Oct. 10
TEXAS:
Old enough to kill, too young to die?----High court to hear arguments on
execution of teen offenders
(1st of 5 parts)
Texas leads the world in killing young killers.
Marie Brown had given her son Jarrett a Dallas Cowboys jacket because he
liked the team. The jacket cost him his life.
Only in the United States do laws allow the execution of murderers who
were younger than 18 when they committed their crimes. And Texas has put
more juvenile offenders to death - 13 - than all other states combined
since 1985.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo can't match it. Nor can Iran, China
or Pakistan. Those countries have executed under-age offenders in recent
years despite government bans, but none of them comes close to Texas,
which accounted for 6 of the last 7 U.S. executions of juvenile killers.
"As far as Texas is concerned, if you're old enough to hold a rattle,
they'll kill you," said Michael Byck, a lawyer in the Dallas County public
defender's office.
Actually, murderers must be at least 17 to make themselves eligible for
the Huntsville needle - for now. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will
hear arguments on whether capital punishment for crimes committed under
the age of 18 violates the Constitution.
The court will consider a Missouri case. But its decision could have the
greatest effect on Texas, which has 29 juvenile killers under death
sentence. No other state has half as many.
"The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past," Justice
John Paul Stevens wrote in 2002. "We should put an end to this shameful
practice."
Only 4 justices felt that way then, when the court declined to take up the
issue.
Court scholars say Justice Sandra Day O'Connor may join the four this
time, making a majority. If so, it would be the most significant death
penalty action since the court outlawed capital punishment for the
mentally retarded 2 years ago.
73 in 12 states
There are 73 juvenile offenders under death sentences in 12 states.
"It's immoral, it's barbaric and it violates international law," said
state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, who has sought to have the Texas
execution age raised to 18.
But Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School, argues for
executing those under-18 offenders whose depravities put them among the
"worst of the worst" criminals.
"They're vicious and they're evil, and they deserve to die for it," he
said.
Texas's death row has no shortage of men whose crimes as 17-year-olds
were, by any standard, horrific.
Raymond Levi Cobb, for example, told police he killed a 23-year-old woman
while stealing a stereo from her Walker County home in 1993. He confessed
to dragging her body to the woods half a mile away. Then he returned to
the house, took the woman's sleeping 1-year-old daughter from her bed, and
went back to the woods.
There, he dug the woman's grave. In the hole next to her he placed the
baby, who was still breathing as he shoveled in the dirt.
"Just like we can celebrate great goodness and heroism on the part of
17-year-olds, we can deal with great evil on the part of 17-year-olds,"
said Mr. Blecker. "When we find it, we should be willing to punish it."
As with any debate over the death penalty, this one embraces causality,
morality, vengeance and race. International standards have entered the
argument as well. Every country but the United States and Somalia, which
has no organized government, has adopted a United Nations convention
barring execution of under-18 criminals.
Dozens of national and international organizations recently urged the
Supreme Court to ban the juvenile death penalty. Among them were the
American Bar Association, the American Medical Association and the
European Union. Other signatories included Jimmy Carter, Mikhail
Gorbachev, former Polish President Lech Walesa and South African
Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Victor Streib, professor of law at Ohio Northern University, said
Americans have used the juvenile death penalty as their fears of violent
juvenile crime have risen. Death sentences for juvenile offenders reached
their high in 1995, 1 year after murders committed by 17-year-olds reached
their peak.
Downward trend
Since then, both the juvenile murder rate and the number of juvenile death
sentences have declined in the state. (Although those who commit murder at
17 are commonly referred to as juveniles, they are considered adults under
the law.)
"It's been this way since the Wild West," said Stanley Schneider, a
Houston appellate lawyer who has defended juvenile killers.
Those wishing to recall the frontier origins of the current statute
sometimes invoke the "Waco Horror" of 1916, in which a 17-year-old black
farmhand named Jesse Washington was accused of killing a white woman.
An all-white jury took four minutes to find him guilty. Then a mob pulled
him from the courtroom and dragged him in chains down the street to Waco
City Hall, where his body was burned.
