Oct. 9 NORTH CAROLINA----execution Perkins acknowledges family at time of death Sammy Crystal Perkins acknowledged both his family and the uncle of the 7-year-old girl he was convicted of killing in 1993 before dying quietly by lethal injection early Friday. In the small witness room at Central Prison in Raleigh, Perkins' brother, Martin Earl Perkins, and his niece, Kimberly Gorham, reached out toward the condemned man as he was wheeled into the death chamber at 1:50 a.m., 10 minutes before his scheduled execution by the state of North Carolina. Gorham waved and pressed her palm to the window that separated the witness room from the death chamber. Martin Perkins pointed a fist toward his brother, his ring clinking against the double-paned glass. Only about a foot on the other side of the glass, Sammy Perkins could have reached out to meet his brother's hand if he hadn't been restrained. Instead, Perkins turned his head, offered a toothy smile and mouthed something to his brother, who leaned forward in his blue plastic chair. Then Perkins turned back, his gaze drifting toward the ceiling, his head resting on a light blue pillow and his body covered from his feet to his shoulders with a light blue sheet. Underneath the sheet, straps held down Perkins' ankles, wrists, thighs and chest and an IV needle rested in each arm, according to prison officials. In the 2nd row of chairs in the witness room, Roderick "Hot Rod" Moore, the uncle of 7-year-old Lashenna "Jo Jo" Moore, shook his head and fought back tears. Perkins was convicted in 1993 of raping and smothering Jo Jo Moore to death in her grandmother's Hopkins Drive home. He was dating Moore's grandmother at the time. At 1:58 a.m., Moore sat up and waved both hands in the air to get Perkins' attention, jabbing his fingers toward himself when Perkins turned to look at him. Perkins nodded in acknowledgement. Warden Marvin Polk briefly entered the darkened witness room and announced that, without further instructions from the state secretary of correction, the execution would proceed as scheduled. Marvin Perkins and Gorham pressed their palms against the window. Moore began waving at Perkins again, this time pointing upward with both hands until Perkins again nodded at him. At 1 minute before 2 a.m., Perkins closed his eyes and began mouthing words to himself. At 2 a.m., he opened his eyes, swallowed, and licked his lips, opening and closing his eyes for the next two minutes until he again turned toward the window. He nodded at his relatives, took a deep breath, yawned and turned back toward the ceiling. His eyes closed, his tongue darted in and out of his mouth and then he went motionless. Moore put his head in his hands. "Oh God, Oh God," he said as Penny Warren, victim/witness coordinator for the Pitt County district attorney's office, put her arm around him. For the next 11 minutes, many in the room silently comforted each other. In the front row, one of Perkins' attorneys, Ed West, put his arm around fellow attorney Nora Hargrove. Gorham reached around Martin Perkins to take West's hand. Warren rubbed her hand against Moore's back. Pitt County assistant district attorneys Kimberly Robb and Darth Akins, Greenville police Sgt. Joe Friday and retired Greenville police detective Ricky Best sat quietly. At 2:14 a.m., a curtain was drawn across the window, blocking Perkins from view. A few seconds later, Polk entered the room. "Ladies and gentlemen, the orders of the court have been carried out. He was pronounced dead at 2:14 a.m.," Polk announced. Outside the prison gates, about 20 death penalty opponents had gathered to hold a vigil. Among those was Steve Woolford of Chatham County. Woolford, who has been attending vigils for the past couple years, said he had been corresponding via letters with Perkins since Perkins had been in prison and visited him few times. "Its especially hard to be out here tonight since its his last night," Woolford said. Perkins' final statement, which he made to Polk shortly before being wheeled into the death chamber, was directed toward his family: "I would like to say I love my mother, all my brothers and sisters and all my children. I'll see y'all on the other side. Thank you." More than a dozen members of Perkins' family, who visited with him between 10 a.m. and 11 p.m. Thursday, left the prison without comment. It wasnt until after 5 p.m. Thursday, when the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled on 2 appeals and Gov. Mike Easley had denied clemency, that Perkins became sure of his fate. In one court ruling, justices lifted, with a 5-4 vote, a stay of execution that had been issued by a federal judge last week to allow Perkins time to contest the state of North Carolina's method of execution. In the other, the high court ruled unanimously not to reverse state court rulings against Perkins on contested trial issues. Perkins, the second person executed in North Carolina this year, was the 1st to die from a new protocol for lethal injection recently adopted by the state. The new protocol changed the amount and order of the chemicals used. Officials with the state Department of Correction said the change allows for more anesthetic to be used as the death unfolds. A court challenge had claimed the previous method left the possibility for the condemned to feel pain during execution. Perkins becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in North Carolina and the 32nd overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1984. Perkins becomes the 48th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 933rd overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977. (sources: The Daily Reflector & Rick Halperin) TEXAS: Judiciary should delay Harris execution dates Members of the Harris County judiciary should stop setting execution dates for Texas death row inmates until next spring. The work of the Houston crime laboratory that handles evidence for cases in Harris County has been called into question, most recently with the discovery of 280 boxes of evidence that had not been