July 5
TEXAS----impending execution
Family battles emotions as execution nears -- Steven Horton's parents say
they can't forgive their son's killer
20 years after the death of their son and just days before his killer's
execution, Nolan and Mary Horton of Corpus Christi said they feel as if
the murder happened yesterday. 20 years after the death of their son and
in the days before his killer's execution, the dead man's parents said
they feel like the murder was yesterday.
The parents of Steven Wayne Horton will attend the July 7 execution of
Troy Kunkle, the man who has been on death row since March 2, 1985, for
the murder of their 31-year-old son. To the Hortons, the pending death of
Kunkle represents ultimate justice, but both parents have said they don't
expect it to heal their emotional wounds.
"The only thing I know is that we can say we saw it through to a just
end," Nolan Horton said recently in a recent interview in his Corpus
Christi home.
Nolan and Mary Horton were both brought up Baptist, but the pain of losing
their son on Aug. 12, 1984, has not allowed them to forgive the killer.
They still cry about it.
"I can't forgive him. He had no reason to do that," Mary Nolan said. "It
wouldn't make the pain go away. I don't think you ever get relieved of
certain miseries, as far as that goes. I guess the worst thing is it was a
senseless murder." Mary Horton said she does feel sorry for Kunkle's
mother and his family.
Kunkle refused an interview request from death row.
Kunkle has not had contact with the Hortons, and that is fine with them.
They said there are no words of comfort he could offer.
Nolan Horton said he does not expect Kunkle to address them from the
gurney in the death chamber, an opportunity given to all condemned
prisoners.
"To me, it would make no difference," Nolan Horton said.
The Hortons remember their son well and often.
The couple laughed when they recalled the way their son loved wildlife,
just like his mother. He had an especially strong attraction to reptiles.
The family talked about how he would set up a plastic pool in the back of
the house and keep water moccasins in it.
Steven Horton, a graduate of Carroll High School in the early '70s, was
also an avid fisherman, his family remembered. He even worked briefly as a
gulf shrimper.
He enjoyed working with his hands.
"He was very adept and skilled with his hands," Nolan Horton said. "He'd
probably be a construction worker."
The often bearded and mustachioed Steven Horton would also be playing a
lot pool these days, if he were still alive, his mother said.
The Hortons' son was returning from playing pool at a local bar called
Mickey Finn's, a local bar, when Kunkle and his eventual co-defendants -
Lora Lee Zaiontz, Russell Stanley and Aaron Adkins - picked him up on the
way home. All 3 were all convicted, but not given the death penalty.
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Kunkle and his
friends visited the beach from San Antonio. They saw Horton walking along
Paul Jones Avenue and offered him a ride. They demanded his wallet, which
contained $13.
"I guess he basically told them what he thought of them," Nolan Horton
said.
Kunkle, according to the state's report, then told Stanley to kill him.
Stanley refused. Then Kunkle took the .22-caliber pistol and shot Steven
Horton behind a nearby skating rink. Marks on the back of Steven Horton's
head were later determined to be fingernail cuts from one of the
co-defendants restraining him, the family noted.
Kunkle, according to prison records, said after the killing, "Another day,
another death, another sorrow, another breath."
He later also called the murder, "beautiful," prison records said.
The reported callousness of the murder still sticks with the Hortons. But
they said maybe the execution can offer some closure, even if it cannot
numb the anguish of losing a son.
Steven Horton had 2 children who grew up without their father. Grown now
and moved away, they will probably not go to the execution, Nolan Horton
said.
"His children didn't have a chance to know they had a father," Mary Horton
said.
With the execution only days away, the Hortons said they hope Kunkle will
not get a stay.
They have been fighting for the execution for almost 20 years. They
attended hearings and wrote several letters to the board of pardons,
including one recently. As always, it hurt Nolan Horton to relive losing
his son.
"I was having such a hard time," Nolan Horton said. "When you sit down and
try to write something like this, your thoughts go way back, like it was
yesterday."
(source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times)
*********************
Man, 22, is charged in 1-year-old's death
Fort Worth police charged a 22-year-old man with capital murder Sunday in
the death of a 1-year-old boy he was watching while the mother was at
work.
When police found Quran Ross on Saturday night, the child had bruises on
his face and was not breathing, police said. The boy was taken to Cook
Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, where he was pronounced dead
around 9:30 p.m.
The caller to 911 hung up, police said.
The man in custody, Corey Wormley, told detectives he had been wrestling
with the child, police said.
"Basically, he was a friend of the family keeping the child," said
homicide Detective Cheryl Johnson. "He originally told us he was wrestling
with the child and threw him down."
