After 28 years on death row, Sidney Porterfield, the man Gaile Owens hired to kill her husband, died on death row yesterday.
Porterfield was the oldest man on death row at 71. He was pronounced dead at approximately 2:47 p.m. at Lois DeBerry Special Needs Facility, according to the Tennessee Department of Corrections. They say he died of natural causes.
He had been on death row since 1986, after his conviction in the contract killing of Ronald Owens, whom he had beat to death with a tire iron for the price of $17,000. Gaile Owens, who was also sentenced to death for hiring him, was freed in 2011, a little more than a year after then-Gov. Phil Bredesen commuted her sentence, due in part to years of spousal abuse Owens said she had suffered. (Background reading on the case, Owens' release, and more.)
Porterfield is the second inmate in a year to die of natural causes on Tennessee's death row. Since 2000, 10 death row inmates have died of natural causes while another committed suicide.
