Yet another death row inmate in Texas may in fact not be guilty of the crime that put him there. Robert Gene Will was convicted in the 2000 slaying of Deputy Sheriff Barrett Hill in Harris County, Texas. Will and another man, Michael Rosario, were caught trying to break into a car in December 2000. Both men fled, but Will says he was apprehended and placed in handcuffs by police. That’s when someone shot Deputy Sheriff Hill.
Will says that the shooter couldn’t have been him, on account of his hands literally being tied behind his back. And his lawyers argue that Rosario, the accomplice in the attempted car burglary, has admitted to at least five people that he was the one who pulled the trigger that morning. And now, Will’s case is attracting even more attention after a U.S District Judge voiced his own reservations about the initial conviction and the appeal that was conducted. TheHouston Chronicle reports:
“The questions raised during post-judgment factual development about Will’s actual innocence create disturbing uncertainties …,” [Judge Keith] 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.”
Judge Ellison was limited in his ability to hear new evidence before making a decision on whether to grant an appeal to Will, and despite his expressed dismay over the lower court’s verdict, was forced to deny the appeal on a technicality. But Will and his defense attorneys still have avenues open to them, including a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows for convicted criminals to, in some cases, challenge the competency of their state-assigned appeals lawyers. For Will, whose appointed attorney filed a legal brief that copied extensively from one he filed previously for a completely different case, the Supreme Court decision offers a ray of hope.
Texas has a well-earned reputation for unsympathetic governors who are undeterred at overseeing more executions than any other state in the country. Current Gov. Rick Perry presided over 235 executions during his time in office, by far the most of any governor in the modern era. This despite several questionableconvictions that call into question the use of the death penalty at all.
my own opinion
Perry is more of a murderer than anyone who’s death warrant he has signed. Innocent isn’t in Perry’s vocabulary, Perry loves the smell of burning flesh in the morning. What’s going wrong with him ? what’s going wrong with this state ? Maybe Perry may need psychotherapy, an event in his childhood of the trauma to become a man who happens to sleep at night knowing that he killed people and especially innocent people. I think sometimes the most dangerous people are not those caught, but those who elected to lead.
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 couple of Fridays ago, Kerry Max Cook, who was released from Texas’ death row in 1997 after two decades, went to pick up his 11-year-old son, Kerry Justice, from his North Dallas school. Class was just letting out. As Mr. Cook approached a group of children and their parents, a little girl squirmed out of her mother’s arms and ran toward him. “Mr. Kerry!” she called. He laughed as she jumped into his arms. “Haleigh!” he shouted, and began tickling her. “She adores Mr. Kerry,” her mother said.
The same jolly scene followed Mr. Cook as he walked around the small campus — children calling out to him, laughing, jumping into his arms. Vicki Johnston, the school’s director, looked on, smiling. “Kerry’s such a big part of the school,” she said. “He’s like a pied piper to the kids.” Asked about his past, Ms. Johnston simply said: “We know him. We know what kind of man he is.”
Unfortunately for Mr. Cook, 15 years after his release, the State of Texas still does not share Ms. Johnston’s view. Though he is widely recognized as one of the country’s most famous exonerated prisoners, Mr. Cook is not legally exonerated. In fact, in the eyes of the state, he is still a killer — convicted of the 1977 rape and murder of Linda Jo Edwards.
Mr. Cook’s situation is complex. His death sentence was twice overturned by higher courts, and DNA taken from the victim’s underwear did not match his own, and the evidence used to convict him has been shown to be entirely fallacious — but because Mr. Cook pleaded no-contest to the murder on the eve of what would have been his fourth trial, he cannot be declared actually not guilty.
Nevertheless, Mr. Cook has become a high-profile spokesman for the wrongfully imprisoned. He has published a book about his experience and has been one of the subjects of a popular Off Broadway play, “The Exonerated,” which was later made into a film. He has given speeches all over the United States and Europe. His Facebook page contains pictures of Mr. Cook with actors like Robin Williams, Richard Dreyfuss and Ben Stiller, who have been drawn to his story.
Yet Mr. Cook lives in the shadows with his wife and their son, knowing that whenever he applies for a job or gets on an international flight, he will be identified as a convicted murderer. Now he hopes to change that, with two motions filed recently in Smith County, where the case was originally heard, that could finally clear his name.
Mr. Cook has always claimed to be innocent of the murder of Ms. Edwards, a woman who lived in the same Tyler apartment complex. The case against him was largely circumstantial, including the words of a jailhouse informant who said that Mr. Cook had confessed to him and the recollections of a man who said that on the night of the murder, he and Mr. Cook had had sex and watched a movie that involved a cat torture scene.
