COLUMBIA, S.C. — Two men who raped and killed two women after escaping a Kentucky prison will still face the death penalty, according to a decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday.
Brandon Basham, 43, and Chadrick Fulks, 47, kidnapped, raped, and killed 44-year-old Alice Donovan in Conway, South Carolina and 19-year-old Samantha Burns in West Virginia in November 2002.
These murders happened during a 17-day crime spree by Basham and Fulks after they escaped a Kentucky prison, according to court records.
Basham and Fulks carjacked a Kentucky man at knifepoint and tied him to a tree, stole firearms in Indiana, and stole a woman's purse in Ohio, among other crimes, before they carjacked, raped, and killed Donovan and Burns.
Authorities eventually arrested the pair. They were federally indicted indicted for carjacking resulting in death, kidnapping resulting in death, and using firearms during "crimes of violence," among other charges.
Fulks pleaded guilty to all of his charges in May 2004. Basham was found guilty of all his charges in a September 2004 trial. Prosecutors sentenced both to death for the kidnapping death and carjacking death-related charges. They were given 744-month sentences for the remaining charges.
Appeals by both offenders were denied by the SC district court and Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals immediately following their court proceedings. In 2016, they requested to appeal again in light of multiple Supreme Court decisions, including United States v. Taylor (2022), which states that kidnapping is no longer considered "a violent crime."
Basham and Fulks were allowed to appeal in 2023, arguing that if kidnapping is no longer a violent crime, they should not receive the death penalty for a crime related to it. They also argued that carjacking is not a violent crime.
However, the Appeals Court states that carjacking remains a violent crime by definition. Additionally, the Court believes the kidnapping definition defense in no way shaped the jury's decision on the matter.
"Fulks and Basham carjacked Alice Donovan, kidnapped her in her own car, took her to a secluded cemetery, raped her, and killed her," Monday's Court opinion states. "Now they argue with supreme irony that they committed no “crime of violence.” They cling to the categorical approach as a life raft, asking us to ignore all of these facts. At a certain point in time, however, reality has a way of breaking through. The reality here is that appellants visited terror upon woman after woman."
Basham and Fulks are two of 40 federal death row inmates. Dylan Roof, who killed nine people at a church in Charleston in 2015, and Brandon Council, who killed two bank workers during a robbery in 2017, are two other South Carolina offenders on federal death row.
Three people convicted in North Carolina are on the federal death row list. They are Charlotte man Marcivicci Barnette, who killed his girlfriend and another man in Virginia in 1996, Richard Jackson, who raped and killed a woman in the Pisgah National Forest in 1994, and Alejandro Umana, an MS-13 gang member from Charlotte who killed two people in Los Angeles in 2005.
Basham and Fulks are housed at a federal prison in Indiana.