death penalty news
October 7, 2004
TEXAS:
Second execution in Texas in as many days
Texas Condemned inmate Peter Miniel got the punishment he sought.
The 42-year-old asked that no additional appeals be filed to stop his
execution. None was, and the lethal injection was carried out yesterday.The
Illinois man became the 15th Texas inmate put to death this year and the
second in as many nights.He uttered a brief prayer as a final statement
before the lethal drugs took effect.Three more executions are scheduled
this month in Texas, including one next week.
Miniel becomes the 15th inmate executed in Texas this year and the 328th
since Texas resumed executions in 1982.
He is the 47th person legally killed nationwide in 2004 and the 932nd
inmate in modern times.
(source: AP & Joerg Sommer)
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Inmate Freed After 17 Years on Death Row
Prosecutors once called him a ?satanic demon,? but fatal fire probably
wasn?t even arson.
A man who spent 17 of his 59 years on death row in Texas was abruptly
released Wednesday after prosecutors conceded that there was no evidence
that he started a fatal fire in 1986.
Ernest Ray Willis, clutching his release papers, walked out of a prison
unit here into the arms of his wife, Verilyn. They wed four years ago while
he was behind bars; it was the first time they had embraced.
?It didn?t sink in until I walked out that door,? Willis said, his lip
trembling. The twill slacks prison officials had given him to wear were too
big in the waist, forcing him to hitch them up with his thumb. ?Once Texas
gets you, they don?t want to let you go,? he said. ?I walk out of here an
innocent man.?
Willis, who was described to jurors as a ?satanic demon? by prosecutors,
said he wasn?t sure where he and his wife would live, though they were
quick to say it wouldn?t be in Texas.
Earlier this year, a judge raised troubling questions about Willis? 1987
conviction on a murder-arson charge. That prompted Pecos County Dist. Atty.
Ori T. White to revisit the case. White hired an arson analyst who pored
over the evidence and determined that Willis had been wrongly convicted of
setting fire to a house in West Texas.
Not only did Willis not start the fire, which killed two women, the blaze
probably wasn?t caused by arson at all, the analysis found. Most likely,
White said, the fire was caused by an electrical problem ? a broken ceiling
fan or a faulty outlet.
?He simply did not do the crime,? said White, whose predecessors took
Willis to trial. ?The justice system actually worked in this case. But
admittedly, it worked very slowly. I?m sorry it wasn?t quicker. I?m sorry
this man was on death row for so long and that there were so many lost years.?
U.S. District Judge M. Brock Jones Jr., on White?s recommendation, signed
the papers ordering Willis? release on Tuesday.
Dr. Gerald Hurst, the Austin, Texas-based arson analyst White hired, is a
retired chemist who spent a long career working with rocket propellants in
the aerospace industry and with explosives for defense contractors. He has
studied numerous cases as a consultant in recent years and spent two months
working on the Willis case.
?I wanted to make sure that I understood everything,? Hurst said. ?I
couldn?t find any trace of evidence that this was arson. It was a joke. It
kind of blew me away.?
In the summer of 1986, Willis, then 40 years old, was a hard-driving,
hard-drinking, itinerant oilfield roughneck. He had recently connected with
a cousin, Billy Willis, and the two were staying with friends at a house in
tiny Iraan, Texas, which today has a population of 1,219 and was then even
smaller.
The morning of June 11, following a boisterous party at the house, flames
erupted. The Willis cousins escaped, but the fire killed Elizabeth Grace
Belue, 24, and Gail Joe Allison, 25. Investigators were mystified at first,
but officers who responded to the fire soon reported that Ernest Willis had
acted strange and distant outside the house.
Soon, the investigators found what they believed to be ?pour patterns? on
the floor of the house ? traces of some sort of accelerant that they
believed had been used to start the fire. Willis had reported that after
attempting to wake his housemates he had run from the burning house yelling
?Fire!? But authorities determined that the soles of his feet showed no
evidence of burning.
A warrant was issued for his arrest. He turned himself in and a grand jury
? to the surprise of law enforcement officers who had conceded that they
didn?t have much of a case ? indicted him on murder-arson charges.
During his trial, authorities say today, Willis was given large amounts of
antipsychotic medication, which left him in a trance of sorts. Prosecutors
seized on his mental condition, telling the jury that he was coldhearted, a
?satanic demon.? His court-appointed lawyers offered jurors little argument
that they should spare his life, and they didn?t.
