list.

Russell, who was 17 at the time of the killing, used the five-minute hearing Wednesday to further complain about his status at Tecumseh.

“I'd rather be dead than reside in protective custody,” Russell said by telephone from Tecumseh State Prison.

In his motion, Russell wrote that in April 2008, he “was forced into protective custody unit which constitutes disciplinary islouation (sic) after being assaulted by two gang members ... and has been denied all requests (for) transfer to another prison facility so that he may reside in general population.”

He says he is not allowed to exercise because “it is unsafe for defendant to cross the main prison yard, according to Warden Britten.”

Fred Britten, warden at Tecumseh, has said inmates are placed in protective custody because of “concerns for their safety,” not as a form of punishment. And, he said, those inmates are allowed to exercise and have access to medical care, visitors and religious services.

A family friend of Joseph Edmonds said granting Russell's request would have been “too easy” on the prisoner.

Kathy Moses, whose brother was Joseph's uncle, said Joseph's mother was devastated by her only son's death.

Marlene Edmonds died in 2003 at age 63.

Moses said her brother still can't talk about little Joseph because “it's too hurtful.”

Russell “made so many people suffer,” Moses said. “If he is having a tough time behind bars, oh well. I say, let him live another 50 years.

“I wish he could feel some of the pain this family has felt.”

Contact the writer:

444-1275, todd.cooper@owh.com

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