texas

Y’all are killing an innocent man’: Last words of ‘mentally ill’ Texas death row inmate executed for killing 12-year-old girl

October 11, 2012 http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Last Minute Appeal Denied For Texas Death Row Inmate

An inmate on death row used his last breath to protest his innocence of the murder of a 12-year-old girl as he was executed in Texas last night despite his legal team arguing he was mentally ill.

Jonathan Green, 44, was jailed for the abduction, rape and strangling of Christina Neal, 12, whose body was found at his home a month after she was reported missing in 2000.

Several last ditch appeals were made on the basis of his mental health in an attempt to save him from the death penalty but Green was given a lethal injection after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the arguments to spare him.

Too mentally ill: Attorneys argued that Jonathan Green should be spared execution for the murder of 12 year old Christina Leann Neal

The 11th-hour appeals delayed the punishment nearly five hours past the initial 6pm execution time and as the midnight expiration of the death warrant neared.

Asked by the warden if he had a statement from the death chamber gurney, Green shook his head and replied: ‘No’

But seconds later he changed his mind, adding: ‘I’m an innocent man. I never killed anyone. Y’all are killing an innocent man.’

He then looked down at his left arm where one of the needles carrying the lethal drug was inserted, and said: ‘I’ts me hurting bad.’

But almost immediately he began snoring loudly. The sounds stopped after about six breaths.

Green was pronounced dead 18 minutes later at 10.45pm.

 

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TEXAS – Green gets stay 2 days before execution EXECUTED 10:45 p.m

October 9, 2012 http://www.news-journal.com/

Two days before his scheduled execution, a Montgomery man on Texas’ Death Row for the 2000 abduction, rape and strangulation murder of a 12-year-old Dobbin girl received a stay because he wasn’t given due process to prove he is mentally incompetent for execution, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Judge Nancy Atlas, in the Southern District of Texas, ruled that Jonathan Marcus Green, 44, who was convicted in 2002 for the murder of Christina LeAnn Neal, did not receive a fair opportunity to demonstrate that he is incompetent, “and thus the State of Texas denied him due process.”

But the Texas Attorney General’s Office plans to file a motion today asking the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate the stay.

Green is schizophrenic and “is not malingering,” said his appellate attorney, James Rytting.

“He is mentally ill … and he’s only gotten worse after being stuck in administrative segregation,” Rytting said.

In her written opinion, Atlas notes that 221st state District Court Judge Lisa Michalk, who denied Green a stay two days before he was to be executed on June 30, 2010, applied incorrect legal standards by seeking to determine if there was a change in Green’s mental capacity since his imprisonment in 2002.

“The correct question was whether Green was presently competent, regardless of his comparative mental capacity between 2002 and 2010,” Atlas wrote.

Green understood that he was convicted of killing Christina and was to be executed for that crime, the basis for Michalk’s finding that he understood why he was being executed, Atlas wrote.

But Green believed he was to be executed as a result of “spiritual warfare” between demons and God, Atlas found, and Michalk prevented Green from presenting relevant evidence, denied Green due process.

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TEXAS – Convicted Cop Killer in Texas Exhausts Appeals – Anthony Cardell Haynes STAYED

October 5, 2012 http://www.courthousenews.com

Houston, Texas (CN) – A convicted cop killer who faces the death penalty for the 1998 murder of an off-duty police officer cannot have his appeal reopened and his Oct. 18 execution will move forward, a federal judge ruled. Anthony Cardell Haynes shot and killed Sgt. Kent Kinkaid following a night of crime where he committed a string of armed robberies before spotting the off-duty officer and firing at him.
A Harris county jury convicted Haynes in 1999 of capital murder and sentenced him to death. After failing to find relief in both state and federal courts for more than a decade, including a 456-page federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed in 2005, Haynes petitioned the court to reopen his federal habeas action citing an ineffective trial counsel. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake rejected that petition Wednesday and denied him a certificate of appealability.
Haynes claimed relief under the recent Supreme Court decision Martinez v. Ryan, which concluded that a deficient performance by a state habeas attorney may amount to some cause, but Lake said that decision does not apply to cases arising from Texas courts.
Lake also said even if it did apply, Haynes failed to show extraordinary circumstances under the law.
“Because the Martinez decision is simply a change in decisional law and is not the kind of extraordinary circumstance that warrants relief under Rule 60 (b) (6), Haynes‘ motion is without merit. Additional, the applicability of Martinez to Texas’s post-conviction process does not change the fact that the court has already adjudicated Haynes‘ Strickland claim. Haynes asks the court ‘to exercise its authority and grant him relief from its prior judgment…and grant federal review of this claim …'”
“The court has already reviewed the merits of Haynes‘ Strickland claim in the alternative and found it to be without merit.”
Lake also noted that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals observed, on direct appeal, that Haynes confessed “to knowingly murdering a police officer after a violent crime spree.”
“Haynes admitted that he shot Sergeant Kincaid because he was a police officer and, showing no remorse, bragged to friends that he had killed a police officer. Haynes also told people that he should have killed Nancy Kincaid, so that there would have been no witness to the murder.”
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Haynes will be the 10th death row inmate to be executed this year, in the country’s most active death penalty state.