Mr. Wormley was arrested Sunday morning on a charge of causing injuries to
a child. He was charged with capital murder in the afternoon after the
Tarrant County medical examiner's office ruled the death a homicide caused
by blunt force injuries.
Detective Johnson says Mr. Wormley could be arraigned as early as today,
with charges filed as early as Tuesday with the district attorney.
"Something like this usually happens because somebody becomes angry when a
child is crying," she said. "We're starting to get a sense of what
happened, but it's still early on in the investigation."
The boy's mother could not be reached for comment.
The father, Detective Johnson said, did not live with the mother and
child.
(source: Dallas Morning News)
OHIO:
Spirko hopes to be freed from death row
Joe Amrine spent 17 years on Missouri's death row for a prison killing he
did not commit.
He watched as 60 men were taken to the death house to be executed.
"There were 4 or 5 I had been in the cell with for years when they came
and took them up out of there," he said. "They claim there is nothing
wrong with the death penalty in Missouri, but Joe Amrine is here to prove
you wrong."
Amrine and John G. Spirko Jr., on death row in Mansfield for the 1982
abduction and murder of Elgin postmistress Betty Jane Mottinger, were
cited by the national Death Penalty Information Center as men on death row
whose guilt may not be established beyond a reasonable doubt.
The list ran in the June 12, 2000, edition of Newsweek. Since then, Amrine
and Larry Osbourne, of Kentucky, have been freed. Gary Graham of Texas was
executed.
Of those listed, only Spirko and John Francis Wille, of Louisiana, remain
on death row, according to Brenda Bowser of the center.
One man's tale
"Here I am sitting on death row for a murder I didn't commit, trying to
keep my hopes up," Amrine, 48, told the News Journal. "I didn't kill
nobody. This is the United States and justice will prevail. Next thing I
know, it's been 15 years and I was just denied by the United States
Supreme Court."
College students became interested in the case and did an investigation
that led to a widely viewed documentary and Amrine's eventual freedom.
Unfairness cited
"Ironically, at the time I caught this case I was for the death penalty,
but I didn't know all the flaws that went into it," Amrine said. "The
death penalty is something that cannot be safeguarded. When you got a
system where the color of your skin or how much money you've got plays a
part in your punishment, it's not fair."
Sent to prison in 1977 for robbery and burglary, Amrine was freed in
October and is working for his lawyer and studying to become a paralegal.
"Everything has changed," Amrine said, mentioning cell phones, compact
discs and DVDs. "Computers are my worst nightmare. A lot of things you
just take for granted and here I am a 48-year-old man and I don't know how
to answer the phone."
He already has wrecked a car.
"You always hear people talk about being institutionalized," Amrine said.
"I was more scared about coming out into society and trying to fit in than
I was of being executed."
**
A history of the death penalty in Ohio
- 1885-1897: 28 convicted murderers were hanged at the Ohio Pennitentiary.
Prior to that, sentences were carried out by public hanging in the county
where the crime was committed.
- 1897: Inmate Charles Justice used his rudimentary knowledge of
electricity to help design and build the state's electric chair. Justice
was released after serving his sentence, returned to prison on a murder
charge and was executed in the chair on Oct. 27, 1911.
- 1963: The last inmate electrocuted was Donald Reinbolt, 29, on March 15,
1963. In all, 315 people were put to death in Ohio's electric chair,
including 3 women. It would be a 35-year legal battle before Ohio again
executed an inmate after Wilford Berry volunteered to die in 1999.
- 1972: The death sentences of 65 Ohio inmates were reduced to life in
prison in 1972 after the United States Supreme Court declared the state's
death penalty unconstitutional.
- 1974: Ohio lawmakers revised the death penalty law. The U.S. Supreme
Court again rejected the law, reducing the sentences of 120 prisoners,
including 4 women, to life in prison.
- 1981- 1991: The state's current death-penalty law took effect in October
1981.
Lenoard Jenkins of Cuyahoga County was the 1st to be sentenced under the
current law, but his sentence and the sentences of 3 other men and 4 women
were commuted to life by former Gov. Richard Celeste.
- 1992-1997: The state loses a battle to return to death row 7 of the 8
inmates whose sentences were commuted by Celeste.
- 1993: Lawmakers past a provision allowing an inmate to choose between
electrocution and lethal injection.
- 1995: Death row is moved to Mansfield Correctional Institution,
seperating it from the Death House at the Southern Ohio Correctional
Facility in Lucasville.
