William Richard Stevens was convicted in Davidson County, Tennessee, of two counts of first-degree murder and of a further offense. The jury found that he had hired Corey Milliken, who was 18 at the time, to kill two women in 1997. The dead were Sandra Jean Stevens, who was 45, and Myrtle Wilson, who was 75. Stevens was sentenced to death. The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed the sentence in 2002, and he remained on death row until his death in April 2016, at the age of 60.
Sandra Jean Stevens was 45 years old when she died in 1997, and she was married to William Stevens. Myrtle Wilson was 75. The deaths occurred in the Nashville area, and the State of Tennessee brought the prosecution in Davidson County against the man who had arranged them.
The jury found that William Stevens had hired Corey Milliken to carry out the killings. Milliken was 18 years old. In 2016 he was serving a life sentence. On the jury's finding that Stevens had commissioned the offenses, he was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder.
The Davidson County jury convicted Stevens of two counts of first-degree murder and of a further offense, and the court imposed a sentence of death. The exact date of the sentence is not on record.
The case went to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which affirmed the death sentence in 2002. One justice dissented from the death penalty and expressed grave concerns about the court's proportionality review. The majority upheld the sentence.
Stevens spent close to twenty years under sentence of death in Tennessee, and he was never executed. Tennessee had set execution dates for ten men in early 2014, and in April 2015 it put all executions on hold. Stevens died on April 4, 2016, in Tennessee, at the age of 60. The Department of Correction announced his death the next day.
Tennessee's last execution before the April 2015 hold took place in 2009. No execution date was in force when Stevens died, and 65 men and one woman remained on death row.
1997: Sandra Jean Stevens, 45, and Myrtle Wilson, 75, die in the Nashville area.
Late 1990s: sentence of death imposed in Davidson County on two counts of first-degree murder and a further offense.
2002: the Tennessee Supreme Court affirms the death sentence.
April 4, 2016: William Stevens dies in Tennessee, aged 60.
April 5, 2016: the Department of Correction announces his death.