If confessing on deathbed, be sure you are going to die!

James Brewer recently had a stoke and thought his days on this earth were few.  Accordingly, to “cleanse his soul,” he confessed to a murder he committed over 30 years ago.

However, his estimate on his remaining days was wrong.  Instead of dying, he recovered and had to figure out what to do.  He and his wife sold everything they owned and fled.  But, later he surrendered to police and may now face the death penalty.

The “back story” is this — he was arrested for killing a man in 1977 in Tennesee.  He thought that the man (Jimmy Carroll), his neighbor, was trying to seduce Dorothy, his wife.   He jumped bail and fled to Oklahoma where he and Dorothy began a new life which appears to have been a good one.

See Kunal Dutta, Stroke victim’s ‘deathbed’ confession to 32-year-old murder proves premature, Independent World, March 24, 2009.