On the eve of the state’s 482nd execution since reinstatement of the death penalty, a federal court on April 24 issued a stay for Beunka Adams, who was slated to be executed tonight. Adams was convicted of the robbery and murder of Kenneth Wayne Vandever in 2002. Adams and co-defendant Richard Cobb were convicted of robbing a Rusk convenience store and then kidnapping Vandever and two female clerks. The pair then reportedly drove the three to a field, sexually assaulted one of the women and shot all three; the women survived, but Vandever did not. Adams has lamented his involvement in the robbery – “Due to financial burdans [sic], confusion, and drug abuse … I ended up getting into something I deeply regret,” he wrote in 2004 – but has also written online that he was not the triggerman. Adams alleges that although Cobb confessed to shooting the trio, that information was suppressed during his trial. Both men were given the death penalty. Cobb is still on death row. A federal judge in Texarkana stayed Adams’ execution reportedly in order to give the court an opportunity to consider whether Adams received ineffective assistance of counsel during the early stages of his appeal.
Also scheduled to die, on May 2, is Anthony Bartee, even though advocates say further DNA testing is needed in his case. Bartee was slated to be executed earlier this year, but he was given a reprieve so that never-before-tested DNA evidence could be analyzed. He was sentenced to die for the 1996 murder in San Antonio of his friend David Cook. According to the state, Bartee shot the 37-year-old in the head and neck and then fled the scene on Cook’s motorcycle. Reportedly Bartee has maintained his innocence; he was with Cook at the time of the crime but was not the doer. His previous date with death was cancelled so that hairs found clutched in Cook’s hand could be tested; now, however, the Texas Coalition To Abolish the Death Penalty reports that although that testing is not yet completed, state District Judge Mary Román has issued a new death warrant for next week.
The British Government has said it is doing all it can the save the life of a British grandmother who has spent 11 years on Death Row in the United States.
Linda Carty, 53, could receive a date for her execution at any moment after her final attempts to secure a new appeal failed.
She would become the first British woman to be executed in 50 years.
She was convicted of killing a young mother in Texas a decade ago but has always said she was framed.
Her lawyers believe she was failed by the American legal system and admit her situation is “desperate”.
Carty spoke to Sky News on Death Row in Texas and told us: “I am 110% innocent. I know I didn’t commit this crime. They took 11 years of my life for something I know I didn’t do.”
She was born on the Caribbean island of St Kitts before its independence from Britain and now wants support from the UK.
“If you don’t then you’re telling me there’s no value to my life and if you do intercede it is saying that every British national, it doesn’t matter whether we were born in the mother country or in the colonies, we matter,” Carty said.
“We are British. I can’t wash off my nationality with soap and water. I am going to always be British.”
Ms Carty said she feels sympathy for the family of victim Joana Rodriguez.
“She was somebody’s child too, somebody’s daughter. For me it’s not only a healing process but its to show the families that the person you’ve been hating all these years did not commit this crime,” she said.
Ms Carty is being represented by the campaign group Reprieve.
Director Clive Stafford-Smith said her best chance of avoiding the death penalty was clemency.
The Foreign Office said it is putting pressure on the authorities in Texas.
“The Prime Minister and British Government are deeply concerned by the position Ms Carty is in,” it said in a statement.
“We are committed to using all appropriate influence to prevent the execution of any British national.
“We are working closely with Ms Carty’s legal team to ensure their work to secure clemency is supported by appropriate political representations.”
Since her conviction, Ms Carty has been held at the Mountain View unit in Gatesville where all of the women on death row in Texas are held.
She admitted she fears her death sentence.
“I won’t get up and ask the British Government to go out in the public and lobby for me had I known that I am guilty because then it would be an embarrassment not only to myself and my family but also the country that I love.
“So for me when I say I am innocent and that I didn’t commit this crime I mean that.”
:: Meanwhile, the Connecticut Senate has voted to repeal the state’s death penalty, moving it one step closer to becoming the fifth US state in five years to abandon capital punishment. The measure now moves to the House of Representatives.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is refusing to disclose the size of its stock of a key pharmaceutical used in executions, saying doing so would endanger its drug makers and suppliers.
The charge comes in a brief filed with the Texas Attorney General’s Office in response to a December query by an British newspaper concerning the contents of state’s death house medicine chest. The agency said releasing such information would provide ammunition for Reprieve, a British anti-death penalty group that successfully has pressured drug makers to stop selling to executioners.
