Law: Death Wish Denied

An execution is stayed, but others may be on the way

On the day after Christmas 1976, John Louis Evans and a friend he met in prison, Wayne Ritter, rented an Oldsmobile Cutlass and went on a spree. By Evans' count, the pair committed 37 robberies, two extortions and nine kidnapings. When they got to Mobile, Ala., Evans shot a pawnbroker in the back while the victim's two daughters, aged 7 and 9, looked on. It was all a "deadly game," says Evans. "I was planning on dying. I would never go back to prison."...

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