Man who wanted death penalty hangs self in prison

JACKSON - A mentally ill man who asked to be put to death for the 1996 slaying of a husband and wife killed himself on Georgia&#39;s death row, prison officials said Monday. <br> <br> Daniel Colwell, 41, was found dead in his cell Sunday night in Jackson. Prison officials determined he committed suicide by hanging himself. <br> <br> Colwell was on suicide watch last year, but was no longer on it, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Scheree Lipscomb said. <br> <br> Colwell, a former Americus High School football star, said he had bought a gun to kill himself with and, when he was unable to commit suicide, decided to go on a killing spree that would get him the death penalty. <br> <br> Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and manic depression, Colwell drove to a Wal-Mart parking lot in Americus and gunned down Mitchell and Judith Bell of Ellaville, according to court testimony. He then drove to the police department, confessed and asked that he be put to death in Georgia&#39;s electric chair. <br> <br> At his 1998 trial, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death. <br> <br> Colwell was not the first suicide on Georgia&#39;s death row. In 1989, John Everett Castell, sentenced to die for killing a Stephens County tax official, hanged himself in his cell with shoelaces.

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