August 10
TEXAS:
JURY TOLD BEATTY WOULD BE THREAT TO SOCIETY
Forensic psychiatrists testified Monday that Tracy Lane Beatty is
aggressive and impulsive and would continue to commit acts of violence and
be a threat to society.
Beatty was convicted of capital murder Friday for beating and strangling
his 62-year-old mother, Carolyn Ruth Click, to death on Nov. 25. He also
stole her car, drained her credit and bank accounts and gave away her
personal items, making it a capital offense. He led authorities nearly a
month later to her nude body, which was buried in a shallow grave behind
her mobile home in Whitehouse.
"This was a very violent crime, directed toward a family member who
offered him a place to stay shortly after being released from prison," Dr.
Edward Gripon said.
The state rested its case in the punishment phase of the trial Monday
evening after a day and a half of testimony. The defense will begin its
case Tuesday in 241st District Judge Jack Skeen Jr.'s court.
Beatty, 42, faces the death penalty or life in prison, for which he would
be eligible for parole in 40 years.
Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham, First Assistant DA Brett
Harrison and Chief Felony Prosecutor April Sikes are prosecuting the case
while defense attorneys Robert Perkins and Ken Hawk are representing
Beatty.
The defendant has a tendency to be deceptive, giving different stories to
authorities and trying to place the blame of his mother's murder on
someone else. His behavior and excessive use of drugs and alcohol in the
days following the murder indicate he has no regard for the offense,
Gripon said.
He and Dr. Tynus McNeel, both forensic psychiatrists, were acquired to
testify by the state and were given hundreds of pages of offense
statements, photographs and prison, police and parole records to examine
and determine whether Beatty would be a continued threat.
"Mr. Beatty presents a high degree of risk for future dangerousness,"
McNeel said.
Both doctors testified Beatty's behavior was consistent with the lifelong
condition of anti-social personality disorder and that he had an alcohol
and drug abuse problem.
There is no known medication to treat the disorder.
Gripon said a person suffering from the disorder could change if they
wanted to but he didn't see any want or willingness in Beatty to change.
Beatty is not mentally ill to any significant degree and has an IQ of 100,
which places him in the middle of the population, he said.
FIERY TEMPER
McNeel testified Beatty has a "fiery temper" and "poor impulse control."
He is easily angered for minor discrepancies and has threatened people's
lives when he didn't agree with something they said or did, he added.
Of about 1,100 pages of Beatty's parole records, the state submitted about
20 into evidence.
Jay Patzke testified about the records that indicated Beatty threatened a
parole officer and assaulted his mother, which resulted in his parole
being revoked.
A regional director for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Patzke
said Beatty had been arrested 21 times for various offenses, including
injury to his 18-month-old niece in which Beatty shocked her with an
electrical cord, burned her with a cigarette, pulled out her hair and
struck her in the face.
The records stated Beatty showed no remorse and total disregard for the
child's injuries.
There were 16 incidents where Beatty threatened or attacked prison
employees or showed other acts of violence while in several Texas prisons.
There is a high probability that he would commit similar violent acts in
the future, or at least attempt to, McNeel said.
"It's almost like everywhere he went he caused these kinds of problems,"
he said.
Gripon agreed. He said Beatty's violence started a long time ago and has
escalated to the point that he committed capital murder.
Beatty has emotional problems and is very violent. Since 1987, when Beatty
was first released from prison on parole, the defendant has been in and
out of prison and has had his parole revoked four times, Patzke testified.
Beatty was on parole at the time of the murder and would have been
discharged in December, he said.
PRISON GANGS
TDCJ Officer Armando Cano works to monitor alleged members of security
threat groups, also known as prison gangs.
He testified to a report presented by prosecutors that stated Beatty once
claimed to be a member of the Arian Circle gang, one of 11 gangs the Texas
prison system recognizes, and had a tattoo representing the group.
Cano said the gangs commit extortion and assaults inside the prisons and
the Arian Circle is a white supremacist gang responsible for criminal
activity.
Pictures taken of Beatty's body Monday were shown to Cano, who testified
he could not discern a tattoo that represents the Arian Circle gang,
although marks on Beatty's chest could be consistent with tattoo removal.
He also said some of Beatty's tattoos were old and were unclear in the
pictures.
Beatty also has a teardrop tattoo beneath his left eye, which Cano said
could be a gang symbol that in the past represented how many times he's
been in prison or how many people he's killed.
Cano testified Beatty assaulted him while in prison in 1989 and the 2
engaged in a physical fight.
Smith County sheriff Deputy Dale Dixon testified he found an unauthorized
weapon in Beatty's jail cell on June 2. The officer found a homemade metal
shank and holster, he said.