Likening Reprieve’s campaigns to those of violent prison gangs, the brief written by TDCJ Assistant General Counsel Patricia Fleming asserts that releasing information “creates a substantial risk of physical harm to our supplier. … It is not a question of if, but when, Reprieve’s unrestrained harassment will escalate into violence…”
TDCJ is seeking authorization not to answer questions posed in a December public information request by Ed Pilkington, the New York correspondent for The Guardian, a national British newspaper. An attorney general’s response is expected this month.
Pilkington sought to determine how much pentobarbital, one of three drugs used in executions, the death house had in stock. He also asked how the agency met requirements that a second “back up” dose of lethal drugs be available at executions.
“I was very surprised by the language they chose to use, which was pretty inflammatory, really,” Pilkington said. “Obviously, there is an international disagreement over the death penalty. … Usually that discourse is conducted in a civilized manner.”
He called the claim that the prison system’s drug suppliers were in jeopardy, “pretty far-fetched.”
‘Public interest’
Joseph Larsen, a lawyer for the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said Pilkington’s questions go to the “heart of how effectively TDCJ performs its official functions.”
“The whole idea behind the Texas Public Information Act is that the governmental bodies do not get to control the information that underlies political discussion,” he said. “Specifically, the governmental body does not even get to ask why a requestor wants certain information. How then can a governmental body base its argument for withholding on what use it anticipates will be made of the information if released?”
In a 2008 case, the Attorney General’s Office sided with TDCJ in denying Forbes magazine the names of companies that supplied execution drugs, noting that “releasing the names of the companies would place the employees of those companies in imminent threat of physical danger.”
Drug’s maker pressed
An appeals court rejected that ruling the following year.
Pentobarbital was added to the state’s lethal cocktail in May 2011, replacing sodium thiopental after that drug’s maker stopped production, in part because of Reprieve’s anti-drug agitation.
Reprieve followed by directing international pressure on Lundbeck, pentobarbital’s Danish maker, obtaining a July 2011 agreement that the company no longer would sell to prisons in death penalty states. The production plant later was sold, but the new owner abided by the agreement.
Reprieve also targeted a pharmaceutical company that had supplied sodium thiopental to Arizona. On its website, Reprieve posted photos of the supplier’s office along with its tax returns and the name, phone number and address of its owner.
Dr. George Denkowski conducted psychological exams for 14 current death row inmates. 1) Anthony Pierce 2) Virgilio Maldonado 3) Calvin Hunter 4) Roosevelt Smith Jr. 5) John Matamoros 6) Derrick Charles 7) Kim Ly Lim 8) Coy Wesbrook 9) Joel Escobedo 10) Jamie McCoskey 11) Warren Rivers 12) Tomas Gallo 13) Steven Butler 14) Alfred Brown
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals today ordered a Harris County criminal court to re-evaluate whether death row inmate CoyWayne Wesbrook is intellectually competent enough to face execution for the murders he was convicted of in 1998.
Wesbrook was sentenced to death for the 1997 fatal shootings of his ex-wife and three men. He appealed his death sentence, raising claims that he was mentally retarded. His claims were denied in 2007 after Dr. George Denkowski testified as an expert for the state in his case.
The state’s highest court has ordered similar reviews in at least two other death penalty cases involving Denkowksi, who was reprimanded last year for his work. (See story below.)
(12/15/2011) — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday ordered lower courts to review two death penalty cases that involved a psychologist who was reprimanded earlier this year for using questionable methods to determine whether defendants were intellectually competent enough to face capital punishment.
“What we’re seeing is a growing awareness on the part of the Court of Criminal Appeals for scientific integrity in criminal cases,” said Kathryn Kase, interim executive director of the Texas Defender Services, which represents death row inmates. “The evidence of retardation in both of these cases is pretty compelling.”
The state’s highest criminal court sent the cases of Steven Butler and John Matamoros back to Harris County courts to re-evaluate the evidence used to sentence the two men to death. Dr. George Denkowski examined both of the men and told the juries they did not suffer from mental retardation.
In April of this year, the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists (TSBEP), issued a reprimand against Denkowksi, whose methods were widely criticized. Denkowksi agreed not to conduct intellectual disability evaluations in future criminal cases and to pay a fine of $5,500. In return, the board dismissed the complaints against him. The psychologist admitted no wrongdoing and defended his practice. But defense lawyers were hopeful that the reprimand would prompt the courts to review other cases where juries relied on Denkowski’s evaluations to hand down death sentences.
Denkowski evaluated 14 inmates who are now on Texas’ death row — and two others who were subsequently executed — and found them intellectually competent enough to face the death penalty.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that states cannot execute mentally handicapped people. The court, though, left it to the states to create guidelines for determining whether a person is mentally handicapped. Texas courts have generally adopted a three-part definition that requires the convicted inmate to have below average intellectual function, lack adaptive behavior skills and to have had those problems from a young age.
