Prisoners testify in death penalty appeal

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., June 2 (UPI) -- Three Florida prisoners say another man, not death row inmate John Richard Marek, confessed to the 1983 slaying for which Marek is sentenced to die.

Testifying in a Fort Lauderdale courtroom Monday, the three prisoners claimed the late Raymond Wigley confessed to them that he raped and strangled 45-year-old Barry University administrator Adela Marie Simmons in June 1983, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

Wigley, who received only a life sentence for the crime while Marek got the death penalty, was slain in prison in 2000, the newspaper said.

Marek, 47, was set to die by lethal injection May 13 but the Florida Supreme Court postponed the execution, sending the case to court for the evidentiary hearing, during which Jessie Bannerman, serving a life sentence for armed robbery, testified that while drinking homemade wine with Wigley at Union Correctional Institute in about 1987, Wigley said: "I have killed, and I'll kill again."

"He just vividly described certain parts of that murder that let me know he wasn't pretending -- the choking part," the newspaper quoted Bannerman saying. "He said he used his hands."