Smith County sheriff Sgt. Wanda Hunter said Beatty made a written request
to the jail, which stated he was a member of "A.C.," or Arian Circle, and
had the shank because there were also members of "M.M.," the Mexican Mafia
gang, inside the jail.
Royce Smithey, chief investigator for a special prosecutor's unit for the
Texas governor's office, testified about inmates' violent nature in a
prison environment.
State Classification Committee Member Steve Rogers said someone convicted
of capital murder who received a life sentence would most likely be placed
into TDCJ's general population. There are some factors of Beatty's
criminal past within the prison system that could be considered, though,
in placing him in a maximum supervisory administrative segregation cell.
Perkins filed a motion for the judge to make an instructed verdict. He
said the state's evidence was insufficient to establish the probability
that Beatty would be a future danger. Skeen denied the motion and told the
sequestered jury the trial would reconvene Tuesday.
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JUDGE AUTHORIZES DEFENSE FUNDS IN LEWIS HEARING
Convicted killer Rickey Lynn Lewis appeared before a Smith County judge
Monday for a hearing on claims he is mentally retarded and therefore
ineligible for the death penalty.
Lewis was convicted in 1997 for murdering a northern Smith County man and
raping the man's girlfriend during a home invasion in 1990.
Lewis sat quietly in 114th District Judge Cynthia Kent's courtroom on
Monday while his attorney Mike Charlton of Taos, N.M., argued against
holding the evidentiary hearing.
"There is no point in holding an evidentiary hearing because we have no
evidence to present," he told the judge.
In a mental retardation claim, the burden of proof is on the defense since
the state has already proven its case in the guilt or innocence phase.
Charlton argued that Judge Kent's ruling to disallow funds for Lewis'
second writ of habeas corpus unfairly limited the defense's ability to
research and build a case. The three-prong approach to diagnose mental
retardation outlined in the Health and Safety Code includes below average
intellectual functioning usually denoted by an IQ score of 70 or less,
manifestation of the disorder by age 18 and consideration of adaptive
functioning, or how a person operates in daily life. While Lewis as a
child attended Tyler's St. Louis School, a facility geared toward children
with special needs, the defense argued costly testing and field
investigations were necessary to prove mental retardation.
"We can't establish a case given the limitations imposed on the defense.
As it currently stands, we are unable to prove that Rickey Lynn Lewis is
mentally retarded," Charlton told the judge. "The court's position is
denying us the right to be heard."
He urged the judge to allocate funding, saying he has defended eight other
such cases and to the best of his knowledge the state comptroller's office
has reimbursed the counties involved in each case.
The judge ruled previously that the county would not pay for another writ
of habeas corpus proceeding for Lewis who had exhausted his appeals prior
to the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2002 ruling that executing the mentally
retarded was unconstitutionally cruel. Lewis filed a second writ of habeas
corpus claiming he was mentally retarded and received a stay from the
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that halted his August 2003 execution.
The same court later reviewed Judge Kent's ruling on funding the 2nd writ.
It also denied Lewis' request, but failed to give a reason.
"I honestly thought the court of criminal appeals would give us some
direction on successor writs when it denied this motion," Judge Kent said.
Smith County Assistant District Attorney Michael West argued that Lewis'
attorneys had two previous opportunities to present evidence of mental
retardation in the punishment phases of each of his trials and never did
so. The punishment phase in the first trial was overturned due to a
judicial error. West said neither was a mental retardation claim raised in
Lewis' 1st writ of habeas corpus, which was also funded.
Kent initially ruled to go ahead with the hearing on Monday in spite of
Charlton saying he had no case to present. But the prosecution objected to
allowing Charlton to question their expert witnesses when the defense
never allowed them access to Lewis. Prosecutors instead requested to take
signed affidavits from their witnesses.
Kent denied the request for affidavits and authorized $25,000 for the
defense to perform the necessary testing and field investigations to
present a case. After a debate about who would test the defendant, with
what and when, she rescheduled the evidentiary hearing for Dec. 6.
If the defense proves Lewis is mentally retarded, his death sentence will
be commuted to life in prison.
ATKINS CASE
The controversy about executing the mentally retarded has grown over the
years, and the U.S. Supreme Court has often revisited the case of
twice-convicted Texas killer Johnny Paul Penry. In 1989, the court ruled
while permitting capital punishment for mentally retarded offenders did
not violate the Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual
punishment, states must allow juries to consider mental retardation as a
mitigating factor in sentencing. The Court also determined there wasn't
enough of a national consensus about such executions because only Georgia
and Maryland statutorily prohibited them. In those states, criminal
defendants found to be mentally retarded were instead sentenced to life in
prison.
