David Paul Hammer

David Paul Hammer (born October 9, 1958) is an American murderer. He has been recently transferred from the federal death row at Terre Haute prison, Indiana to United States Penitentiary, Canaan. He was sentenced to death on November 4, 1998 for the murder of his cell mate, Andrew Marti. Hammer has achieved media fame for his appeals against his sentence and against the death penalty itself.

Hammer himself described his childhood as being full of ‘poverty, abuse, and many other of society's ills’. He is the oldest of three children. He attended 21 different schools as a child, dropping out of high school. As a child, he suffered verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. At 13 he ran away from home for several weeks before being returned. Two years later, Hammer lived on the street, with drug abuse problems. At age 16 he married, though was subsequently divorced.

Hammer was first imprisoned at the age of 19. With the exception of two brief escapes during the 1980s, he served 21 of the first 41 years of his life incarcerated for a multitude of offenses, including larceny, shooting with intent to kill, kidnapping and telephoning in a bomb threat. In all, he is serving 1232 years for his 11 convictions.

Hammer was first placed into the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in December 1993. He was transferred from the custody of the State of Oklahoma, where he was serving a state prison sentence in the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for over 1,200 years for crimes committed in that state. Hammer received the BOP ID# 24507-077.

In April, 1996, in the Special Housing Unit in the U.S. Penitentiary, Allenwood, Hammer strangled his cellmate, 27-year-old Andrew Hunt Marti (Federal Bureau of Prisons# 58008-065) to death using a piece of homemade cord. Writing on a website dedicated to his case in 2001, Hammer could not ‘attribute any motive’ to his actions.

Hammer was sentenced to death by lethal injection on November 4, 1998, in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, having pleaded guilty to the murder. His execution date was set at January 14, 1999 at 10:00 A.M. Initially, Hammer was resigned to his fate, and encouragement to fight his conviction did not motivate him. He waived his right to appeal during his trial, then proceeded to appeal three weeks later, then followed by dismissing his own appeal a further three months later.

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