The prosecution’s theory was that Mr. Cook, aroused by the torture scene in the movie, had left his apartment to rape and kill Ms. Edwards.
In the years after, every piece of evidence used to convict Mr. Cook was revealed to be bogus. The informant admitted he had lied as part of a deal with prosecutors, and the witness who claimed to have had sex with Mr. Cook told a grand jury that there was no sex and that Mr. Cook had not paid any attention to the movie. The prosecution had also suppressed evidence showing that Mr. Cook and Ms. Edwards had known each other casually, which explained a fingerprint found at the scene.
Mr. Cook’s verdict was overturned on a technicality in 1988. When District Attorney Jack Skeen of Smith County tried him again in 1992, the case ended in a mistrial. Another trial in 1994 resulted in a guilty verdict and a new death sentence, but two years later the Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, reversed that conviction, noting that “prosecutorial and police misconduct has tainted this entire matter from the outset.”
Mr. Cook was released on bail in 1997, but the state prepared to try him for a fourth time. He was presented with an option: plead guilty in exchange for 20 years, which he had already served, and the charges would be dropped. He refused. As the trial date approached, in early 1999, Ms. Edwards’s underwear was sent to a lab for modern DNA testing. Mr. Cook, certain he would be exonerated, gave a blood sample.
On the morning of jury selection, the district attorney made another offer: if Mr. Cook pleaded no-contest with no admission of guilt, the case would be dismissed and he could go on with his life. Mr. Cook considered the deal. He had suffered terribly during his 19 years in prison — he had been stabbed, raped repeatedly and had tried to kill himself, once slitting his own throat after severing his penis, which was reattached.
He took the plea deal. Two months later, the DNA results returned. The semen belonged to James Mayfield, a married man with whom Ms. Edwards had been having an affair.
By then Mr. Cook was trying to move on with his life, but it was harder than he had imagined. The physical and emotional abuse he endured in prison causes nightmares and suicidal urges. And the murder conviction made him a second-class citizen.
“I couldn’t get a job, couldn’t sign a lease,” he said. “We’ve had to move five times because people would find out about me. One woman threatened to put up posters in the neighborhood saying ‘Convicted murderer lives here.’ ”
In 2009 Mr. Cook met Marc McPeak, a civil lawyer — with Greenberg Traurig in Dallas — who had read his book. Mr. McPeak’s firm began devising a legal strategy, pro bono, to navigate the difficult road of getting Mr. Cook an official exoneration. The first step was to get DNA testing on other items from the crime scene, including a hair found on Ms. Edwards’s body.
On Feb. 28, Mr. McPeak filed two motions in Smith County, one for the DNA testing and the other to recuse the judge who would decide whether to allow the testing — Mr. Skeen, the former district attorney. “We want it heard outside of Smith County,” Mr. McPeak said. “Not once in 35 years have officials there shown either the desire or the ability to treat Kerry fairly.”
They hope that further DNA evidence excluding Mr. Cook will help them to file a writ of habeas corpus to have him declared actually innocent.
Meanwhile, Mr. Cook waits. He dresses only in black (he swears he will not wear any other color until he is exonerated), and with his dark eyes and white hair, he cuts a striking figure. What he wants more than anything else are life’s simplest things.
“All I want is to be able to put my name on a lease,” he said. “I want to be able to walk my dog and have my neighbors over for cookouts. I want to live a normal life.”
Bruce Jackson is known in some circles as the dean of prison culture. Since the early 1960s, the SUNY Distinguished Professor and James Agee Professor of American Culture in the UB Department of English has been studying the little-known lives and culture of inmates in one of America’s oldest penal institutions.
Jackson‘s work has resulted in classics of prison lore and culture, including “A Thief’s Primer” (1969), “In the Life” (1972), “Wake Up Dead Man” (1972) and in 1980, “Death Row” with his wife and collaborator Diane Christian, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the UB English department.
The couple’s latest prison book, “In This Timeless Time: Living and Dying on Death Row in America” has just been published by University of North Carolina Press in association with the Center of Documentary Studies at Duke University. It is a volume of photographs and stories illuminating the world of death row inmates in the O.B. Ellis Unit, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison in Walker County, Texas. It also explores what happened to those prisoners and what has happened in capital punishment practice, legislation and jurisprudence over the past four decades.