In June 2002 the court reversed itself upon hearing the case of a
convicted murderer in Virginia who claimed to be mentally retarded. In
1996, Daryl Renard Atkins and an accomplice armed with a semi-automatic
handgun abducted a Langley Air Force Base serviceman from a convenience
store, robbed him, drove him to an automated teller machine where cameras
recorded their withdrawal of $200, then took him to an isolated location
where he was shot 8 times. Court documents indicate Atkins' IQ is 59.
The court held that the deficiencies of the mentally retarded "do not
warrant an exemption from criminal sanctions, but diminish their personal
culpability." Atkins' sentence was commuted to life in prison.
TEXAS' CHAMBER
Since 2002, death penalty states have grappled in the dark for a way to
address the U.S. Supreme Court's prohibition on executing the mentally
retarded. 2 bills died in the Texas Legislature in 2003, leaving lower
courts little guidance on how to apply the highest court's ruling.
Sen. Todd Staples, R-Palestine, authored SB 332 that made mental
retardation an issue for the trial jury to consider during sentencing
after finding the defendant guilty of a capital offense. His bill also
listed several factors for the jury to consider in making its
determination. Staples further cited cost savings by reducing the number
of potential pre-trial hearings and jury empanelments.
The counterpoint to Staples' bill was that of state Sen. Rodney Ellis,
D-Houston. Ellis' SB 163 made mental retardation a pre-trial issue and
called for a separate hearing by a separate jury before the trial began.
His bill relied on an IQ test score of 70 or less for a "presumption of
mental retardation." Ellis also said his bill would save the state money
by not holding a capital trial if it is determined beforehand the
defendant is ineligible for the death penalty.
With little middle ground and a full legislative agenda this past session,
neither bill made it out of committee. The result has been a flood of
post-conviction claims from death row inmates.
The Texas Defender Service, a non-profit law firm that represents capital
murder defendants on appeal, reported in February the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals had sent 37 cases back to trial courts for hearings. The
5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans has remanded four additional
cases.
One of them involved four-time convicted killer Robert Charles Ladd, 46,
who received a reprieve hours before he was to be executed April 23, 2003,
for the 1996 murder of a disabled Tyler woman. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court
of Appeals granted Ladd a stay based on his attorney's claim an IQ test
administered at a juvenile facility shows Ladd is mentally retarded. But
prosecutors have said Ladd scored an 86 on an IQ test when he was in
prison for the 1978 murders of a young mother and her two small children
in Dallas. The Texas Attorney General's Office confirmed Monday that
Ladd's case is still pending in federal district court.
There are about 450 inmates on Texas' death row.
(source for both: Tyler Morning Telegraph)
********************
REFLECTING ON STRUGGLE--Case raises more lab issues; New test suggests
problems affect more than the closed DNA section of crime unit
After George Rodriguez was sentenced to 60 years in prison for the rape of
a teenage girl in 1987, his mother feared he would never come home again.
"They gave him so many years, I thought I wasn't going to see him any
more," 71-year-old Mary Rodriguez said Monday as she sat on the porch of
the 2-bedroom bungalow where she raised 10 children.
Rodriguez wrote to his parents from prison last week, however, saying he
had new attorneys to help prove he was wrongly convicted. He said he hopes
to be back home in Houston's East End later this year.
"We always knew he was innocent, but we just never had the money to get a
good lawyer to represent him," said one of his brothers, Robert Rodriguez.
17 years after he went to prison, George Rodriguez's attorneys at the
Innocence Project of New York filed court papers last week seeking his
release. Their appeal accuses a former Houston police crime lab supervisor
of giving flawed testimony that contradicted basic elements of forensic
science.
Rodriguez's case suggests problems at the embattled crime lab are more
widespread than previously believed, extending beyond the DNA division,
which was shut down last year, into the serology section, which tests
blood and hair for evidence in criminal cases.
Several officials have begun calling for the appointment of an independent
judge, or special master, to oversee the reopening and possible retesting
of thousands of cases dating more than 10 years.
Rodriguez's case has drawn national attention, in part because it raises
questions about the justice system in Harris County, which sends more
prisoners to death row than any other county in the United States.
For Rodriguez and his family, the new appeal may portend the close of a
long struggle to clear his name.
2 men were accused in the 1987 kidnapping and rape of a 14-year-old girl.
One man confessed and implicated another man, Isidro Yanez. A prosecutor
told police that Yanez also was implicated in a similar rape during the
same period.
