By Stephanie Taylor Staff Writer
Published: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 3:30 a.m.
A Linden woman pleaded guilty to killing her boyfriend outside the Footwash festival in Hale County nearly three years ago.
Connie Johnson, 57, shot Claude Lee Lloyd, 52, after the festival on Sept. 20, 2007.
Michael Jackson, the district attorney for Hale County, said the pair had set up a booth at the festival, which was held off County Road 26, and were arguing over the money they had made that day.
“She said that ‘she was tired of his s---’ and she shot him,” Jackson said.
Johnson pleaded guilty to intentional murder on Monday. Hale County Circuit Court Judge Marvin Wiggins sentenced her to 25 years and one day in prison. Jackson said she would be eligible for parole after serving 15 years, when she is 72.
Johnson walked up to Lloyd, who was sitting in his Ford Explorer, and shot him in the neck with a pistol. She was arrested by a Marengo County deputy later that day and charged with capital murder. She pleaded to the lesser charge and avoided a possible death sentence, which she could have received if a jury had found her guilty.
Johnson claimed that she and Lloyd struggled over the gun, Jackson said, but investigators with the Hale County Sheriff’s Office determined that Lloyd was not armed at the time.
“We’re going to keep sending these gunslingers to prison,” he said.
The Footwash festival is a tradition that began in the rural county in the late 1800s. According to research by University of Alabama students studying black culture, the festival was started by the Fairhope Benevolent Society, which was formed in Faunsdale in 1888 to improve conditions for burying the dead.
Life insurance wasn’t widely available to blacks, and burial costs could wipe out a family’s assets.
Members paid 10 cents a month and the money was used to purchase caskets, aid the sick and pay for burials.
Money left at the end of the year was used to finance the annual Footwash festival, held around the fourth Sunday in September. The meetings included sermons from ministers and were held in a one-room building, according to a UA website. No actual foot washings took place at these gatherings.
The event was called Footwash because participants had to wash their feet when they returned home from the rural area.
Reach Stephanie Taylor at
stephanie.taylor@tuscaloosa
news.com or 205-722-0210.
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