Hurst discovered that the ?pour patterns? used as primary evidence at the
time were actually not evidence that an accelerant had been used to torch
the house. Since the mid-1980s, he said, analysts have made vast
improvements in arson investigations, and they have discovered that a
phenomenon known as ?flashover burning? can leave the same patterns on the
floor as an accelerant.
It happens, he said, at the moment that temperatures inside a building
suddenly spike. Today, the phenomenon would be recognized instantly by
investigators, Hurst said. Willis didn?t have any burn marks his soles
because the fire hadn?t burned the floor of the house by the time he ran
out, Hurst said.
?All of their indicators [that it was arson] are basically old wives? tales
by today?s standards,? Hurst said. ?Those were the bad old days of fire
investigation, and it?s just really unfortunate that he wound up on death
row because of it.?
White, meanwhile, discovered a number of troubling details.
Willis, it turned out, left his prized eelskin boots inside the house,
suggesting, White said, that he had to run out quickly. Billy Willis, the
cousin, woke up earlier that night and smelled something burning. Unable to
find the source, he went back to sleep. The cousins were close, White said,
and Ernest Willis surely would have woken Billy before setting the house
ablaze. Instead, White said, Billy Willis only survived the fire by
?jumping out the window naked.?
Willis? release is the latest in a series of developments that death
penalty opponents here find troubling. Texas is responsible for about a
third of the nation?s executions.
And it came a day after 30-year-old Edward Green III was put to death in
Texas, despite the efforts of capital punishment supporters and opponents
to delay his execution while newly discovered evidence could be reviewed.
The Houston Police Department disclosed in August that 280 boxes of lost
evidence involving thousands of cases had been found in a property room.
Gov. Rick Perry, who did not return phone calls seeking comment Wednesday,
declined to intervene in that case and has rejected calls for a death
penalty moratorium. Former Texas Gov. Mark White is among those who asked
Perry to stop executions until all of the misplaced evidence could be
cataloged.
To death penalty opponents, Willis has quickly become another symbol of
what they call a flawed capital punishment system in Texas.
?The system is broken. And it has to be repaired,? said Steve Hall,
director of StandDown Texas, an Austin nonprofit that is among those
fighting for a moratorium on executions.
(source: Axis of Logic)
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TENNESSEE:
UPDATE: Sevierville Couple Will Face Death Penalty
An East Tennessee couple will face the death penalty if convicted of
kidnapping and murdering a South Carolina executive.
David Edens and Jennifer Holloway of Sevierville are charged with killing
71-year old Jim Cockman.
Police say Edens and Holloway stuffed his body in a freezer after he died
during a carjacking.
(source: volunteertv)
======================
USA: (book review)
Scott Turow on the death penalty, law and sweet success
Scott Turow's international fame has spread as he penned one best-selling
legal thriller after another following the debut of "Presumed Innocent" in
1987. But the 55-year-old attorney also has been prominent in legal
circles, as the partner in a prestigious Chicago firm and a member of the
Illinois Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment.
Turow's service on that 14-member citizens panel resulted in his second
non-fiction book, "Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing
With the Death Penalty," now out in paperback from Picador.
In this award-winning book, Turow eloquently explains how what he learned
on the governor's panel helped him reconcile his conflicting feelings about
the death penalty and finally arrive at a position of outright opposition
on a variety of grounds. Turow, an engaging talker, discussed this during a
Tuesday visit to Seattle.
Since "Ultimate Punishment" was published in 2003, are you encouraged or
discouraged by developments with the death penalty in America?
Anybody who is realistic about the death penalty has to see there's an ebb
and flow about this issue. Generally speaking, things continue to inch
toward a recognition that the death penalty is just not worth it, but
change will be slow in coming. There is a moratorium on use of the death
penalty in Illinois now and everybody seems at peace with that. At least
until there's another John Wayne Gacy and the whole debate will be revived.
You say that if Gacy, who murdered more than 30 men, were on the gurney
awaiting lethal injection, you could press the button to start that
process. Yet you say you're against the death penalty. How do you reconcile
those positions?
I don't deny my own anger and moral outrage for crimes like Gacy's. I don't
deny there are cases like Gacy's where it does not seem morally repugnant
to put a murderer to death in reprisal for his crimes. But my point is: You
can never design a death penalty system to reach just the "right cases"
without also reaching "wrong cases," where the innocent person may have
been convicted or the application of the death penalty has been screamingly
unequal.