Administration of the current law is "fundamentally racist," said Mr.
Burnam, the state representative. "We are a part of the old Confederacy."
Since 2000, 6 juvenile offenders have been executed in Texas; all were
black. 5 of their victims were white. Of the under-age killers now under
death sentence in Texas, 31 percent are black.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott declined to be interviewed about the
juvenile death penalty. But he has joined 5 other state attorneys general
in urging the Supreme Court to find that the execution of under-18
offenders is not cruel and unusual punishment.
"A teenager who plots like an adult, kills like an adult, and covers up
like an adult should be held responsible ... like an adult," their brief
says.
Mr. Abbott and his colleagues believe the juvenile death penalty should be
available for those who commit murders that are especially brutal or
meticulously planned.
But not every juvenile offender who gets a Texas death sentence committed
a crime that was coldly plotted or expertly obscured. Some teenagers who
kill "like an adult" have the mental power of small children.
Tony Tyrone Dixon, 17, fatally shot a woman - a dentist who provided free
treatment to the poor at neighborhood clinics - during a 1994 Houston
carjacking.
An IQ of 54
It was a brutal and senseless slaying, an innocent and productive life
snuffed for a brief joyride in a red Thunderbird. But a transcript of the
interrogation by Houston police indicated that the murderer had only a dim
notion of what he had done.
Sgt. J.W. Belk: "Do you understand she's no longer?"
Dixon: "Killed?"
Belk: "Yeah, you killed her. She's not alive anymore. She's dead. You
understand that? Did you know that she was dead? Well, why are you
crying?"
Dixon: "Huh?"
Belk: "You know she died right there, Tony, after you shot her. And that's
why you're charged with murder.
Dixon: "You know if she gots any, she got kids?"
3 years earlier, Mr. Dixon's IQ had been tested at 54. A score of 70 or
below is generally considered to indicate retardation. Born to a
13-year-old rape victim, he could not read or write at 17 and lived at a
home for the mentally disabled.
Another look
Though he was sentenced to die, last year the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals sent Mr. Dixon's case back to the trial court. There, a district
judge will decide whether Mr. Dixon's execution can be barred under the
U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 ruling that blocks capital punishment for the
retarded.
Some lawyers argue that many 17-year-olds who are arrested for murder do
not have the maturity to stand up for themselves in a tough police
interrogation.
Toronto Patterson was convicted in Dallas in 1995 of shooting to death his
cousin and her 2 young daughters. Police said he did it to get money for
car rims. He was 17 at the time.
Mr. Patterson contended that the confession he gave to Dallas police had
been coerced and that his requests for a lawyer were ignored - an
allegation that police denied.
The jury that convicted Mr. Patterson never heard this: A month after his
admission, in an unrelated case, the same detective had extracted a signed
confession from another young murder suspect during an aggressive
interrogation. That suspect, it was later proved, was not guilty.
Died claiming innocence
Mr. Patterson was executed in 2002, the last juvenile offender to receive
lethal injection in Texas. He went to his death professing his innocence.
Those who wish to spare juvenile killers from state-sanctioned death
contend that many of them never had the chance to overcome childhood
traumas. Their short life stories include searing accounts of grievous
influences grandparents as sexual predators, gang leaders as neighborhood
heroes, mothers giving cocaine to pre-teens as if it were milk, poverty as
a constant, violent death all around.
Joseph Cannon was hit by a truck at age 5, and suffered brain damage. He
finished only one year of school, drank gasoline to get high and
repeatedly attempted suicide, once by swallowing insecticide.
He told psychiatrists he was sexually abused for years by his stepfather
and grandfather. Doctors diagnosed him as schizophrenic and psychotic.
When he was 15, he threw a 6-year-old boy into a bayou. The boy drowned.
By age 17 he was illiterate and homeless. That's when he killed a San
Antonio mother of eight as she begged for her life.
