August 25
TEXAS----execution
Inmate executed for double slaying
Condemned inmate Jasen Shane Busby was executed today for the fatal
shooting of 2 teenage girls more than 9 years ago in Cherokee County in
East Texas.
About 2 1/2 hours before he was scheduled to be strapped to the death
house gurney, the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, rejected a last-day
appeal that attempted to keep Busby, 28, of Tyler, from becoming the 11th
Texas prisoner executed this year and the 1st of 2 on consecutive nights
at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit.
James Vernon Allridge, 41, was set for lethal injection Thursday evening
for the fatal shooting of a Fort Worth convenience store clerk in 1985.
Busby was arrested within an hour after cousins Tennille Thompson, 18, and
Brandy Gray, 16, were gunned down at a mobile home in Antioch, just west
of Jacksonville. A 3rd person, Christopher Kelley, then 18, was shot in
the neck but managed to call for help. He identified Busby as the gunman
and testified against him.
Busby was caught with Kelley's red pickup truck. Ammunition from the
assault rifle used in the slayings was scattered in the back of the truck.
Records showed he told an officer the "devil made me do it."
"He made a bad choice, and bad choices cost pretty dearly sometimes,"
James Cromwell, the now-retired Cherokee County district attorney who
prosecuted Busby, said this week.
Court records also showed Busby and the victims had been partying for
several hours and had smoked marijuana. Busby, who was 19 at the time,
gave a confession to police but argued later in appeals that his statement
was the result of drug intoxication. The courts rejected the argument.
Busby declined to speak with reporters in the weeks leading up to his
execution date.
In letters he wrote to friends while in jail awaiting trial, he described
the slayings in graphic detail. In unsuccessful appeals, he contended
authorities improperly viewed and made copies of the letters.
"His letters, his confession, the testimony of the eyewitness, we had a
lot of evidence," Cromwell said. "The facts fit the need for the death
penalty and the state sought the death penalty. We didn't make up the
facts."
In similar appeals to the courts, attorneys for both Busby and Allridge
challenged the way Texas juries decide death penalties.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the claims, sending the cases
into the federal courts.
Defense lawyers argued a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June in a Washington
state case makes improper the question of whether convicted murderers
present a future danger. It's one of the questions Texas jurors are asked
when they consider whether a capital murder convict should be sentenced to
death.
The appeals also contended a life prison term is the maximum sentence a
judge can impose if a jury can't agree on the so-called special issue
questions that can lead to a death sentence. But the appeals argued a
death sentence based on a jury's answers to those questions is a "tail
that wags the dog" escalation of the statutory maximum sentence and
improper under recent Supreme Court decisions.
In addition, lawyers for Allridge, whose brother, Ronald, was executed in
1995 for the slaying of a woman during a restaurant robbery in Fort Worth,
contended he's been rehabilitated during his 17 years in prison and
executing him after his rehabilitation would be improper cruel and unusual
punishment.
Allridge's lawyers also argued jurors deliberating his punishment were not
allowed to properly consider his abusive childhood and his domination by
his violent older brother.
Allridge was condemned for the slaying of store clerk Brian Clendennen,
21, during a $300 robbery in Fort Worth. Ronald Allridge drove the getaway
car.
The former furniture builder and restaurant manager said last week from
death row he's long regretted his involvement in the slaying and the grief
it caused his victim's family.
"If I could say anything, it would be how sorry I am that any of this had
to be part of their lives," he said. "I'm sorry. I know those sound like
the two most trifling words you could ever say. As insignificant as they
were, they were sincere."
Busby becomes the 11th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in
Texas and the 324th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on
December 7, 1982.
Busby becomes the 85th condemned inmate to be put to death during the
tenure of Governor Rick Perry.
Busby becomes the 40th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in
the USA and the 925th overall since America resumed executions on January
17, 1977.
(source: Associated Press & Rick Halperin)