KENTUCKY death row inmate being sent to New Mexico

september 26, 2012

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky death row inmate is set to be extradited to New Mexico to face murder charges in the 1991 slaying of a paramedic prosecutors say he kidnapped and shot and left to die remote desert area.

Kerri Richardson, a spokeswoman for Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, told The Associated Press that a governor’s warrant has been signed for 55-year-old Michael Dale St. Clair. The inmate is scheduled for trial on Jan. 22 in Clayton, N.M., on charges he killed 22-year-old Timothy Keeling, of Denver.

Dennis Gene Reese, who is serving life in prison in Oklahoma, is also charged with participating in Keeling’s slaying.

Donald Gallegos, the district attorney in Clayton who is prosecuting the men, said St. Clair and Reese should be in New Mexico by next week. Gallegos said no decision has been made on whether to seek the death penalty.

“I wanted to wait to get them here before I decided that,” Gallegos said. “I still need to talk to the victim’s family, too.”

Kentucky Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Lamb cited security concerns in declining to comment on the extradition of St. Clair, who is on death row for killing a Bardstown man in October 1991.

Tim Keeling‘s widow, Lisa Keeling Hill of Waxahachie, Texas, has pushed to have St. Clair and Reese prosecuted for the slaying.

Dennis Gene Reese, who is serving life in prison in Oklahoma, is also charged with participating in Keeling’s slaying.

Donald Gallegos, the district attorney in Clayton who is prosecuting the men, said St. Clair and Reese should be in New Mexico by next week. Gallegos said no decision has been made on whether to seek the death penalty.

“I wanted to wait to get them here before I decided that,” Gallegos said. “I still need to talk to the victim’s family, too.”

Kentucky Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Lamb cited security concerns in declining to comment on the extradition of St. Clair, who is on death row for killing a Bardstown man in October 1991.

Tim Keeling‘s widow, Lisa Keeling Hill of Waxahachie, Texas, has pushed to have St. Clair and Reese prosecuted for the slaying.

“St. Clair has never really had to answer for Tim’s death,” Hill told The Associated Press.

Retired New Mexico State Police Detective Toby Dolan, who investigated Keeling’s death, said the pending extradition of St. Clair and Reese is a relief. Dolan, the second officer to arrive at the scene, said he’s kept copies of crime scene photos and reports with him since retiring more than a year and a half ago after 21 years with state police.

“You kind of have that hollow feeling for that poor guy … who was murdered for no reason out in the middle of nowhere,” Dolan said. “It’s just one of those things that stuck with me all these years.

Reese and St. Clair had broken out of the county jail in Durant, Okla., on Sept. 19, 1991. At the time, St. Clair was serving four life sentences for murder and Reese was awaiting trial on charges of strangling and beating a woman to death.

What happened after the breakout is detailed in court testimony, documents and interviews with St. Clair and Reese. The pair went on a cross-country spree that led them through Texas and on to Denver, where they came across Keeling outside a grocery store.

St. Clair and Reese posed as buyers interested in purchasing Keeling’s truck, then kidnapped him. Reese drove as Keeling sat next to him and St. Clair held a .357 magnum revolver in the passenger seat. They stopped near Clayton, N.M., a small crossroads town, where prosecutors say St. Clair ordered Keeling out of the truck and shot him.

The run ended a few weeks later in Kentucky, where police charged them with kidnapping and killing distillery worker Frank Brady near Elizabethtown after they ditched and burned Keeling’s truck.

In an interview with The Associated Press in June, Reese acknowledged his role in Keeling’s death and said he plans to plead guilty. St. Clair, in letters to The AP, has remained defiant in his denials and doesn’t expect to live long enough to face execution in either state.

“Mother Nature has first mortgage on my death,” St. Clair said in a 2011 letter.