“In This Timeless Time” has been named by Publishers Weekly one of its top 10 social science recommendations in its 2012 spring books issue. The book continues and expands upon stories addressed in “Death Row” and includes a DVD of the authors’ 1979 documentary film of the same name.
Although both books feature the same subject, they take very different approaches to the story. “The first book was essentially a snapshot in time,” Jackson says. “‘In This Timeless Time’ looks back and analyzes what has happened to those inmates and to the death penalty in America since the first book was published.”
The book includes a series of 92, mostly unpublished, photographs of the Ellis unit and its prisoners taken during the authors’ fieldwork for “Death Row.” This section also offers brief notes about what happened to the photo subjects, many of whom were executed, some of whom had their sentences commuted to life, one of whom was paroled, one of whom was exonerated after 22 years on the row and one of whom is still there.
The second section explains events in the world of capital punishment over the past three decades, including changes in law and current arguments over the death penalty.
The final section discusses how the authors completed the book, and looks at the problems they encountered doing the work and their stance on ethical issues related to the death penalty and to prison reform.
“We believe that killing people in cold blood for the crime of killing people in hot or cold blood is not justified. You shouldn’t do the things you say you shouldn’t do,” says Christian, adding that in the new book she and Jackson elaborate on their points of view and consider studies on capital punishment and relevant Supreme Court decisions.
In both books, the couple describes the treatment of the prisoners as “remedial torture” and recounts the conditions the men were forced to endure, such as having the glass windows of their cells replaced with frosted glass, which not only prevented them from seeing the outside world, but caused them to develop chronic optical myopia because they could not exercise their distance vision.
The authors point out that the United States remains the only industrialized nation that still employs the death penalty. While the pace of capital sentences has slowed here, Jackson suggests it’s partly because it costs the system less to imprison a person for life than to sentence him or her to death, which involves the cost of repeated appeals and heightened security.
“In some states, legislatures have been reconsidering the death penalty, not for moral reasons, but because they’re broke,” says Jackson.
Another major change is the introduction of life without parole as a sentencing option.
“As it turns out, the main thing the juries wanted wasn’t to kill the criminals, but to get them off the street and make sure they stayed off the street,” he says.
Jackson explains that while states are becoming less likely to use capital punishment, the federal government has become more punitive and restrictive since the Oklahoma City bombing. The appeals process has become much more difficult and capital punishment is permitted for more crimes.
Prisons also have become more conservative and restrictive to outsiders wanting to come in, which would make it difficult—if not impossible—for anyone today to write a book like “Death Row” or “In This Timeless Time.” Jackson and Christian had access to the prison to photograph, film and speak to inmates three decades ago, but when they tried to go back to revisit death row for their new book, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice refused their calls and ignored their emails. Information on the inmates they interviewed in 1979 had to be culled from the prison system’s online website.
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.
They have the death penalty in 34 American states – 16 of which currently perform executions with lethal injections. Until only recently, you could elect to die by firing squad in Utah.
German filmmaker Werner Herzog laid out his cards when he interviewed Hank Skinner, a man who has spent 17 years on death row in Texas.
“I’m not an advocate of the death penalty,” said Werner.
“Neither am I,” quipped Hank.
What emerged from this compelling documentary was a grim story of life on death row. The treatment of inmates seemed barbaric. Time doesn’t just drag here, it’s all over the place.
They don’t wash the windows of the cells so prisoners end up cocooned in a world of their own.
There’s activity and noise 24 hours a day. Theyserve breakfast at 3am, lunch at 10am and supper at 4pm.
The food is awful, says Hank, until you get to the execution unit, where you get a good last meal. He’s been so close to execution that he’s been given the last rites and had a final meal – fried chicken, catfish fillets, salad, a bacon cheeseburger, fries and chocolate milkshake.
It was delicious – because it’s prepared by the prisoners and they get to eat what the condemned man couldn’t face. Hank says, with a wry smile, that his last-minute reprieve gave him his appetite back and the prisoners had to go without their treat.
Hank says he’s innocent of the murder of his girlfriend and her two mentally disabled sons in 1995 – I guess a lot of death row men say they’re not guilty – but it seems unjust that he had to go to the Supreme Court to get the District Attorney to release DNA evidence which he says could prove his innocence.
On the face of it, he might have a point. There was another man’s jacket at the scene covered in the victim’s blood. His fingerprints were on a knife because he used it every day to make sandwiches.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, it throws the spotlight on the use of the death penalty. Being proved innocent after death makes no sense at all.
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)
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