- 1999: Wilford Berry, dubbed "The Volunteer" because he dropped his
appeals, becomes the 1st Ohio inmate to be executed 1963.
- 2001: Jay D. Scott is taken to the death chamber 3 times before his
sentence is carried out on June 14. 2 last-minute stays -- the 2nd time
after the needles already were in his arms -- brought Scott back to
Mansfield before he was sent to Lucasville a 3rd time.
- Lawmakers scramble to retire the electric chair after John W. Byrd
indicates he will choose it, forcing the state to electrocute someone for
the 1st time since 1963.
- 2002: Byrd, 38, is executed Feb. 19 for the 1983 murder of Monte
Tewksbury, 40, at a Cincinnati convenience store. Byrd was the 1st of 3
men executed in 2002: Alton Coleman, 46, for the 1984 murder of Marlene
Walters in Hamilton County and Robert Buell, 62, for the 1982 murder of
Krista Lee Harrison of Wayne County. Coleman was the only person in the
country to be on death row in 3 different states.
- 2003: The state executed 3 men: Richard E. Fox, 47, for the 1989 murder
of Leslie Keckler of Wood County; David M. Brewer, 44, for the 1985 murder
of Sherry Byrne in Greene County and Ernest Martin, 42, for the 1983
murder of Robert Robertson in Cuyahoga County.
- In June, Gov. Bob Taft commutes the sentence of Jerome Campbell to life
in prison without parole. It is the only time Taft has used his right to
grant executive clemency.
On June 26, Donna Roberts becomes the 1st female on Ohio's death row since
the Celeste commutations in 1991. She is held at the Ohio Reformatory for
Women in Marysville.
In July, Taft signs into law a procedure for the DNA testing of evidence
in the cases of inmates facing death.
- 2004: The state executed 4 inmates through the first week of June: Lewis
Williams for the 1983 murder of Leona Chmielewski in Cuyahoga County; John
Glenn Roe, of Franklin County, for the 1984 murder of Donnette R.
Crawford; William D. Wickline, of Franklin County, for the 1982 murder of
Peggy Lerch and William G. Zuern, for the 1984 murder of Hamilton County
Sheriff's Deputy Phillip Pence.
(source: Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction; 2003 Capital
Crimes Annual Report of Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro; News Journal
archives)
Ohio's death penalty law
County prosecutors can seek the death penalty against anyone convicted of
aggravated murder when the crime meets one of the following
specifications:
- Assassination of the president, governor or someone in line of
succession.
- Murder for hire.
- Killing for the purpose of escaping detection, apprehension, trial or
punishment for another offense.
- Killing while already under detention.
- Offender has previous conviction or murder or attempted murder or when
the offense is part of a course of conduct intended to kill or attempt to
kill more than 1 person. - Killing a law enforcement officer.
- Killing while committing, attempting to commit or fleeing from a
kidnapping, rape, aggravated arson, aggravated burglary or aggravated
robbery.
- Killing a witness to a crime.
- Killing someone under 13 years of age.
- Killing as a terrorist act.
Upon conviction, jurors hear evidence from both sides regarding sentencing
before recommending death, life without parole or life with the
possibility of parole.
(Source: Ohio Revised Code)
Area death row inmates
- Kevin Keith: Keith was convicted of the Feb. 13, 1994, murders of
Marichell Chatman, 24, Linda Charman, 39, Marchae Chatman, 7, and the
attempted murder of 3 others in a Bucyrus Estates Apartment. The victims
were relatives of a police informant involved in a drug investigation of
Keith. Keith went to the apartment, ordered everyone to lie on the floor
and shot each person multiple times.
His case is pending in federal circuit court.
- Steven T. Smith: Smith was convicted of the Sept. 29, 1998, murder of
his girlfriend's 6-month-old daughter, Autumn Frye. His case is pending in
the state court system.
- Maxwell White: White was convicted in Ashland County of the Jan. 19,
1996, murder of Ohio Highway Patrol Trooper James Gross, 27, during a car
stop on Intertstate 71. His appeal remains before the federal circuit
court.
- August Cassano: On Oct. 21, 1997, Cassano murdered his cellmate,
22-year-old Walter Hardy, at Mansfield Correctional Institution. Cassano
stabbed Hardy 75 times with a homemade knife. Cassano was serving a life
sentence for an aggravated murder in 1976 and had previously stabbed
another cellmate in 1992, according to the corrections department.
Cassano's appeal is in the 2nd of 3 possible trial reviews. Cassano began
the federal appeal process in June 2003.