Prosecutors regularly relied on Denkowski to perform psychological evaluations to determine whether a murder suspect would be eligible for execution. But in 2009, other psychologists and defense lawyers complained to the TSBEP that Denkowski used unscientific methods that artificially inflated intelligence scores to make defendants eligible for the death penalty.
In his 2006 evaluation of Steven Butler, who was convicted in the shooting death of a store clerk, Denkowski rejected other IQ test scores that indicated Butler was well below average intelligence. He discounted behavioral evaluations from Butler’s family and friends, who said that Butler couldn’t understand the rules of basketball, had to have others read menus for him and that he had failed basic classes.
The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Butler’s execution pending the outcome of the complaint against Denkowksi. And on Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said it was acting on its own initiative to remand the case to the trial court in Harris County and “allow it the opportunity to re-evaluate its initial findings, conclusions, and recommendation in light of the Denkowski Settlement Agreement.”
The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals had also stayed the execution of Matamoros, who was convicted in 1992 of stabbing to death a 70-year-old Houston man. As in the Butler case, the criminal appeals court said it was taking initiative to send the case back for re-evaluation based on the psychologist’s reprimand.
Kase said she hoped the court would also order re-evaluation of the other death penalty cases in which Denkowski examined the defendants.
“Exonerations, I think, have caused the court to become concerned about the integrity of forensic evidence,” she said. “That’s really, really important here, where the decision about whether someone has retardation is a matter of life and death.”
Like so many before him, Texas death row inmateRobert Gene Will II says he’s not guilty. Given the state of Texas’ record in seeing its death sentences carried out, the odds on getting the right people to believe him are not great.
But there have been exceptions. Will insists that if he can get a fair hearing, he will be another one. He admits he was no saint in his younger days, that he ran with a bad crowd, and yes, that he and a buddy were breaking into a car on the morning of Dec. 4, 2000, when a spotlight suddenly caught them in its glare. Within moments his life changed forever, and Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Barrett Hill lost his.
Will claims he did not shoot Hill. He has claimed as much since the day of his arrest. He could not have done it, he says, because his hands literally were tied behind his back.
“I am COMPLETELY INNOCENT,” Will wrote on a website dedicated to securing his freedom, “and I am sure anyone who takes the time to look into my case will come to that same conclusion.”
Perhaps not. Those convicting of killing law enforcement officers are even less likely than most of death row’s 288 residents to find sympathy. So it was bound to draw notice when U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison recently showed legal solidarity even as he denied Will’s latest appeal. Ellison said legal limitations – technicalities, if you will – precluded him from siding with Will.
“Questions as to Will’s possible innocence do remain,” Ellison wrote in a March 19 order granting Will the right to appeal to a higher court. “Unfortunately, the court is powerless to address the merits of additional claims raised post-judgment, unsettling though they are.”
Judge suggests review
In a separate opinion two months earlier, issued after a hearing at which Will was allowed to introduce evidence, Ellison reiterated his frustration at not being able to help, and he went further. Although he also denied Will’s motion, the judge made clear that Will’s case should get a broader review. He called one of the original trial judge’s rulings an “error of grave proportion” and said that the presence of rows of uniformed law enforcement officers in the courtroom “would have likely justified post-trial relief had the issue risen on direct appeal.”
“The questions raised during post-judgment factual development about Will’s actual innocence create disturbing uncertainties …,” Ellison wrote in a Jan. 17 memorandum. “On top of the considerable evidence supporting Will’s innocence and the important errors in the trial court, there must also be addressed the total absence of eyewitness testimony or strongly probative forensic evidence. With facts such as these, and only circumstantial evidence supporting Will’s conviction and death sentence, the court laments the strict limitations placed upon it.”
Questions abound
Will, 33, admits that he and Michael Rosario were burglarizing a car when Hill came across them. They ran, but Will was apprehended. He claimed that he was handcuffed when Rosario showed up and shot the deputy. Prosecutors contended that Will shot the deputy and admitted as much to a motorist he encountered during a later carjacking as he was trying to escape. Will’s lawyers argue that the motorist did not mention that in any of her early statements to police.
Will’s lawyers also have argued that Rosario, the son of a Houston police officer who was not charged in the murder, has admitted killing Hill to at least five individuals. They also point to an absence of any forensic evidence connecting Will to the shooting, and to a bullet graze on the back of a jacket Will wore that morning – consistent with a shot being fired by Rosario toward Hill when the latter was close by and in custody. Hill’s weapon was not fired.
