Eric Nance

The execution was briefly stayed on November 17 by United States federal judge James Moody of the Eastern District of Arkansas. The stay was vacated by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on November 19.

On November 17, 2005, the Arkansas Parole Board recommended, with a vote of 6-1, that Governor Mike Huckabee deny clemency for Nance. The dissenting vote was from one member who wanted to stay the execution to give more time to determine if Nance was mentally retarded.

Nance ordered a final meal of two bacon cheeseburgers, french fries, two pints of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, and two Coca-Colas. Nance made no last statement. Given a lethal injection, he was pronounced dead at 9:24 p.m. CST. It was the first execution by the state of Arkansas since Charles Laverne Singleton on January 6, 2004.

In 1995, Nance began a decade-long correspondence with James Nelson, an Irish tenor who is critical of the death penalty. Through their friendship, Nelson realized "that Eric's only means of escape from [his] hell's purgatory was through his letters, his memories and his dreams." With fellow Celtic Tenors Niall Morris and Matthew Gilsenan, Nelson set a poem of Nance's to music and entitled it, "Eric's Song". After Nance's execution, the Celtic Tenors released the song on their album, Remember Me.

Nance was found guilty of capital felony murder, with attempted rape as the underlying felony. During the sentencing phase of the trial, it was revealed that five months before the murder, Nance had been released from a twenty-year sentence for beating two Oklahoma girls in 1982. The jury found that there were no mitigating circumstances in the case, and recommended that the judge sentence Nance to death, which he did on March 31, 1994.

On October 11, 1993, 18-year-old Julie Heath (June 11, 1975 - October 11, 1993) was driving on U.S. Highway 270 between Malvern and Hot Springs, Arkansas, to visit her boyfriend in Hot Springs. Nance stated that he stopped to help Heath after her car broke down and offered her a ride to Malvern. The prosecution said that Nance then raped and murdered her. He was later seen in a convenience store wearing no shoes, socks, or shirt. According to the clerk, there appeared to be fresh dark, damp stains on his overalls.

Heath's body was found on October 18, 1993, by a hunter. Her throat had been cut. Photographs of the scene show that she was fully clothed, but her belt buckle was partially undone, her pants zipper was not fully up, and the left shoulder of her shirt was torn. The shirt was also on inside out. The medical examiner also reported that her socks and panties were on inside out and her bra was pulled up around the neck and shoulder area. A pubic hair located in Nance's pickup was said by an expert to be microscopically identical to that of Heath.

Eric Randall Nance (January 9, 1960 – November 28, 2005) was an American man who was convicted of murder in the state of Arkansas. While on death row, the former heating and air conditioning technician obtained his high school equivalency certificate and penned multiple poems, one of which was set to music and recorded by the Celtic Tenors. Nance was executed in 2005, twelve years after the crime.