examined. That is too late for two inmates executed this week, and it won't halt the execution of the nine Harris County inmates already scheduled through March. However, trial courts, which are responsible for setting execution dates, could prevent other inmates from being added to the list while questions of evidence are resolved. More than 150 men and women from Harris County are on death row. Gov. Rick Perry refused a request by Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, this week to halt the executions of Harris County inmates until March because of the quality of work at the crime lab. Those valid concerns warrant a suspension of the executions. This is only the latest call for a moratorium on executions across the nation. Concern about adequate legal defense for capital murder defendants and the disproportionate number of minority and indigent inmates on death row in Texas and other states also have prompted such calls. During the last legislative session, a proposal failed that would have allowed Texans to vote on a constitutional amendment imposing a 2-year moratorium on the death penalty. Because the executive and legislative branches of state government refuse to address the issue, the judiciary is the last resort. In this case, the trial courts offer the last hope. Once all legal appeals are exhausted, the trial court sets the execution date for the death row inmate. While judges face restrictions on how soon they can set an execution date, there are no limits on how far into the future the date can be scheduled. Thus, they can postpone setting an execution date for a few months to allow the system to work. There are no guarantees that new evidence will exonerate any of the men and women on death row, but it is unconscionable that they not be given time for evidence to be reviewed. (source: Editorial, San Antonio Express-News) MARYLAND: Court upholds death penalty in '91 murder----Baker's defense attorney plans appeal to U.S. Supreme Court Maryland's highest court upheld yesterday the death sentence of a Baltimore man convicted in the 1991 fatal shooting of a grandmother during a robbery in the parking lot of a Catonsville mall. The unanimous decision by the Court of Appeals brings Wesley Eugene Baker, 46, one step closer to the issuance of a warrant for his execution. William B. Purpura, a public defender representing Baker, said he intends to appeal the court's decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and plans a broader legal challenge that would explore the issue of race in capital cases. "We are close to the end and ... there's just nothing much more," Purpura said yesterday. "The Baltimore County state's attorney could seek a death warrant. They could do that now." S. Ann Brobst, a county prosecutor, said she will speak Tuesday with the state attorney general's senior counsel for capital litigation to decide on a course of action. Baker was scheduled to be put to death in May 2002. But days before his scheduled execution, then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening imposed a state moratorium on the death penalty. The moratorium was effectively lifted when Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. came into office, and in June convicted murderer Steven H. Oken was executed. In Baker's most recent appeal, he had argued that Maryland's process for sentencing death penalty cases is flawed. His lawyers focused on the way a judge or jury weighs reasons to sentence a murderer to death against reasons to spare the killer's life. Using a standard called "preponderance of the evidence," a judge or jury must decide whether aggravating factors, such as a rape or another felony committed along with the murder, outweigh mitigating factors, such as a defendant's troubled childhood. Preponderance of the evidence means that it is more likely than not that the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors. It is a less stringent standard than "beyond a reasonable doubt," which is required in finding a person guilty of a crime. But the Court of Appeals wrote in its 17-page opinion that the challenge to the evidence standard "is not a proper issue this case" because the balancing test was not used during Baker's sentencing hearing. The sentencing judge determined there were no mitigating factors to consider. Still, the appeals court went on in yesterday's opinion to reaffirm the constitutionality of the state's balancing test. But Michael Stark, an organizer with Campaign to End the Death Penalty, said the court missed the real issue: Plenty of mitigating evidence never reached the sentencing judge because Baker, told the night before the hearing by his attorneys about the family history they planned to present, forbid his attorneys from presenting any of it. "That's always been the sticking point with Baker," Stark said. "His life is like a horror story with tons and tons and tons of mitigating stuff." In a clemency petition delivered to Glendening in May 2002 in an effort to save Baker's life, the death row inmate's attorneys wrote that an unstable childhood with an exceptionally young mother led Baker to begin drinking vodka and using marijuana by age 10 and to start shooting heroin by 14. After running away from home, Baker frequented The Block and took to "sleeping in movie theaters, hotel bathrooms and abandoned cars," according to the petition. He quit school in the eighth grade, and at 14, according to the petition, began a relationship with a woman in her late 20s who supported a heroin habit by working as a prostitute. Baker was 34 when a Harford County jury convicted him of murder in 1992 for killing Jane Tyson, a 49-year-old teacher's aide. She was shot June 6, 1991, in front of 2 of her grandchildren in the parking lot of Westview Mall in a robbery that netted $10. Baker's lawyers also are preparing a legal challenge that would use a University of Maryland study released last year that found racial and geographic influences on capital punishment in the state. (source: Baltimore Sun) OHIO: Death row inmate