But when authorities were unable to locate Yanez, they began questioning
Rodriguez. Although his employer told police he was at work when the rape
occurred, police said a crime-lab test matched Rodriguez to a pubic hair
found in the victim's panties.
At the trial, crime lab supervisor James Bolding testified that tests
excluded Yanez as a possible subject, although numerous experts say that
conclusion was "scientifically unsound."
A recent DNA test cleared Rodriguez and points to Yanez, Rodriguez's
attorneys said.
Rodriguez has spent years trying to clear his name, filing handwritten
court papers and using credit from his commissary account to pay other
inmates for legal advice, his family said.
"He always said, 'I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing until I prove
myself innocent,'" said another brother, Albert.
An eighth-grade dropout, Rodriguez was a father of five working at a
furniture factory on the East End. Relatives recalled that he was quiet
and he liked to fish and repair cars.
"He wasn't a rough guy, like the rest of us were," Albert said. "He wasn't
the type to run the streets like the other kids."
For now, "We're just waiting," said his sister, 37-year-old Priscilla
Rodriguez. "I've got to see him out here to believe it. He's been in there
a long time."
Family members said Rodriguez's imprisonment adversely affected his
26-year-old son, also named George, who was convicted of murder in 1996.
"I think that if he would have been out there raising his son, (the son)
wouldn't be locked up," said Esmerelda Estrada, daughter of the elder
George Rodriguez. "When his father left, that is when he started messing
up."
(source: Houston Chronicle)
********************
Contrasting images of Acuna given at trial
Prosecutors painted a picture of Robert Aaron Acuna as a vicious loner who
preyed on the elderly, while friends and relatives described him as a
quiet and well-mannered teenager during the 2nd day of testimony in the
penalty phase of his capital murder trial.
A Harris County jury on Friday convicted Acuna, 18, in the Nov. 12
shooting deaths of James Carroll, 76, and his wife Joyce, 74, in their
Country Club Estates home, just across the street from Acuna's family
home.
Acuna faces the death penalty or life imprisonment with the possibility of
parole after 40 years. In the penalty phase, jurors must decide if Acuna
poses a risk of committing future violent acts and whether there are
sufficient mitigating factors in his character and background that would
make a life sentence, rather than capital punishment, appropriate.
Monday's testimony began with security personnel of San Jacinto Mall, who
described how they used surveillance cameras to track a young man who a
75-year-old Mont Belvieu man said had accosted him with a knife in the
parking lot on Aug. 7, 2003.
Baytown Police detective Bryan Thompson testified about using a videotaped
image of the man's pick-up truck license plate to identify Acuna as the
suspect.
Thompson said that because the victim of the aggravated assault, Sidney
Bodine, and a witness could not identify the assailant in a photo spread,
he put out the word to Baytown police officers to watch out for Acuna's
truck and stop and detain him if he committed a traffic infraction.
Under questioning from Assistant District Attorney Vic Wisner, Thompson
explained that he wanted to take Acuna "out of his environment" in order
to question him and get a confession.
On Sept. 16, Baytown Police officer Mark Street stopped Acuna for not
wearing a seat belt and called Thompson, who arrived minutes later, the
detective testified.
Thompson said Acuna gave consent to search the truck, in which Thompson
found a red bandanna and a large pocketknife like those described by
Bodine.
Thompson testified that he brought Acuna to the Baytown police station,
where Acuna gave a written and videotaped confession to the assault. In
the statement, which Thompson read in court, Acuna said he was attempting
to rob Bodine because he owed $45 to someone named Juan.
Acuna was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly
weapon. He was scheduled to appear in court Nov. 13, the day his parents
reported him missing and Michelle Cressy discovered her parents' bodies in
their home.
Under cross-examination from lead defense attorney Bob Loper, Thompson
said he could not have proceeded in charging Acuna without obtaining a
confession. He also said he had not attempted to corroborate whether there
actually was a "Juan."
Later, Cressy described the impact her parents' death has had on her and
the extended Carroll family.
Cressy said that at first, she was unable to cry about the loss of her
parents, but that over time she has felt the effects more acutely.
"All of a sudden you're an orphan, and your children don't have
grandparents," she said tearfully.
"My children will always know that their grandparents were murdered," she
said.
Following Cressy's testimony, prosecutors rested their case in the penalty
phase.
In the defense case, Loper called Dennis Longmire, a Sam Houston State
University criminology professor, who testified that the "great consensus"
among academics who study prison populations is that convicted murderers
have less propensity for committing violent acts in prison because they
are resigned to the fact that they will be in prison for a long time.
Longmire said such inmates try to find a way fit in to prison life rather
than becoming involved in prison gangs or other activities that might
cause them to lose privileges.
