He claimed innocence, but DNA said guilt:
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — A man convicted of raping and murdering a woman in 1988 was executed by injection Wednesday night. Authorities said he was the first Nevada convict to be sentenced to death based solely on DNA evidence.
“Allah is great, Allah is great,” Daryl Linnie Mack said before he died.
Mack had said he would rather be executed than spend the rest of his life in prison. He claimed he didn't strangle Betty Jane May, 55, in the Reno boarding house where she lived.
Mack was serving a life sentence in prison for murdering Kim Parks in 1994 in a Reno motel when he was linked to May's murder. A homicide detective reviewing inactive cases noticed blood and semen samples that had never been tested. Such DNA tests had not been developed at the time of May's slaying.
A database search found a match in Mack. He was sentenced to death in 2002.
The execution had been scheduled for late last year but was stayed by the state Supreme Court. The stay was lifted in February.
May's children, Charles May, 48, of Reno; Denise Notinelli, 44, of Los Angeles; and Alana Coy, 42, of Kentucky, witnessed Mack's execution. Charles May said the family wanted to see justice carried out, and the execution was “long overdue.”
