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Larry Blackmon says it's counterproductive to stay mad at the man on death row for murdering his brother.
"I don't really have any feelings one way or the other to be honest with you," Blackmon said. "I was angry in the beginning, but years have gone by and I'm just not going to stay mad about it."
Blackmon also didn't have a reaction Friday when he heard his brother's killer, Troy Kell, 43, got married in a ceremony at the Utah State Prison.
Kell, who in 1994 stabbed to death Lonnie Blackmon at the prison in Gunnison, stood on one side of a glass partition Thursday afternoon with guards while his bride, a justice of the peace and two witnesses stood on the other, said Utah Department of Corrections spokesman Steve Gehrke.
"At all times they were separated by that glass partition," Gehrke said.
Kell wore his orange inmate jumpsuit with his feet shackled but his hands free, Gehrke said. The couple have never been allowed physical contact, Gehrke said, and physical contact will not be allowed despite the marriage.
Corrections is not identifying the bride, and Gehrke said he did not know how the couple met. Gehrke said courts have held that prisons cannot prohibit inmates from marrying.
Kell was convicted in Nevada for the 1986 murder of a Canadian tourist in Las Vegas. He was sentenced to two life sentences and sent to Utah as part of an inmate exchange.
On July 6, 1994, at the Gunnison prison, another inmate held down Lonnie Blackmon while Kell stabbed him 67 times with a shank. Lonnie Blackmon, 32, was serving a sentence for robbery and theft.
A Sanpete County jury in 1996 convicted Kell of capital murder and sentenced him to die.
In a telephone interview from his home in Arkansas, Larry Blackmon, 55, said he does not want Kell executed and is opposed to capital punishment.
"I don't think it's effective," Larry Blackmon said. "I don't think it works. If it worked, we still wouldn't have people doing murders and rapes."
However, Larry Blackmon said, his 72-year-old father wants the execution to proceed and to be in the audience when Kell is executed.
Killer remainson death row
Troy Kell's appeals are continuing. There is no date for his execution. Because he committed the murder in a prison, Kell is segregated even from the other death-row inmates. He is allowed two 90-minute visits per month, but they must be held in a partitioned visitation room.