says killing not intended The way Adremy Dennis sees it, he is being executed over a mere $15, and the robbery victim is partially to blame for his own death. "I told this man `Don't move,'" Dennis said during a pool interview last Monday from death row at Mansfield Correctional Institution. "I ain't saying it's all his fault, but why did he move? Every day I think about that. It ain't `Why did you kill that man?' It's `Why did you move?'" Dennis is scheduled to be executed by injection Wednesday for killing Kurt Kyle, 29, of Akron, during a robbery 10 years ago. At age 28, Dennis would be the youngest inmate put to death in Ohio since 1962. During a Sept. 10 interview with a member of the Ohio Parole Board, Dennis said he regretted that the robbery netted so little cash. "I'm about to get (profanity) killed over $15," he said. Dennis, of Akron, insists the killing with a 20-gauge sawed off shotgun was not planned and that he couldn't think straight because he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol. "(Kyle) had to know I was drunk. I know he could smell it on my breath, smell the weed lingering on my clothes. If I come up to you and tell you don't move, you're like this (still)," he said at the Mansfield prison. He told the parole board member that he had expected to be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Instead a Summit County Common Pleas Court jury convicted him of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and unlawful possession of a gun. "If my intent was to kill this man, like if they say we was out looking for any old Joe to rob, well that's (profanity)," Dennis said. The board voted 5-3 that Gov. Bob Taft deny clemency for Dennis. The dissenting members said Taft should consider clemency, citing Dennis' age at the time of the killing - 18_ and a troubled childhood. The majority said no evidence of injustice or his age and upbringing warranted clemency. Taft has not made a clemency decision yet. He can allow the execution to proceed or reduce Dennis' sentence. He has commuted the sentence of one inmate since Ohio resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1999. Dennis would be the 15th inmate to be executed during that period. Dennis has exhausted his procedural appeals. But he has a lawsuit pending against the state that claims the lethal-injection process in Ohio is unconstitutional. Prosecutors say that during the early morning of June 5, 1994, Dennis and Leroy Lamar Anderson tried to rob a man on an Akron inner-city street, but the man ran away. A short time later, Dennis and Anderson approached Kyle and Martin Eberhart in front of Kyle's home. Kyle, a stock race car driver, was celebrating a victory at Barberton Speedway. Anderson demanded money while pointing a gun at Eberhart's neck. Eberhart handed over $15. Kyle searched his pockets, prompting Dennis to shoot him in the head. Anderson, who was 17 at the time, is serving a life sentence. Ohio prohibits the death penalty for defendants under age 18. "He ratted and he got the better deal," Dennis said of Anderson's sentence. Dennis also regretted allowing any witnesses to survive. "If my mind would have been right at the time, and if I would've made my mind up, then c'mon man, it wouldn't have been no eyewitness to that," he told parole board member James Bedra, who voted to grant clemency. "Everybody where I'm from know that you don't leave no eyewitness." Marquita Dennis, 49, said she visited her son in prison recently and he expressed remorse for Kyle's death. "He told me it was an accident, and I believe it," she said. But attorneys for the state and members of Kyle's family have said evidence was overwhelming that the shooting was not an accident and that he has shown no remorse for his crime. Dennis' aunt, Querida St. Andre, 54, of Charleston, S.C., said she tried to give her sister guidance on how to raise a child during a failed marriage, but that her nephew had a difficult life from the time he was an infant, including a near drowning as a teenager. Dennis told authorities he was never married but has 4 children. "He is a caring individual," St. Andre said. "His adult life has been in prison. He realizes he made mistakes and he wishes he had done things differently. In my eyesight, I would never have believed he would have done something like this." She said she believes his youth, tainted by drugs and street crime, should be factors in whether he should be put to death. Dennis said he was skipping school as early as kindergarten and his role models were "drug lords and pimps." "At age 18, he thought going out on a robbery spree one night was fun, and out of this a life was taken," St Andre said. "I don't condone what happened by no means, and my heart goes out to the Kyle family. But now, who cares about Adremy Dennis? His life in prison is already a living hell." Shortly before he was killed, Kyle had just taken a job as a salesman for Kobelco Stewart Bolling Inc., a Hudson-based designer and builder of equipment in the rubber and plastics industries. But Kyle's passion was stock car racing at Barberton Speedway and other tracks. His father, Howard, brother, Craig, and friends were with him in his back yard on his final night celebrating his first pursuit-race victory. "Kurt never hurt a soul," said his mother, Doreen Kyle, 64. "He tried to wrestle for a short time in school. He stopped because he said he could never hurt someone. He and his brother never had a cross word at all." Kyle, who was not married and had no children, owned his home, his mother said. "I told him to do his fun things before he got married. He did a lot of fun things," she said. Mrs. Kyle said she and her husband do not plan to attend the execution but three of her son's friends plan to be there. "Kurt was the type of guy who would give the shirt off his back to a total stranger," said Eberhart, now a Barberton police officer. "Kurt said when Adremy was asking for the money, 'I will go into my house.' And Kurt would ... give anything this guy wanted." (source: Associated Press)