Justices’ ruling a factor
Ellison’s sympathetic language after reviewing the case was the first good news Will’s legal team has had in a long time. But even better news arrived on March 20 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that simple fairness, if not the Constitution, requires that the lawyers who handle the early appeals of a capital murder conviction do so competently.
In a 7-2 decision in Martinez v. Ryan, the high court ruled those convicted of a crime can in some instances challenge the effectiveness of those hired for so-called habeas corpus appeals at the state level. It is unclear, experts said, whether such a challenge is limited to the very narrow circumstances raised by that Arizona case, or whether it can be applied to all manner of misconduct that results in a defendant being unable to raise an issue in future appeals, such as missing a deadline or failing to file certain claims.
“I think it is arguable that Martinez covers the latter scenario and will be argued by defense counsel that way, but the opinion as written is pretty restrictive,” said Brad Levenson, head of the State Office of Capital Writs, a public defender’s office for appeals in capital murder cases that was established in 2010 in part because of concern over the consistence of legal representation. “I think only time will tell how far Martinez can be interpreted.”
If the decision turns out the be less restrictive than the specifics of the Martinez case, the ruling could be significant. Critics of the decision, including dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia, raise fears that it will prolong death row appeals and be a burden to states. Defense lawyers who specialize in capital cases say it could be a great boon to those who have drawn the black bean of a lousy appeals lawyer.
Ex-lawyer defends work
Will’s former state habeas lawyer, Leslie Ribnik, filed a 28-page legal brief on Will’s behalf, the first 20 pages of which were the same — word for word, typo for typo — as the one he filed in the case of Angel Maturino Resendiz, the notorious “railroad killer” whose serial murders led to his conviction and ultimate execution in 2006.
Ribnik admitted making mistakes in Resendiz’s appeal and missed deadlines, which resulted in the default of some claims. Ribnik later removed himself from the appellate lawyer list and acknowledged he suffered from Parkinson’s disease and likely was feeling the effects even as he was preparing Will’s appeal.
Nevertheless, Ribnik has previously insisted he did an adequate job on Will’s appeal.
“I will own up to my screw-ups — I’ll take my lumps,” Ribnik told the Austin American-Statesman in 2006. “As for Will, I think I did a good job on that one.”
Will’s later appeals lawyers disagreed, pointing out that Ribnik did not investigate the statements from individuals about Rosario’s alleged statements about the shooting, or investigate anything.
“The damage was real,” Will’s lawyer, Samy Khalil, said of Ribnik.
Ellison seemed inclined to agree. If Will’s appeal is again placed before him, he may be able to do something.
“It seems that Judge Ellison could hear the claim now,” Levenson said. “And from what I know, it could be a substantial claim.”
A year ago, facing a possible shortage of key drugs needed to keep the nation’s busiest execution chamber in business, Texas prisonofficials appear to have purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of the lethal drugs, new disclosures by state officials reveal.
While no detail is provided, records obtained by the American-Statesman hint that Texas could have enough of the drugs on hand to cover its executions for more than a year and perhaps the largest stockpile in the country — at a time when other states are scrambling to find suppliers for the same drugs.
The disclosure came this week, when the Texas Department of Criminal Justicefiled paperwork seeking to keep secret all details of five purchases last May and June of “medical supplies” from Physician Sales & Service Inc.
Asked by the Statesman to make public details about those purchases made with taxpayer dollars, as the agency routinely does with other items it buys, prison officials appealed to Attorney General Greg Abbott to keep the information from public view.
“The requested copies of vouchers, invoices, purchase orders and other purchasing documents will reveal the identities of suppliers of the agency’s lethal injection drugs,” Patricia Fleming, an assistant general counsel for the prison system, wrote in a letter Tuesday to Abbott.
Although Fleming’s letter seems to state that the purchases were lethal drugs, a spokesman for the prison agency disputed that.
“We’ve not identified what the medical supplies are listed on the invoices,” prison spokesman Jason Clark said.
In seeking to keep the information secret, Fleming wrote that disclosure would allow death penalty opponents and others “to intimidate, harass and threaten the suppliers, forcing them to shut down production or blacklist correctional departments.”
She also accused an “abolitionist coalition” including death penalty opponents, human-rights organizations, criminal defense attorneys and the media of engaging in a campaign to cut off the supply of execution drugs.
At least twice recently, drugmakers facing pressure from death penalty opponents stopped selling one of the three drugs used in lethal injections in the United States — or stopped making it altogether, the letter says.
