Man who killed USC student in 1978 eligible for execution

Seven of California’s 713 death row inmates are eligible for execution after exhausting their appeals, including one man who was sentenced for his crimes in a 1978 spree that included the shooting and beating death of USC graduate student Rosemary Cobbs.

Stevie Lamar Fields, now 54, had been on parole from a manslaughter conviction for two weeks when he began a three-week crime spree that included three rapes, a robbery and two kidnappings in addition to Cobbs’ death.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, trial records show Fields tied 26-year-old Cobbs to the rails of his bed, forced her to write checks made out to him, ordered her into a car and then shot her six times before beating her to death.

Also according to the Chronicle, Fields appealed his conviction several times. His sentence was first overturned in 2000 by a federal judge who determined he should get a new penalty trial because the jury foreman had cited biblical teachings to the rest of the jury.

In September 2007, a federal appeals court reinstated Fields’ death sentence. Fields made his final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied review of the case in April 2008.

Executions have been suspended in the state while lethal-injection policies were revised. Fields — along with the six other death row inmates who have exhausted their appeals — will be eligible for execution after the new procedures are approved by a federal judge.

California has the largest death row population in the nation, though there have only been 13 executions since the penalty was reinstated in 1977.