- Christopher J. Newton: Newton pleaded guilty to capital murder in
Richland County Common Pleas Court for the Nov. 15, 2001, murder of his
cellmate, Jason Brewer, 27, at Mansfield Correctional Institution. A
3-judge panel sentenced him to death. Newton wrote a detailed confession
to the crime before he murdered Brewer.
- Jerry Allard: Allard was convicted of the March 30, 1992, murder of his
former wife, Karen, 25, and their daughter Rachel, 2, and of the attempted
murder of their son, Aaron, 4 at their Mount Vernon apartment.
Allard died on death row of natural causes on April 30, 2000.
(Source: Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction; 2003 Capital
Crimes Annual Report of Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro; News Journal
archives)
Freed in Ohio
The Death Penalty Information Center counts 4 Ohio men as having been
freed from the state's death row:
- Gary Beeman was convicted of aggravated murder in 1976 and sentenced to
death. Beeman claimed the state's star witness, an escaped prisoner, was
the killer. Beeman won a new trial. 5 witnesses testified they heard the
state's witness confess to the murder, and Beeman was acquitted in 1979.
- Dale Johnston was sentenced to death in 1984 for the murder of his
stepdaughter and her fiancee. His conviction was overturned in 1988 by the
Ohio Supreme Court because the prosecution withheld evidence from the
defense and because one witness had been hypnotized. The state later
dropped charges against Johnston.
- Timothy Howard and Gary Lamar James were convicted of robbing a bank in
1977 and killing a guard. They were sentenced to death but re-sentenced to
life in 1978, after Ohio's death-penalty law was ruled unconstitutional.
Howard and James were able to uncover new evidence not made available to
their defense attorneys at the time of their trial, including conflicting
witness statements and fingerprints. James passed a state-administered
lie-detector test. The charges were dropped and he was freed in 2003.
On April 23, 2003, a judge overturned Howard's conviction, citing evidence
not disclosed or available at trial.
(source: Mansfield News Journal)
USA:
Dissent and the death penalty
The death penalty is a bad idea for a host of reasons.
It is discriminatory. Race is more likely to affect death sentencing than
smoking affects the likelihood of dying from heart disease, according to
the Death Penalty Information Center.
It is arbitrary. California murderers get life in prison; Texas murderers
lethal injection.
It is ineffective as a deterrent and degrading to those in whose name it
is carried out.
And, says the Catholic church, it is a grave sin against life itself.
It is true, as we are frequently reminded these days, that official and
authoritative church teaching does not call for an absolute prohibition on
the death penalty. Unlike the teaching on abortion, the church calls on
public officials to make prudential judgments about the efficacy and
morality of capital punishment in each case in which the question arises.
That said, applying the teaching in the United States is not a complicated
matter. While theoretically permissible, state-sanctioned killing, the
definitive teaching of the church holds, should be a thing of the past.
(We favor a strict prohibitionist approach, but thats an editorial for
another day.)
In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II makes the case.
The nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and
decided upon and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender
except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not
be possible otherwise to defend society [emphasis added]. Today, however,
as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal
system, such cases are very rare if not practically nonexistent [emphasis
added].
The Catechism of the Catholic Church is equally clear: If bloodless means
are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect
public order and the safety of persons, public authority should limit
itself to such means.
The death penalty, the church teaches, is not to be applied as punishment,
but only to protect the innocent from an aggressor. The value of the life
of the person facing execution is not lessened because of the heinous deed
or deeds he or she may have committed. Yes, that person is in need of
expiation, and yes, civil society has the obligation to punish criminals.
But the life of a murderer, like all human life, is made in the image and
likeness of God and, therefore, requires our respect and protection.
In applying this teaching to the United States, the question arises: Is
there anywhere in our 50 states where capital punishment is an absolute
necessity, a requirement for protecting the innocent against an aggressor?
Any reasonable person, and any Catholic with a well-fashioned conscience,
we assert, would have to answer that question with a resounding no.
Its a no-brainer. The United States certainly has its faults, but we are
very good at locking people up.
And yet states kill convicted criminals at the rate of more than one a
week.
>From January through May of this year nine states executed 27 convicts,
with Texas accounting for a third of those killings. Were keeping pace
with last year, when 65 inmates were lethally injected or electrocuted.
Since 1996, nearly 600 men and women have been executed in the United
States.
Whatever one thinks of capital punishment, no one can argue that it is
very rare or practically nonexistent in the United States. Many Catholic
governors, legislators and judges embrace the practice not as a reluctant
last resort, but as a positive good.