Mr. Cannon was executed in 1998. He was 38 when it finally happened, and
he had spent more than half his life behind bars.
Stephani Walsh, daughter of the victim, said Mr. Cannon apologized to her
in a private meeting on his execution day.
"Then he said, 'But I still have to die?'" Ms. Walsh recalled. "I said,
'Yes.'
"I really empathized with Cannon's bad deal, the deck of cards that he was
dealt before he met my mom," said Ms. Walsh, a San Antonio lawyer. "No
question in my mind that he got screwed. That still doesn't relieve him of
his obligation to pay for the crime.
"I don't think any of these young offenders' backgrounds should relieve
them of receiving the same penalty as those who are a mere 12 months
older," she said.
A recent study of every juvenile offender executed since 1985 found that
all but one of them had experienced "life determinant traumatic factors."
The study, by Cleveland State University sociologist Chris Mallett, also
surveyed 53 young killers currently on death row. It provided a checklist
of 9 life traumas, including drug addiction, brain damage, school failure,
abuse and poverty.
"The average childhood does not experience even one of the nine factors.
Zero is the norm," Mr. Mallett said. "Whenever a child experiences even
one, it's a major problem."
8 out of 9
What of those who suffered four, five or even more, as many of the
juvenile offenders did? Said Mr. Mallett, "They didn't have a chance."
Nobody on the current national death row roster had more categories
checked in the Mallet survey - 8 - than Eddie C. Johnson of Fort Worth.
This might make Mr. Johnson one of the best arguments against the death
penalty. The problem with that is his remorseless, almost cheerful
approach to shooting people.
"I don't feel bad about it," he said in a prison interview. He smiled when
he said it.
Mr. Johnson, who was kicked out of 6 schools for fighting, was a heroin
addict at 15 and a member of the Bloods.
One February night in 1996, a carload of predators - 17-year-old Mr.
Johnson and fellow gang members, according to trial testimony - cruised
Fort Worth streets looking for motorists to follow home.
3 who survived
They confronted a man in his driveway and shot him in the mouth. Ten
minutes later, they shot a woman in the arm. A few minutes after that,
they shot a 39-year-old man in the back and the face.
All the victims survived - but at least 1 suffered severe, permanent
injuries.
A week later, Jeff Doolittle, a 42-year-old electronics salesman, was on
his way home in his blue Mercedes. He had gone to Wal-mart to buy
microwave popcorn for his co-workers.
Mr. Doolittle pulled into his driveway about 9:30 p.m. As he stepped from
his car, a man emerged from the darkness. After a short struggle, Mr.
Doolittle was shot through the heart.
Mr. Johnson denies committing this murder. But 2 of his alleged
accomplices testified that he did it, and 2 0thers said he confessed his
role to them.
"He was laughing and he say, 'I shot him,'" testified Kendrick Battle, a
friend. "He said the man tried to run and he shot him in the back 3
times."
More harm than good
His lawyers commissioned a psychiatric report on Mr. Johnson, a standard
tool in a death penalty defense.
But they chose ultimately not to introduce it as evidence because, they
said, its portrait of Mr. Johnson's inner workings would have done his
case more harm than good.
He was convicted and sentenced to death.
"He thinks he's a hero to all the other gang members now," said his
lawyer, Ray Hall. "These guys are like topless dancers. They live in their
own little world."
Now 25, Mr. Johnson said he has grown up on death row. "I've had a chance
to look at things from a different perspective," he said. "I've matured a
lot."
He was asked what he would do if he could walk out of prison today. Maybe
go to school, he said, or find a job.
"But if I didn't get a good job," he said, "it's damn near inevitable for
me to go back to crime to get money."
*****
Condemned but cocky, killer unrepentant----Sentenced to die for 1 murder,
ex-gang member recalls another
Eddie C. Johnson looks to be one of the happiest men on death row. He
smiles, he laughs and he charms, even when he's telling a reporter how he
murdered an innocent man.
One of 29 juvenile offenders under death sentence in Texas, Mr. Johnson
was convicted in 1997 of killing a Fort Worth man in a driveway robbery.