According to public state purchasing records, the prison agency on May 4 paid for $22,928.76 worth of “medical supplies” from Physician Sales & Service.
The following day, the agency paid for three additional purchases totaling $24,839 from the same firm — for 39 vials of the execution drug Nembutal, according to a copy of the invoice for that purchase. The American-Statesman obtained a copy of that invoice from a complaint filed last year by attorneys for two death row inmates who asked the Texas Department of Public Safety to investigate the purchase.
On June 1, the agency paid for another $1,910.73 in “medical supplies” from the company, according to the records, which list no detail.
The nearly $50,000 in purchases are a tiny fraction of the agency’s $3 billion budget and comparable to the $19,000 a year it costs taxpayers to incarcerate a prisoner. And while the price of execution drugs has increased 15-fold over the past year, death penalty supporters and crime victims groups say the cost is well worth it to ensure public safety.
The purchases could presumably include other commonly used medical items such as syringes, gloves, saline solution and other items used in executions — although such items are unlikely to cost tens of thousands of dollars. Furthermore, the agency did not disclose redacted versions of the invoices — as most agencies, including the prison system, usually do in responding to public records requests when they want to keep some details secret.
State records reviewed by the American-Statesman show the purchases during 2011 were the only ones the agency has made in recent years from Physician Sales & Service, at a Houston address.
The company, headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., did not return calls for comment. On its website, it bills itself as “the country’s largest supplier of medical products to physician practices.”
The prison system buys its execution drugs directly, not through its separate medical providers as other states have done, documents previously made public have shown.
Regardless of how much stock the agency has on hand, Clark said “the agency has no plans to sell drugs to other states” — as some other states have done.
Texas, America’s most prolific practitioner of the death penalty, has launched an extraordinary attack on the international anti-death penalty charity Reprieve, accusing it of intimidating and harassing drug companies and likening the group to violent prison gangs responsible for the eruption of prison riots.
The attack comes from the Texas department of criminal justice, TDCJ, which each year carries out the lion’s share of executions in America. In a letter to the attorney general of Texas, Greg Abbott, the TDCJ accuses Reprieve of “intimidation and commercial harassment” of manufacturers of medical drugs used in lethal injections.
In astonishingly vivid language, the TDCJ says that Reprieve, which is headquartered in London, “crosses the line from social activists dedicated to their cause to authoritarian ideologues who menace and harass private citizens who decline to submit to Reprieve’s opinion on the morality of capital punishment by lethal injection”.
Reprieve’s tactics present the risk, the Texas prison service claims, of violence. “It is not a question of if but when Reprieve’s unrestrained harassment will escalate into violence against a supplier.”
In the most colourful accusation, the TDCJ compares the human rights organisation to gangs operating in Texas prisons. It writes that Reprieve’s methods “present classic, hallmark practices comparable to practices by gangs incarcerated in the TDCJ who intimidate and coerce rival gang members and which have erupted into prison riots”.
The Texas letter takes the war of words between US states still practising executions and anti-death penalty campaigners to a new level. Reprieve has long had fraught relations with states practising capital punishment in the US, but never before has it been accused of fomenting violence.
Maya Foa, Reprieve’s specialist campaigner on lethal injection, said the accusation was absurd. “Pharmaceutical manufacturers have been objecting to the use of medicines in executions since the lethal injection was invented – Reprieve didn’t create these ethical scruples! And far from harassing them, Reprieve defends these companies and their ideals and we have excellent relationships with them.
“Medicines are made to improve and save lives, not to end them in executions. This principle is at the core of the pharmaceutical profession, and companies have long objected to the misuse of their products by US departments of corrections.”
Texas makes its assault on Reprieve in a 15-page brief that it composed in response to a request for information from the Guardian relating to the quanitity of anaesthetic that the prison service had left in its supplies. The pool of anaesthetic – the first drug used in a cocktail of three chemicals that makes up the lethal injection – has been running low as a result of s boycotts in Europe and other countries.
In its brief, the TDCJ makes a case for withholding the information requested by the Guardian on security grounds. It says that to release information on drug stocks would help Reprieve identify the source of the medicines and that in turn would create “a substantial risk of physical harm to the supplier”.
As supporting evidence, the TDCJ cites the example of Lundbeck, a Danish drug company that is one of the world’s leading producers of the anaesthetic pentobarbital, trademarked as Nembutal. Last summer the firm placed strict restrictions on the distribution of Nembutal to prevent it being used in executions in the US.