You've had seven best sellers as a writer and your legal career has also
been marked by great success. What keeps you writing and practicing law
when you could retire?
People who've had this success have three things in common. One is that
they've been lucky and anybody who has been greatly successful and does not
recognize the role of luck in that is a fool. The second is they've worked
very hard and the third is they've enjoyed using whatever talent they got
and they had a pride in what brought them to prominence.
I do what I do because I enjoy it, although I often confess that some
aspects of the practice of the law make me worn out on the law and I do not
do it as much because of that. There is the pressure to get a brief done on
time and dealing with the ugly SOB on the other side. Life -- life is too
short. ... There are times when I have walked out of a courtroom and
promised myself that I will never try another case.
You're probably not going to pick a favorite among your books, but
"Presumed Innocent" must hold a special place in your heart.
It is my signature book. I remember reading a book at age 16 by the
screenwriter for "Bullitt" who said writing it had changed his life. I had
dreams of being a writer and I wondered what it would be like to be able to
say a book had changed my life. "Presumed Innocent" did that. ...
I went from somebody writing on the morning commuter train to being a
best-selling novelist at a speed that was great enough to make my head spin
like in "The Exorcist." I read a few pages of the novel every now and then
and I wish I could understand what it was that made that book so special.
If I did, I would put it into a bottle. But I've concluded the thing that
makes certain books so compelling is indefinable. ...
And the movie version of "Presumed Innocent" -- how could I avoid it, since
it is on TV so often. One of my kids is always calling me into the room
with, "Hey, Dad, 'Presumed Innocent' is on again!" And we all watch for a
few minutes, but it's like staring into a fire in the fireplace for us.
Then we pull away.
(source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
==========
VIRGINIA:
Malvo case exposes state?s death-penalty split
True to Virginia?s roots, the state political establishment will cast its
lot with the executioners when the U. S. Supreme Court takes up the
juvenile death penalty on Oct. 13.
Attorney General Jerry Kilgore has joined his counterparts in Alabama,
Delaware, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah in signing a legal brief supporting
retention of the ultimate penalty for youths whose crimes were committed at
ages 16 or 17.
Unfortunately, that?s par for the course from the state that carried out
the first execution in the New World and that is second only to Texas in
executions since death-penalty statutes were revised in the 1970s.
This time, however, the hang-?em-high crowd won?t be the only ones
representing Virginia at a Supreme Court death penalty hearing.
Also speaking loud and clear by their actions will be the Chesapeake jury
that gave Lee Boyd Malvo life in prison, rather than death, for his role in
the I-95 sniper killings two years ago.
That decision in one of the most notorious crime sprees in American history
is powerful testament to evolving community standards on the execution of
juveniles. Despite gruesome testimony about Malvo?s role in the
cold-blooded, random killings, jurors appeared persuaded that his
susceptibility to adult influence mitigated against death.
That, in fact, is the choice of most of the civilized world. When it comes
to judging those whose crimes were committed before they turned 18, it is
increasingly the choice of Americans as well.
An ABC News poll released in December 2003 showed seven out of 10 Americans
oppose the execution of juvenile offenders. Thirty-one states now ban the
practice. The two most recent additions, South Dakota and Wyoming, joined
the list this spring.
Virginia is one of just six states that have carried out executions of
individuals who were younger than 18 at the time of their offense.
Shamefully, three such deaths puts Virginia second only to Texas in the
category.
Virginia politicians appear not to have heard, or at least heeded, the
evolving science about adolescent brains. Increasingly sophisticated
research affirms what many parents have long suspected: that full brain
development does not occur until the late teens or 20s. Young males often
display an impetuousness and lack of control that is eclipsed by age.
Since 1994, death sentences for juvenile offenders have dropped nationally.
An intensive, soon-to-be-published Columbia University study credits
evolving attitudes, rather than factors such as a decreased juvenile
homicide arrest rate.
Regrettably, many leading Virginia politicians retain their knee-jerk
embrace of capital punishment in broad form. When the Supreme Court struck
down the penalty for individuals with mental retardation two years ago,
state policy-makers cleaved to the losing side.
This time, however, their voices may be drowned out by the action of a
conservative, tough-on-crime community that came face-to-face with the
reality of juvenile crime and drew a life-and-death distinction.
(source: The Virginian-Pilot)