What happened after the breakout is detailed in court testimony, documents and interviews with St. Clair and Reese. The pair went on a cross-country spree that led them through Texas and on to Denver, where they came across Keeling outside a grocery store.

St. Clair and Reese posed as buyers interested in purchasing Keeling’s truck, then kidnapped him. Reese drove as Keeling sat next to him and St. Clair held a .357 magnum revolver in the passenger seat. They stopped near Clayton, N.M., a small crossroads town, where prosecutors say St. Clair ordered Keeling out of the truck and shot him.

The run ended a few weeks later in Kentucky, where police charged them with kidnapping and killing distillery worker Frank Brady near Elizabethtown after they ditched and burned Keeling’s truck.

In an interview with The Associated Press in June, Reese acknowledged his role in Keeling’s death and said he plans to plead guilty. St. Clair, in letters to The AP, has remained defiant in his denials and doesn’t expect to live long enough to face execution in either state.

“Mother Nature has first mortgage on my death,” St. Clair said in a 2011 letter.

Incompetency to Be Executed: Continuing Ethical Challenges & Time for a Change in Texas

September 26, 2012 

Brian D. Shannon


Texas Tech University School of Law

Victor R. Scarano


University of Houston – Health Law & Policy Institute

2012

Texas Tech Law Review, Vol. 45, 2013 
Abstract: 
This Article focuses on a small, but unique group of death row inmates who have largely exhausted their post-conviction procedural rights and have a date set for execution, but while awaiting execution have become incompetent to be executed because of serious mental illness. The United States Supreme Court has determined that it is unconstitutional to execute an individual who is mentally incompetent. The Court has not, however, ruled as to whether it is constitutionally permissible for a state to order a death row inmate to be medicated forcibly for the purpose of restoring that inmate’s competency to allow an execution to proceed. This Article discusses the scope of the serious ethical concerns related to this very challenging scenario, and reviews state and lower federal court decisions that have considered the issue, as well as United States Supreme Court opinions that have considered other, related medication issues concerning offenders with mental disorders. In particular, however, the Article offers and discuss a possible legislative solution that the Texas Legislature could enact that would avoid the thorny ethical and legal issues that are at stake in such cases.

 

Number of Pages in PDF File: 32 download here 

JEL Classification: K19

Death Row Unlikely to Be Source for Organ Donations

http://www.texastribune.org

Before Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon established a moratorium on his state’s death penalty last year, Christian Longo, a death row inmate, started a campaign to allow the condemned to donate their organs.

Longo argued that a new execution protocol that many states — including Texas — have adopted leaves inmates’ organs viable for transplantation.

“While I can potentially help in saving one life with a kidney donation now, one preplanned execution can additionally save from 6 to 10 more lives,” Longo wrote in a plea that Oregon officials denied.

No state allows death row inmates to donate their organs. Although Texas recently abandoneda three-drug cocktail in favor of a single-drug method for execution, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said it did not intend to change its policy. There are 11,000 Texans on the organ transplant waiting list.

Criminal justice and medical experts say that the idea of recovering organs from willing convicted murderers is fraught with moral, ethical and medical challenges that make it unlikely to ever be an option.

“It’s complicated in ways that are very messy and very fuzzy,” said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

The Criminal Justice Department allows offenders in the general prison population to donate organs, such as kidneys, while they are alive in certain cases and after death if they complete a donor form.

The prospect of death row organ donation, though, prompts several questions, said Dr. David Orentlicher, a co-director of the Hall Center for Law and Health at Indiana University’s Robert H. McKinney School of Law. Is an inmate giving free and informed consent, or is he hoping to win favorable treatment? Would a donation affect jurors in murder cases who are weighing the death penalty versus life sentences? Or prosecutors deciding whether to seek the death penalty? Or governors deciding whether to grant clemency?

There is also the possibility that allowing death row organ donation could lead jurors to issue more death sentences, Orentlicher said.

For prospective recipients, there are emotional and mental considerations, he added.

“People might say, ‘Gosh, I’m walking around with the organ of a murderer,’” he said. “It may be irrational, but I suspect that’s lurking there.”

The condemned have a high risk of carrying diseases like hepatitis and HIV And conditions in the death chamber are not conducive to organ recovery, said Mike Rosson, regional director of the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance. To keep organs viable, they must have oxygen after the brain dies, which means the donor must be on a ventilator, and surgery must be done quickly.