Texas claims that Lundbeck imposed the restriction in response to intimidation by Reprieve. “Lundbeck acquiesced to Reprieve’s unrestrained harassment and agreed to deny orders from prisons located in those states active in carrying out death penalty sentences,” the brief says.
But Lundbeck has told the Guardian that its move to impose restrictions on the end use of Nembutal had nothing to do with Reprieve. “We acted because we are a company that wants to help save people’s lives and we are against the misuse of our drugs in prisons. We took our stance long before we were contacted by Reprieve.”
In a gesture that makes a mockery of the claim of intimidation, Lundbeck this week has signed a Hippocratic oath that pledges its commitment to advance the health of the public and avoid inflicting any harm. The oath was drawn up by Reprieve as part of its campaign to block the use of medical drugs in executions.
Texas is the powerhouse of the death penalty in America. Since executions began in the modern era in 1976, the state has put to death 480 people – four times more than the next most plorific practitioner, Virginia, with 109.
Last year, it executed 13 prisoners, again far more than any other state.
The enthusiasm of Texas for judicial killings became an issue in the presidential race last September when its governor, Rick Perry, told a cheering TV audience at a Republican nomination debate that he never lost sleep over the thought that some of the 240 people who have been executed on his watch may have been innocent.
Beunka Adams is 29 years old today and is awaiting his execution at the Polunsky Unit, Livingston,Texas.
He has three children that he loves deeply.
Beunka Adams spends his days writing poetry or letters to his friend, creating artwork, working out and reading.
Beunka Adams also published a poetry book, named Delirium – A mind at death row.
In the beginning of October 2011 Beunka Adams’ final appeal was rejected by the US Supreme Court, even though there are obvious flaws in Mr. Adams’ legal procedure, doubts about the fairness of his trial and also doubts about what really happened that unfortunate day of a robbery back in 2002 in Rusk, Texas, USA.
Beunka Adams has repeatedly expressed his deepest regrets for taking part in the robbery. Mr. Adams is the father of three children and a healthy young man that can be a great asset to society in the future.
Resume of the events:
Richard Cobb and Beunka Adams robbed a store and took three hostages, two women and one man. They drove the hostages to a field where one woman and one man were shot. The man tragically died from his injuries. The women survived.
Beunka Adams has never denied his involvement in the robbery which led to the murder of a man by his accomplice.
The crime: Beunka Adams tells his story
It was an extremely transitional point in my life (more than I knew) at the time when thismost unfortunate incident occurred. Not long before I had been kicked out of Job Corps and lost every stitch of clothing I owned. I had reunited with my children’s mother after a
little over a month separation and was preparing what would have been our third homesince I was 14 or 15 years old. I was out of work and in the coming two weeks were my step-son and my daughters birthdays… (I tell you this not to trivialize the events that
followed but to show you what motivated me to involve myself in this situation.)So when my friend/co-defendant showed up while I was working on the house and asked me to help him rob a store – I agreed.
It was not planned but I didn’t assume there would be any real physical violence. I didnot even carry my own gun. I was suppose to just follow his lead and be a pair of eyes, but shit went bad from the moment we entered the store and it became obvious my friend had
not planned anything out. He mostly stopped talking and nearly froze at the register.It was noticed there was a customer in the store and my friend whispered that one of the cashiers was his neighbor and he believed she recognized him…At that point I knew we were caught and really my only concern was getting the money where it needed to be. My friend was not talking and I had no idea what to do, so it was decided to take everyone from the store to buy some time to think. Now this is when some of the first lies start to occur. At trial one of the victims said she told me: “I know you, don’t I?” and I said: “yes” and took of my mask. This is not exactly true. She said: “I know you, don’t I? Your girlfriend used to work at Brookshines.”. At the time I had long hair and realized she was mistaken me for a friend of mine, but we did know each other and well, so to calm the situation a bit I took off my mask. The other girlknew my co-defendant so we where caught anyway. I was not known to hurt people for no reason, Nicky and Kenneth knew that.
If you read the transcripts it is said that there was laughter and conversation in the car though Nicky contends she was laughing to keep herself from crying. “Fast forward time” we wound up in an open field outside town. I really did not know what to do next because my friend was not really talking to me and acting weird. First idea was to put all three into the trunk and leave the car in a parking lot to be found in a few hours but all three of them would not fit. Two got in and I along with Nicky left walking (with no weapon). Now it has never been revealed what we spoke about by her nor me and I will not do so in this missive… We wound up having sex. I admit when I later gave a statement I conceded to rape but it was because I knew Nicky was engaged to be married and she would say that and if I did not, those officers would not believe one word that came out my mouth! I will be more than willing to take a lie detector test on the fact I never threatened or forced her to have sex with me, that or any other facts I present.
