Although an Alabama man cannot be put to death for kidnapping, torturing and finally killing a Chattanooga woman in 1994 when he was 17 years old, he can be sentenced to spend the remainder of his life in prison, a federal appeals court has ruled.
Kenneth Loggins – one of four teenagers convicted of killing Vicki DeBlieux, mutilating her body and then cutting off her fingers as souvenirs – indicated during his appeals that he now feels “profound shame for his role in the underlying offense.”
Loggins successfully appealed the death sentence he initially received on the grounds that he was a minor when he committed the crime.
In 2005, that sentence was overturned and his sentence was amended to life in prison without parole.
This week, however, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his follow-up arguments that the state of Alabama also violated his constitutional rights when it imposed the lesser alternative sentence.
In their lengthy opinion, justices outlined the events of Feb. 21, 1994, when the four teenagers spotted Ms. DeBlieux at an interstate exit near Birmingham as the 37-year-old woman attempted to hitchhike from Chattanooga to her mother’s home in West Monroe, La.
After luring the woman into their vehicle by promising to take her to Louisiana, the teenagers – Carey Dale Grayson, Trace Duncan, Louis Mangione and Loggins – drove her to a remote area where they kicked, strangled and beat her with beer bottles for hours, evidence in the case revealed.
Finally, when they realized the victim was still alive, Loggins stood on Ms. DeBlieux’s throat so that she could not breathe, testimony indicated.
An autopsy conducted after her mutilated body was discovered revealed that “Deblieux’s face was covered with lacerations, every bone in her face was fractured at least once, almost every bone in her skull was fractured, a tooth was missing, her left eye was collapsed, her right eye had hemorrhaged, there were two large incisions in her chest, her left lung had been removed, she had 180 post-mortem stab wounds, and all of her fingers and both thumbs had been cut off.”