“You don’t have the facility for recovery, and you have transplant surgeons whose oath is to do no harm,” Rosson said. “The situation is just ethically challenging.”

Even if all the moral, ethical and medical questions could be adequately addressed, he said, the yield of usable organs from death row inmates is likely to be small.

“I think there are avenues other than prisoners that the effort expended toward trying to increase donation would be better spent,” Rosson said.

TEXAS – Death row inmate contests the drug – Preston Hughes

September 25, 2012 http://www.chron.com

Preston Hughes, who has been on death row for 23 years for fatally stabbing a teenage girl and a toddler, is suing the state of Texas over the drug it plans to use to execute him in November, claiming officials are “experimenting” on him and other inmates.

Hughes, 46, is arguing that prison officials, facing a shortage of drugs for the three drug “cocktail” formerly used for lethal injection, did no medical testing before changing the protocol to using a single drug, according to court records.

“They are experimenting on death row inmates because there’s never been any kind of medical review, that we know about, that this is a humane way to carry out their legal function,” said Pat McCann, one of Hughes’ attorneys. “I’m not saying they can’t execute people. I’m saying they ought to give it more thought than the time it takes to play a round of golf.”

Officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice declined to comment on the pending lawsuit, but said agency officials examined the execution procedures in other states before changing the procedure.

“The one drug protocol has been adopted by several states and has been upheld as constitutional by the courts,” spokesman Jason Clark said in a statement.

Single, lethal dose

The execution protocol was changed from a three-drug sequence to a single, lethal dose of pentobarbital in July because TDCJ’s stock of the second drug expired and it couldn’t get more.

Anti-death penalty groups have for years been pressuring drug companies, especially in Europe, to stop making or selling drugs used in executions.

Since July, three Texas inmates have been executed using one drug.

No testing

The new procedure, McCann said, was put in to effect without any tests.

“They changed the cocktail, fairly dramatically, because they could get it on sale and stockpile it,” McCann said. “But they’re not doctors and they’re not entitled to experiment on my client.”

He said TDCJ did not seek out opinions from any professional in the medical, psychiatric, or psychological fields about whether the new drug would be “cruel and unusual punishment.”

‘Some merit’

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the lawsuit should be litigated, but is unlikely to stop any executions.

“There is some merit to the claim that it is experimenting,” Dieter said. “In the medical field, you would want experts weighing in on what the best protocol would be.”

However, he said, the standard to get a stay of execution is a high hurdle.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has said you have to show a substantial risk of serious pain, not just allege there may be problems,” Dieter said. “There is some merit to the claim, but it’s an ethical claim. Legally, it may have some trouble.”

Hughes is scheduled to be executed Nov. 15 for fatally stabbing a teenage girl and a 3-year-old boy in September 1988.

Girl was raped

Hughes, then 22, was convicted of killing La Shandra Rena Charles, 15, and her cousin, Marcell Lee Taylor, 3, on a dirt trail behind a restaurant in the 2400 block of South Kirkwood.

A medical examiner testified Charles had been raped. Before she died from a stab wound in her throat, Charles was able to tell a police officer that “Preston” did it to her.

When Hughes was arrested, he was on probation for raping a 13-year-old girl in 1985.

TEXAS – EXECUTION – CLEVE FOSTER 6.p.m. Fourth Execution Date EXECUTED 6:43 p.m.

Foster expressed love to his family and to God.

“When I close my eyes, I’ll be with the father,” he said. “God is everything. He’s my life. Tonight I’ll be with him.”

Foster also addressed the family members of the victims, saying, “I don’t know what you’re going to be feeling tonight. I pray we’ll all meet in heaven.”

September 25, 2012 

cleve foster execution

Cleve Foster has been hours away from execution on death row in Texas only to win a reprieve at the last minute, two times in just the past year and a half.

Whether or not you support the death penalty, Cleve Foster’s case is one that really seems to foreground the practice’s brutality. Twice Foster has been moments away from being put to death, and twice, he has been spared and placed back on death row as the slow wheels of justice grind in his execution.

Supreme Court refuses 4th stay for Texas execution

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Here are five cases of death row prisoners who have been judicially killed over the past year

september 21, 2012 

Each representing a different flaw in the application of capital punishment in America today:

Manuel Valle

Executed: 28 September 2011, aged 61

Flaw: Cruelty of prolonged stay on death row

The case: Valle, a Cuban national who was convicted of murdering a police officer in 1978, spent 33 years on death row. During that time he was held largely in solitary confinement – conditions that it has been argued amount to cruel and unusual punishment that should be banned under the eighth amendment of the US constitution.