The others were let back out and it was decided they would take off in one direction and we would go the other. I stopped them because the direction they were headed led deep into the woods and they’d never come to a house, road or anything. It is decided they stay put. I turned and started walking towards the car assuming my friend was doing the same but after a few steps I heard the first blast!
HUNTSVILLE (April 23, 2012)—Death row inmate Beunka Adams, 29, who was scheduled to receive a lethal injection this week for killing an East Texas man after robbing a convenience store, won a reprieve Monday from a federal judge.
april 13, 2012
Petitioner:
Beunka Adams
Respondent:
Rick Thaler, Director TDCJ-CID
Case Number:
5:2012cv00036
Filed:
April 13, 2012
Court:
Texas Eastern District Court
Office:
Texarkana Office
County:
Cherokee
Nature of Suit:
P. Petitions – Death Penalty
Cause:
28:2254
Jurisdiction:
Federal Question
Jury Demanded By:
None
december 2010, source: various
Beunka Adams is imprisoned on the Polunsky Unit of Texas death row for a crime that another man confessed to committing. He was convicted and sentenced to death at the age of 21. Beunka was involved in a robbery in which store employee, Kenneth Vandever, was shot and killed.
Beunka’s co-defendant, Richard Cobb, admitted to the killing in his trial. This information was suppressed at Beunka’s trial. His jury were told that he was the gunman and he was given the death penalty.
Beunka does not deny his guilt in participating in the robbery and he suffers huge remorse for what happened that night, but he is not a murderer and does not deserve to die for his crime!
His supporters say; “Beunka is indigent – he has no money to pay for a defence and his state-appointed defence attorney is overworked and unable to help him. We need to raise $150,000 to pay for a private lawyer and investigator to help save Beunka’s life”.
In 2007 Beunka’s attorney at appeal, Stephen Evans, presented ten points of error in his client’s criminal case. The court voted 9 to 0 that the objections held no merit. The court affirmed both the trial court’s judgment and the sentence of death.
Evidence presented in the court hearings alledged that on the night of the murder the men entered BDJ’s convenience store wearing masks and demanding money. One of them was armed with a shotgun.
Prosecutors say that after taking the money from the cash register it was said that they demanded the keys to a Cadillac parked outside. Two women employees of the store and Kenneth Vandever were forced the three into the car. After arriving at the secluded field, one female and Mr. Vandever were told to get into the trunk of the car. The prosecution says that the other female was taken away and sexually assaulted. Both women were wounded.
A supporter of Beunka Adams said; “criminals are punished in the name of justice. This sense of justice seems to have abandoned the scene of capital punishment. Even in the USA people who committed murder as a minor are put on death row, those without money cannot afford decent legal aid which almost immediately condemns them, and prisoners spend years and years on death row sometimes getting their execution postponed several times.
“People on death row go through years of isolation and uncertainty. This is when justice becomes torture”.
An East Texas man condemned for a fatal shooting during an abduction and robbery at a convenience store lost an appeal Wednesday at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Richard Aaron Cobb was 18 when he was arrested along with a companion for the slaying of Kenneth Vandever in 2004. Vandever and two women were abducted from a store in Rusk. The three were taken to a field about 10 miles away near Alto, where one of the women was raped and all three were shot with a 20-gauge shotgun.
Vandever, 37, died of his injuries but the two women survived and testified against Cobb and his partner, Beunka Adams.
Both Cobb and Adams were convicted and sentenced to die. Records showed Cobb was on probation at the time for auto theft.
Vandever was described as mentally challenged after injuries in an auto accident left him with the mental capacity of a child.
Cobb’s conviction and sentence were upheld in January by the Court of Criminal Appeals. A subsequent appeal reviewed by the Austin-based court was rejected Wednesday.
The brief five-paragraph ruling from the appeals court upheld the recommendation of the trial court in Cherokee County, where a judge denied Cobb any legal relief after an evidentiary hearing.
Testimony showed Cobb fired the shot that killed Vandever, who frequented the store and would do things like take out the trash. Adams, then 20, was accused of shooting the two women who worked at the store. Adams’ conviction and sentence were affirmed by the court in June.
The men left the scene after believing the two women were dead, but the women were able to get up and run to houses nearby to get help. Adams and Cobb were arrested a few hours later in Jacksonville, about 25 miles to the north.
Both men still have appeals to pursue in the federal courts, and neither has an execution date.