Under cross-examination from Wisner, Longmire testified that he actively
opposes the death penalty.
Loper also called Gilda Kessner, a Dallas clinical and forensic
psychologist retained by the defense to provide a "risk assessment" of
Acuna.
Kessner testified that based on her examination of documentary evidence
and tests and interviews of Acuna, applied to an actuarial-based study,
she found that he has a 34.9 % chance of committing a serious violent act
within the prison system.
Kessner testified that Acuna's lack of disciplinary action during his
incarceration since his Nov. 17 arrest indicates that he has already
adapted to institutional life. If he committed no serious offenses after
10 years in prison, she said, the chances that he would in the future
would drop to "near zero."
Wisner cross-examined Kessner about her interview with Acuna. She said
that when asked about the Carroll murders, he told her that afterward, "he
felt dead inside."
She also testified that he told her that 2 unknown males had encouraged
him to kill the couple and flee to Dallas.
The remainder of Monday's testimony consisted of numerous relatives of
Acuna, who uniformly described the family as a tight-knit one, and Robert
Acuna as shy, polite and respectful toward others.
The testimony, which stretched into the late evening, ended with that of
Armando Acuna, the defendant's father.
Asked by Loper what effect his son's conviction has had on the family,
Acuna said "It's terrible; it's a tough deal."
Of his son's behavior at home, Acuna said, "I couldn't ask for better,
really. He was as good as they come."
He said he would support his son "100 %."
During cross-examination, Wisner and Acuna had a heated exchange about
Acuna's lying to police about his son's disappearance during the first
hours of the Carroll murder investigation.
Acuna accused prosecutors and police of "railroading" his son, and said
authorities had not investigated far enough.
Testimony is set to resume at 9:30 a.m. today in the 262nd District Court,
followed by closing arguments.
(source: The Baytown Sun)
********************************
3 Conroe teens arrested for drug murder
3 Conroe teens are facing capital murder charges after police say they
gunned down a Houston man in a drug deal gone bad Tuesday morning.
Statements from witnesses who saw parts of the altercation and shooting
about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday in the parking lot of the former Kmart store on
South Loop 336 led Conroe Police detectives to the suspects. An anonymous
tip about their whereabouts enabled police to take the teens into custody
Tuesday afternoon, said Sgt. Bob Berry.
Michael Warren Stone, 19, Samuel Avery Yard, 18, and James Wayne South
III, 19, all of Conroe, were taken in for questioning Tuesday afternoon
and charged with capital murder by late evening. They were placed in the
Montgomery County Jail.
Police believe South set up an alleged drug deal between Stone and the
victim, 22-year-old Kenneth Lawrence Osborn, of Houston, which was to take
place behind the former Kmart store.
When Stone and Yard, who was driving, arrived behind the vacant store the
transaction apparently went bad, the drug deal was not completed and an
altercation ensued, according to Berry.
Osborn attempted to flee in his vehicle, but before he could leave the
area, he was shot multiple times at close range, Berry said.
The vehicle rolled from behind the former Kmart store to an area near the
old garden center, where, according to the Osborn's girlfriend, who was in
the back seat of his vehicle during the shooting, Stone allegedly pulled
Osborn from the vehicle and got in himself.
"Stone absconded with the narcotics, and he and Yard left the area in
Yard's vehicle," Berry said.
Statements from Osborn's girlfriend and 3 others, who witnessed parts of
the crime, helped police identify the suspects.
"The vehicle description given by all three of the external witnesses and
the description of the shooter all matched the description given by the
girlfriend, and they all match the suspects," Berry said.
Police were summoned to the parking lot Tuesday morning after someone
reported shots being fired in the area.
When officers arrived, they found a female with blood on her pants running
through the parking lot shouting that someone had killed her boyfriend,
Berry said.
Officers found Osborn lying dead in the parking lot with multiple gunshot
wounds. His vehicle had collided with another vehicle in the parking lot.
Osborn's girlfriend was not injured, but was very shaken by the incident,
Berry said.
Police believe Stone was the shooter, but Yard and South will also face
capital murder charges.
"Yard was the driver of the vehicle and was there while the incident took
place," Berry said. "South made the deal that set it all up. He wasn't
there when the actual shooting took place, but he knew what was going on."
All 3 men were taken into custody together at a Conroe residence Tuesday.
"We also recovered a gun we believe was used in the crime at that time,"
Berry said.
All 3 teens remained in the Montgomery County Jail Tuesday night. They
were expected to go before a judge for a bond hearing this morning.
A capital murder conviction carries a sentence of either life in prison
with the possibility of parole or death, according to the Texas Penal
Code.
(source: The Courier, August 4)