He denies doing that.
**
EDDIE C. JOHNSON
Born: Nov. 26, 1978
Date of offense: March 6, 1996
County: Tarrant
Race: Black
Race of victim: White
Mr. Johnson and fellow gang members followed Jeff Doolittle home as he
drove from a Wal-Mart in Fort Worth. Mr. Johnson was convicted of
ambushing Mr. Doolittle, 42, in his driveway and shooting him in the back
as he fled.
**
But he breezily admitted during a prison interview to a crime for which he
has never been tried: the slaying of a young college student who made the
mistake of wearing the wrong coat.
Here is Mr. Johnson's account, supplemented with information from court
documents and interviews with others:
The 3 of them cruised the south side of Fort Worth in a stolen blue Ford
Taurus. It was Christmas Eve 1995. They were hoping to settle a gang score
and were angry that they hadn't found anyone to kill yet.
The one called Fat Chris drove. Little R, 15, rode shotgun. And
17-year-old E&J - Mr. Johnson's nickname - sat in the back. They called
themselves the East Wood Pirus, a local branch of the Bloods gang.
Mr. Johnson, who grew up in the rough Stop Six neighborhood of Fort Worth,
had run with the gang since he was 13. 2 years after that, he started
using heroin and fathered the 1st of his 2 children.
Their car rolled down East Berry Street, past muffler shops and liquor
stores, about 3 a.m. Few holiday decorations glowed at this hour in this
forlorn part of town.
At the corner of Berry and Riverside Drive, they passed a 24-hour
convenience store. A young man stood near a pay phone on the store's
outside wall.
He wore a jacket with a Dallas Cowboys logo. In the 27-degree night, he
had pulled the hood over his head.
Little R told Mr. Johnson, "Say, blood, look at that K-rab slipping."
K-rab was the name the Bloods used for the archrival Crips. The Crips
favored Cowboys regalia.
Earlier that night, a Crip had robbed a Blood, so the East Wood Pirus were
out for revenge. Now they had their chance.
Fat Chris turned the corner and drove the Taurus around the store three
times - "To make sure the victim would be a stable target," Mr. Johnson
explained later.
They parked behind Cowboy Cleaners, across a parking lot from the
convenience store, out of the young man's sight. Fat Chris turned off the
headlights as Little R and Mr. Johnson stepped from the car.
Little R carried a .38-caliber revolver. Mr. Johnson had a TEC 9mm
semi-automatic. They ran across the parking lot and huddled at the side of
the store.
"Are you ready?" Little R asked Mr. Johnson, who answered him by
chambering a round.
They rushed around the corner and came face to face with the young man in
the Cowboys jacket, Jarrett Brown.
The wrong jacket
Mr. Brown did not belong to the Crips or any other gang. He simply liked
the Cowboys. His mother had bought the coat he was wearing from Dillard's.
A 20-year-old student at Texas Southern University, he worked part time
for UPS and dreamed of becoming an accountant. Mr. Brown was one of those
scrupulous individuals who pay their rent a week before it's due. He hid
his extra cash and credit cards between the pages of a calculus textbook.
"He had books, books, books," said his mother, Marie Brown. "Jarrett would
read anything."
That afternoon, before leaving Houston, he talked with his mother by
phone. "He asked me was I going to fix greens," she said. "He loved
greens."
Because he did not like to fly, Mr. Brown had taken a Greyhound bus home
for Christmas, $32 for a 1-way ticket from Houston to Fort Worth. A friend
picked him up downtown and took him to his mother's house.
Mrs. Brown, a quality-control inspector for Texas Instruments, was at work
when Jarrett arrived home. His brother, Terry, had intended to be there to
let Mr. Brown in, but he had gone out for some food.
Mr. Brown was locked out, his friend already gone. So he walked a half
mile north to the convenience store at Berry and Riverside, where he used
the pay phone to call his uncle.
His uncle promised to pick him up within minutes. In the meantime, the
uncle said, go inside the store for safety. But Mr. Brown waited outside.
