Eric Nance Case: Julie Heath’s Murder, Trial, and Execution

Eric Randall Nance was an Arkansas man executed by lethal injection on November 28, 2005, for the 1993 capital murder and attempted rape of 18-year-old Julie Heath, whom he encountered along a highway after her car broke down. He had been out of an Oklahoma prison for only five months, having served 20 years for raping two girls, when he killed Heath. He was the last person put to death in Arkansas until the state resumed executions in April 2017.

The Killing of Julie Heath

On the evening of October 11, 1993, Julie Heath left Malvern, Arkansas, in her black Camaro to visit her boyfriend in Hot Springs. She was a recent Malvern High School graduate and former cheerleader who worked two jobs and wanted to become a law enforcement officer.¹ Her car overheated on U.S. Highway 270.

Nance, driving his pickup from Hot Springs back toward Malvern, stopped and offered her a ride. Around 12:30 a.m. on October 12, he was seen at a convenience store shoeless, sockless, and without a shirt, wearing overalls with fresh, dark, damp stains.² A week later, on October 18, a hunter found Heath’s body in a wooded area off Wild Hog Road, roughly seven and a half miles from her abandoned car. Her throat had been slashed with a box cutter.

Nance admitted to his brother and sister that he killed her, but his accounts of how it happened changed over time.³ At trial his defense was that Heath grew hysterical after seeing his box cutter, kicked at him, and the blade lodged accidentally in her throat. Years later, during federal habeas proceedings, he gave a court-appointed psychologist a different story: that he and Heath had been in a sexual relationship, that he had heard a rumor she was HIV-positive, and that he broke her neck in a rage when he confronted her.⁴

The Evidence Against Him

Heath’s body was fully clothed but the clothing was in significant disarray. Her shirt and panties were inside out, her bra was pulled up around her neck and shoulder, her shirt was torn near the shoulder, her belt was partly undone, and her zipper was partly open.⁴ Prosecutors argued the state of the clothing pointed to an attempted rape before the killing.

Inside Nance’s truck, investigators found red pubic hairs an expert testified were microscopically similar to samples from Heath. DNA analysis matched blood on the truck’s seat and on Heath’s shirt to her. Criminalist Donald E. Smith testified that hair and blood in the truck belonged to Heath, and that hairs on her clothing belonged to Nance.² He was arrested on October 20, 1993. Before the arrest he had told people he was afraid someone would make up a story linking him to Heath’s disappearance.³

His Prior Convictions in Oklahoma

Nance was born on January 9, 1960, and had worked as a heating and air conditioning technician. He also had a violent record. In 1982 he was convicted on six felony counts for the rape and beating of two girls in Oklahoma. He served a 20-year sentence for those crimes and had been out of prison for only about five months when he killed Julie Heath.⁴ The State later used those six felony convictions as aggravating evidence at his penalty phase.⁵

Trial and Death Sentence

Nance was tried in Hot Spring County, Arkansas, on a charge of capital felony murder with attempted rape as the underlying felony. The prosecution’s case was largely circumstantial: the forensic evidence from the truck, the condition of Heath’s clothing, and witnesses who had seen Nance stained and half-dressed at the convenience store.

The defense called Nance’s brother Vernon and his sister Belinda Christopher to convey his story that the stabbing was accidental. Counsel also argued that a sanitary napkin in Heath’s panties and the way her clothing sat were inconsistent with attempted rape. In mitigation, Nance’s mother, employer, and minister testified, and counsel offered his confession to police as evidence of remorse.⁵

On March 31, 1994, the jury convicted Nance of capital felony murder, found two statutory aggravating circumstances, and concluded those outweighed the mitigation. It recommended death, and the trial court imposed that sentence.³

The Appeals

The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence in 1996 in Nance v. State, 918 S.W.2d 114, rejecting all ten grounds Nance raised, including a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence. The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari.⁶

Nance then sought state post-conviction relief under Arkansas Rule 37, arguing his trial lawyer had been ineffective at both phases of the trial. The trial court denied the petition without a hearing, and the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed in 1999.⁵

Nance filed a federal habeas petition on September 13, 2000, arguing the evidence of attempted rape was insufficient, that his counsel was constitutionally ineffective, and that a report by court-appointed psychologist Dr. Bradley Diner containing his HIV-rumor account amounted to new evidence excusing procedural default. The district court denied the petition on January 22, 2003, and the Eighth Circuit affirmed on December 10, 2004. The Diner report was not new evidence, the appellate court held, because the information in it had been available to Nance all along; the court also noted that if his HIV story had been presented at trial, jurors would have been faced with four conflicting accounts and the prosecution’s case for premeditated murder would likely have been strengthened.⁵

After the Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia barred the execution of intellectually disabled people, Nance’s lawyers moved to file a successive habeas petition on that ground. The Eighth Circuit denied the motion, finding he had not met the statutory requirements. The state pointed out that Nance had tested above the threshold for intellectual disability, had held a job, and had earned a high school equivalency diploma in prison.⁷

Clemency and Execution

The Arkansas Parole Board voted 6-1 on November 15, 2005, to recommend that Governor Mike Huckabee deny Nance’s clemency request.⁸ Huckabee refused clemency on November 28, the day of the execution, saying he had given the petition “prayerful consideration” and a “thorough review.”⁹

The execution was set for 8:00 p.m. but delayed roughly 90 minutes while U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reviewed four last-minute appeals, among them the intellectual-disability claim and a request for DNA testing of the hair found in Nance’s truck. The Court denied all four and vacated the stays. The lethal injection was administered at 9:24 p.m. at the Cummins Unit in Lincoln County, and the Lincoln County coroner pronounced Nance dead at 9:30 p.m. Asked by Department of Correction Director Larry Norris whether he wanted to make a final statement, Nance stayed silent. Witnesses described him as “stone silent” during the procedure, noting only a slight quiver of his lip.³

Four of Julie Heath’s relatives watched by closed-circuit television. Her cousin Johnie Hood said afterward, “This was not easy for us. We do feel for his mother and family. I just pray that Julie rests in peace now. What he went through tonight was painless compared to what he put Julie through.” Another cousin, Belinda Crites, said, “He couldn’t even say he was sorry.” Nance’s spiritual adviser, Robert Rankin, who had spent most of the day with him, said after the pronouncement, “May God have mercy on our souls.”³

What Happened to Julie Heath’s Mother

During the penalty phase, Julie Heath’s mother, Nancy Heath, testified she was under constant medical care and weekly psychological therapy and was taking numerous medications. “Mr. Nance took my only daughter,” she told the jury. “My life will never be the same again.”⁵

She never recovered. Family members repeatedly found her wearing Julie’s clothes, her hair dyed red, lying beside her daughter’s tombstone. She made multiple suicide attempts and took her own life on Christmas Day, roughly a year after the murder. She was 38. Relatives blamed Nance for her death too.¹

1
AY Magazine. Murder Mystery: Opposite Directions
2
CaseMine. Nance v. State
3
Clark County Prosecuting Attorney. Eric Randall Nance
4
FindLaw. Nance v. Norris
5
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Nance v. Norris, No. 03-2018
6
FindLaw. Nance v. State
7
Justia. Nance v. Norris, 429 F.3d 809
8
KAIT8. Arkansas Parole Board Recommends Execution Go Forward
9
CBS News. Arkansas Man Executed