It was the state’s first execution of a death row inmate since 2012.
Last night, David Neal Cox was lethally injected for the murder of his estranged wife more than a decade ago. He was also convicted of sexually assaulting his stepdaughter in front of her mother as she bled to death.
In his final statement, Cox said he loved his children and wanted them to know that he was a good man – at one time.
There was no death chamber confession about another case. Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain said Cox left a letter behind to be mailed to the family of his sister-in-law, Felicia Cox, who disappeared in 2007. David Neal Cox was allegedly the last person to see her alive.
Cox had previously petitioned the court to dismiss his appeals, dismiss his counsel, and move forward with his execution. A Union County Court ruled previously this year that Cox was competent to make such a decision and the Mississippi Supreme Court granted his request.
In 2018, Cox wrote a letter to the Court sharing that he would “gladly” kill his wife again and that he “happily and “premeditatedly” murdered her. Later that year, he wrote to the Court again to say he was seeking the “speedy execution of my guilty body.”
Cox was pronounced dead Wednesday night, November 17, 2021, at 6:15 p.m.