The US supreme court judge, Justice Breyer, voted for a stay of execution for Valle but was outnumbered by his colleagues. Breyer wrote a minority judgment in which he said: “I have little doubt about the cruelty of so long a period of incarceration under sentence of death.”

Christopher Johnson

Executed: 20 October 2011, aged 38

Flaw: “Volunteer”

The case: Johnson was one of the few prisoners who are executed every year as “volunteers” – that is they choose to die and waive all rights to appeal or clemency. That may sound like their right to do so, but the problem is that academic studies have found that about 80% of the volunteers show signs of serious mental illness.

Johnson was no exception. His childhood was troubled with psychotic episodes and in prison he tried several times to kill himself. Yet his desire to be executed for having murdered in 2005 his six-month-old son was still taken by the justice system to be a sane expression of choice, and not as some experts decried a form of judicially approved suicide.

Edwin Turner

Executed: 8 February 2012, aged 38

Flaw: Mental illness

The case: You could tell that Turner had a history of mental illness just by looking at him – his face was terribly disfigured from a rifle bullet after he tried to shoot himself aged 18. His family also had a history of suicide attempts and hospitalisations for mental illness that ran through both his parents and his grandmother and great-grandmother.

There is no law in the US preventing executions for those who are mentally ill. Unless it can be proved they were insane at the moment they committed the crime, they are not exempt from the gurney.

Despite clear evidence that Turner was ill, he was put to death for fatally shooting a clerk in 1995 during a robbery.

Marvin Wilson

Executed: 7 August 2012, aged 54

Flaw: Mental “retardation”

The case: Wilson was diagnosed as having learning difficulties – a condition still referred to by the US courts as “retardation”. He was recorded with an IQ score of 61, putting him in the lowest percentile of the population.

The US supreme court banned executions for people with learning difficulties in 2002. None the less, Wilson was still put to death for the 1992 murder of a police drug informant because his state, Texas, applies its own definition of “retardation” based on the character of Lennie Small in John Steinbeck’s 1937 novel Of Mice and Men.

Daniel Cook

Execution: 8 August 2012, aged 51

Flaw: Childhood abuse

The case: Cook was executed for the horrendous strangulation murdersof two men, one aged 16, in 1987. Though there was no doubt about the heinousness of his crimes, his lawyers argued that Cook suffered such appalling abuse as a child that he should have been shown clemency in commuting his sentence to life in prison.

He was abused from infancy into his teenage years, including rape by his mother, step-father, foster parents, grandparents and the manager of a group home where he was resident. Expert witnesses testified at his appeal that he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the abuse, leaving him prone to wild mood swings that could have been a factor behind the murders he committed.

TEXAS – Court rejects death sentence appeal in 1998 road rage killings of two truckers – DOUGLAS FELDMAN

September 20, 2012 http://fleetowner.com

READ THE OPINION : http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/11/11-70013-CV0.wpd.pdf

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected an appeal to get Douglas Feldman, 54, off death row for the road rage slayings of two truck drivers in 1998 in Texas.

Feldman, a former financial analyst, was convicted in 1999 of murder in the shooting deaths of truckers Nicholas Velasquez, 62, of Irving, TX, and Robert Everett, 36, of Marshfield, MO.

In his 1999 trial, Feldman told jurors he was cruising on his Harley-Davidson on southbound Dallas Central Expressway in August 1998 when a truck “came out of nowhere, just flying.” He said he feared for his life and became angry, according to a report in The Dallas Morning News.

Feldman testified that he fired at Everett’s truck “because I felt like I needed to try to stop that man.” When the truck continued on the highway, “I chased Mr. Everett down, and I shot him to death.”

Feldman said he then spotted Velasquez at a gas station and “exploded again in anger” and shot him, even though Velasquez had done nothing to him. He then shot another man in a restaurant parking lot, who survived.

“I felt emotionally compelled,” Feldman told jurors. “I was consumed by anger.”

In his trial, Feldman testified that he carried a 9mm handgun because he thought his life was in danger. His lawyers presented evidence showing that he had been treated earlier for substance abuse and paranoia.

The jury in the trial took only 24 minutes to convict Feldman of capital murder in the case. He was sentenced to death, but an execution date has yet to be set.

In his appeal, Feldman contended that he had deficient legal help at his trial, that the jury received improper instructions and that a prospective juror was improperly dismissed.

Feldman’s lawyer said he plans to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.