Defense lawyers had argued at his trial that Cobb suffered abuse as a child and from fetal alcohol syndrome, the result of his mother drinking liquor while she was pregnant with him. Prosecutors presented witnesses who testified Cobb was able to tell the difference between right and wrong.
Executions in Texas, the nation’s most active death penalty state, and other states with capital punishment are on hold pending the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court review of lethal injection procedures. Arguments in that case, initiated by two death row inmates in Kentucky, are set for early next year and a decision is expected before summer.
No. 11-9359
Beunka Adams v. Texas
from the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas
Docket Entries
on March 13, 2012
Petition for a writ of certiorari and motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis filed. (Response due April 18, 2012)
Death row inmate Jesse Joe Hernandez, set to be executed next week for the 2001 death of a 10-month-old boy in Dallas, is hoping that a ruling Tuesday from the U.S. Supreme Court could give him another chance to prove that the tragedy was not entirely his fault.
The nation’s highest court ruled that the failure of initial state habeas lawyers to argue that their client’s trial counsel was ineffective should not prevent the defendant from making that argument later on. Lawyers across the country, including those for at least two Texas death row inmates, were eagerly awaiting the court’s ruling in the Martinez v. Ryancase out of Arizona, which could expand appeals access for inmates.
“A procedural default will not bar a federal habeas court from hearing those claims if, in the initial-review collateral proceeding, there was no counsel or counsel in the proceeding was ineffective,” the court majority held.
Habeas lawyers investigate issues that could or should have been raised during a defendant’s original trial.
Brad Levenson, director of the Texas Office of Capital Writs, filed a petition with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday afternoon on behalf of Hernandez,arguing that his March 28 execution should be stayed, in part, because of the court’s ruling.
Although the ruling applies to federal courts, Levenson said, Texas’ highest criminal court should take its cue from the nation’s highest court and hear Hernandez’s claims.
Hernandez was convicted in 2002 for the death of a child who lived in the home where he lived at the time. Hernandez admitted he hit the child, who was rushed to the hospital, where he was put into a medically induced coma and then died after he was removed from life support.
In a writ filed Tuesday with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Hernandez argues that his actions did not directly cause the child’s death. Instead, an expert who recently reviewed the medical records concluded that the hospital gave the child a lethal dose of the drug pentobarbital and that he was pulled from life support too soon.
“There’s no way to tell at end of day whether he would have survived,” Levenson said. “Our expert said there’s a very real probability the child could have lived.”
Levenson said Hernandez’s trial lawyers and his initial appeals lawyers were ineffective because they failed to do further investigation and hire their own experts to find out why the child died. Levenson, who took the case only three weeks ago, hired a doctor who reviewed the medical records and determined that the little boy had not been diagnosed as brain-dead before he was removed from life support and that he was given toxic doses of pentobarbital.
“It’s not to say that Mr. Hernandez is not guilty of a crime, but he’s not guilty of capital murder,” Levenson said.
Current law, though, could prohibit Hernandez from arguing that because his original trial lawyers were ineffective by not further investigating the cause of death that he should get a new trial. Those kinds of claims must be raised from the beginning of the appeals process to be valid later on. And Hernandez’s previous habeas lawyers did not argue that he was inadequately represented.
Levenson said that even though Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling applies to claims made in federal court — not state writs like the one he filed — the same principle ought to apply.
“We’re saying the state courts should also take a look at these claims for the same reason the Supreme Court would take a look at them,” he said.
The ruling could also be a boon for death row inmateRob Will, who was convicted in 2002 of fatally shooting a Harris County sheriff’s deputy. Will says that the man he was with that night was the real shooter and that he is innocent.
In January, U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison denied Will’s pleas for a new trial but wrote that he lamented doing so because of “disturbing uncertainties” raised about his guilt.
Will is hoping the court’s ruling in Martinez will allow him to argue that he should get a new trial because both his trial lawyer and his state-appointed habeas lawyer were ineffective when they failed to track down several witnesses who have testified that the other man confessed to the killing.
CASE UPDATE: We had some success with the filing to the Court and been granted a Certificate of Appealability, which means we have something to work with going forward to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Thank you all for your Solidarity and Support for Rob. He is so appreciative!
Dr. George Denkowski conducted psychological exams for 14 current death row inmates. 1) Anthony Pierce 2) Virgilio Maldonado 3) Calvin Hunter 4) Roosevelt Smith Jr. 5) John Matamoros 6) Derrick Charles 7) Kim Ly Lim 8) Coy Wesbrook 9) Joel Escobedo 10) Jamie McCoskey 11) Warren Rivers 12) Tomas Gallo 13) Steven Butler 14) Alfred Brown
Claim your Innocence 