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Feds To Seek Death Penalty in Cairo Bank Slayings

Feds To Seek Death Penalty in Cairo Bank Slayings
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By West Kentucky Star Staff
Apr. 23, 2015 | BENTON, IL
By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 23, 2015 | 05:36 PM | BENTON, IL
The federal government will pursue the death penalty in its case against a man accused of murdering two bank employees in Cairo.

James Watts of Cairo is accused of fatally stabbing 52-year-old Anita Grace of Olive Branch and 52-year-old Nita Smith of Wickliffe, Kentucky, as well as injuring another woman during a botched bank robbery in 2014.

Watts has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted armed bank robbery resulting in death.

The Southern Illinoisan reports that in a court filing on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Stephen Wigginton said that if Watts is convicted, the federal government intends to prove that his intentional killings of the two women are aggravating factors as basis for imposition of the death penalty.

The document said that Watts committed his offenses in “an especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner in that it involved torture or serious physical abuse of the victims,” that he committed the offenses “after substantial planning and premeditation to cause the death of a person” and that he acted to “intentionally kill and attempt to kill more than one person in a single criminal episode.”

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