Some of them, like Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, are
honest about it. It will come as no surprise from what I have said that I
do not agree with the encyclical Evangelium Vitae and the new Catholic
catechism (or the very latest version of the new Catholic catechism),
according to which the death penalty can only be imposed to protect rather
than avenge, and that since it is (in most modern societies) not necessary
for the former purpose, it is wrong.
Others tie themselves up in rhetorical knots, attempting to reconcile
their support for the death penalty with Catholic teaching. As Scalia
notes, in 21st-century America its an impossible (and we think dishonest)
argument to make. Many of the folks who make the case are, ironically, the
same people who label those who oppose church teaching on contraception or
the all-male priesthood as cafeteria Catholics, picking and choosing what
they like from Romes doctrinal menu.
So what are we to call the Catholic public officials who promote the death
penalty? Dissenters is one word that comes to mind.
The issue arises most recently, of course, because Catholic public
officials who oppose capital punishment and support abortion-rights
(almost exclusively Democrats) say they should get some credit for the
former even as they are attacked for the latter. To which some
antiabortion Republican Catholics respond that capital punishment is
different.
And, of course, capital punishment is different. Unlike abortion, for
example, it involves the apparatus of the state in taking a life.
But, as antiabortion activists point out, its also an issue of magnitude.
If abortion is the unjustified taking of a life, and if there are more
than 1 million such procedures carried out legally in this country each
year, then surely opposing abortion has more of a pull on our time, our
resources and our votes than does the death penalty.
This is fair enough. In the political realm, activists have to make
choices. And, given limits on time, talent and treasure, its certainly
reasonable for people to emphasize one area of injustice over another.
What is not fair, however, is for a Catholic governor or legislator to say
that his or her pro-death penalty position is somehow in accord with
church teaching; that the churchs position is sufficiently grey to
accommodate a pro-death penalty position. That is simply not the case.
No, if the pro-choice Catholic legislator is a dissenter, then so is the
politician who favors the death penalty. And should be treated as such,
with all the rights, privileges and rebukes that come with the label.
Welcome to the cafeteria.
(source: Editorial, National Catholic Reporter, July 2)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Judge's ruling means Spruill remains on death row
In Jackson, a superior court judge confirmed in an order that a death row
inmate was mentally retarded at the time he slashed his girlfriend's
throat in 1985.
The judge, however, says the defense did not prove Johnnie Lee Spruill was
retarded at the time of a hearing held last year.
Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Cy A. Grant Sr.'s order filed this
week in Northampton County keeps Spruill, 50, on death row, his attorney,
Kimberly C. Stevens of Winston-Salem, said Thursday.
Stevens said the order was "in contrast" to rulings made by the U.S.
Supreme Court which say mental retardation diminishes the culpability of a
person in the commission of a crime.
Stevens said she didn't know if she would have to eventually prove that
Spruill was retarded at the time of the hearing. She said she believed the
law is clear and that she only had to prove Spruill was mentally retarded
at the time the crime was committed.
Grant's ruling will be appealed to the state Supreme Court within the next
30 days, but the court is not obligated to take the appeal, Stevens said.
"It's been established he was mentally retarded but by the ruling the
execution can go forward."
The ruling came more than a year after a hearing in Northampton County
Superior Court to determine whether Spruill should receive life without
parole instead of the death penalty because he was mentally retarded when
he killed Beatrice Williams, his former girlfriend, in the parking lot of
a Pleasant Hill nightclub.
Throughout the 26-page order, Grant upholds that Spruill had
"significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning" at the time
of the murder. "This defendant has met his burden of establishing
significant limitations in ... 5 areas of adaptive skill function at the
time of the commission of the capital offense and prior to the age of 18,"
the ruling read.
Those areas are functional academics, health and safety, self-direction,
home living and social skills.
Teachers' notes submitted as evidence show Spruill was extremely slow
throughout school. He eventually dropped out in January of 1972.
Central Prison Chaplain Luther Pike testified last year that he was
"careful to never ask the defendant to read out loud for fear that the
defendant would embarrass himself in front of other inmates."
Friends and experts testified that Spruill had significant difficulty
making and keeping plans for the future. "If he saw something he wanted,
whether it was for 50 cents, he would give $50 for it if he wanted it,"
one person testified.
Spruill, who fathered one child, never took care of his son, the mother
testified, although he never mistreated the baby.
One man testified in all the time he knew Spruill, he could not put his
true feelings about others into words and he could not keep appointments
or make plans.
Noelle Talley, spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's Office, said
the office had no comment because more litigation in the matter could be
pending. The state Department of Correction said no execution date has
been set.
(source: Daily Herald)