Mr. Johnson said Little R fired first, from a few feet away. The bullet
hit Mr. Brown in the temple, passing through his brain and shattering
against the inside of the skull on the other side.
Mr. Brown "made a loud noise," Mr. Johnson said, and crumpled to the
pavement.
Though he was clearly dead, they kept shooting - at least 13 times,
watching the body twitch as the shots struck it. They stopped when they
ran out of bullets.
Then they ran back to the car. One of them told Fat Chris, "We smoked the
dude."
This called for a celebration. They went to a friend's house and "got high
as the Empire State Building," Mr. Johnson said.
Denying a role
Prosecutors believed that they did not have enough evidence to try Little
R for Mr. Brown's murder. But he was sentenced to seven years in prison
for an aggravated robbery committed less than a month before Mr. Brown's
death.
He got out of prison last year and now lives in Tarrant County. In a brief
interview recently, he denied having anything to do with the killing of
Mr. Brown.
As for Mr. Johnson, prosecutors introduced Mr. Brown's murder during his
trial for the unrelated driveway slaying. It was used to indicate Mr.
Johnson's future dangerousness, a requirement for imposing capital
punishment.
In that trial, Fat Chris - Christopher Wallace - testified that he let
Little R and Mr. Johnson out of the car behind the cleaners with their
guns, but said he did not actually witness the shooting.
A lawyer at the trial asked Mr. Wallace why he was testifying. "They
killed an innocent man," he said.
Earlier this year, Mr. Johnson freely admitted to a reporter his role in
Mr. Brown's death.
But he held to his belief that Mr. Brown was a rival gang member and
therefore deserved to die.
"He was in college. He had a job. All that was true. But that doesn't mean
he wasn't in a gang," Mr. Johnson said. "He left the 'hood, but he came
back at the wrong time.
"You can't escape," he said. "Once you make enemies, that ain't something
you just take back and say, 'I quit.'"
No one else involved in the case believes that Mr. Brown was a gang
member.
"Of course not," said his mother. "He was clean-cut, clean-cut. He never
wore his pants sagging." She pointed to a photograph atop her TV of Mr.
Brown in a colorful preppy shirt. "He wanted to be a CPA."
In her living room, Mrs. Brown still has the envelope from the morgue that
held her son's personal effects. She kept the bus ticket but left the
Cowboys coat behind.
"It was all shot up," she said.
'I got used to it'
Mr. Johnson turns 26 next month. If the Supreme Court does not ban capital
punishment for juvenile offenders, he expects to be put to death soon.
"That's what I'm here for," he said. "It doesn't bother me as much as it
used to. I got used to it."
He spends much of his time now writing letters from his cell. In them, he
replaces every C that would normally appear with a K.
"That's a gang thing," he explained. "We're Crip killers. The C is for
Crip. The K is for kill."
A few months ago, Mrs. Brown started writing a letter of her own, to Mr.
Johnson.
She wanted to tell him about herself and what he had done to her - but she
couldn't finish it.
She wishes him to know that she has forgiven him and that she does not
believe he should be executed.
"He can change. He's got a chance at a new life," she said. "You can kill
Eddie Johnson a thousand times; it's not going to bring Jarrett Brown
back."
Mrs. Brown is 58 now and no longer works for Texas Instruments.
"I retired," she said. "I was never any good after what happened."
In the months after the murder, she sometimes felt her son's presence - in
an unexpected whirlwind near his grave one afternoon, or in a bird that
flew into her house, hopped around, then flew back out.
"I told myself, 'That's Jarrett,'" she said.
At a 4th of July gathering, as she relaxed with family members at her
house, they heard unexplained noises from her empty kitchen: a drawer
opening, silverware rattling.
"I said, 'That's Jarrett, getting himself some guacamole,' " she recalled.
"He liked that guacamole."
In the last couple of years, though, such events have ceased.
"That means," she said, "that Jarrett's at peace now."
(source: Dallas Morning News)
