Oct. 11
TEXAS:
Unlocking a deadly mind----Brain development, effect on behavior key to
debate on juvenile offenders
(Part 2 of 5 Parts)
Like a lot of teenagers, Bruce Lee Williams of Dallas had problems with
impulse control. Unfortunately, his impulses were deadly.
The U.S. Supreme Court soon will determine whether that's sufficient
reason to let him live.
"There's just something essentially wrong about the way his brain
functions," said Robyn Tydelski, who encountered him in her apartment. He
wore a ski mask and was armed with 3 knives. She screamed, and he fled.
2 years later, when he was 17, another vulnerable young woman crossed Mr.
Williams' path. This time he kept his killer's nerve: He kidnapped her,
raped her and shot her dead in some Oak Cliff weeds.
The fate of Mr. Williams, and that of 72 other juvenile offenders on death
rows nationwide, now lies with the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, justices
will hear arguments on whether executing people who killed before they
reached age 18 constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
One of the central questions in this debate deals with the way
adolescents' minds work and how that affects their behavior.
The American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association,
among others, argue that young criminals with the brains of children
should not face the severest of penalties meant for adults.
A Supreme Court brief filed by defense lawyers notes that the brains of
17-year-olds do not have fully developed frontal lobes. Thus, they "lack
an adult's capacity for reasoned judgment."
To some behavioral experts, however, this represents bad application of
science.
"It's not logical to say we should excuse them because their brains are
not quite there yet," said Jerome Kagan, professor of psychology at
Harvard. "For being good at calculus, you need to finish the brain. But
morality? My God, every 5-year-old knows you don't hurt people."
Others see the 17-year-old murderer not so much as inherently homicidal as
emotionally incomplete.
"Kids who are 16 or 17 are not done," said John Blume, law professor and
director of the Cornell University Death Penalty Project. "It seems
draconian to impose the ultimate punishment on people who, by any
standard, are still in progress."
On trial for murder, Mr. Williams "absolutely had the mind of a child,"
said his defense attorney, Michael Byck. "He talked like a child; he acted
like a child. He didn't have any consequence awareness whatsoever."
But if Mr. Williams at 17 was still in progress, the question arises:
toward what? "If his face showed you what was in his heart, none of us
could look at him," Dallas County prosecutor Kim Judin said at his murder
trial. "He is evil."
Those searching for more palpable causes came up empty. He had no serious
drug habit and ran with no gangs. Though slow in school, he caused no
major disruptions. He faced no more family problems than those encountered
by thousands of teenagers.
Former neighbor Charles Drake recalled the empty, frightening gaze of a
man-child felon.
"There is nothing behind those eyes," he said. "He's been like that since
he was 9 years old."
Now almost 23, Mr. Williams still shows no signs of remorse or
responsibility. Dressed in prison whites, he sat behind prison
visiting-room glass with the impish grin of a kid summoned to the
principal's office. He is slender and awkward, and he looked as if he
could still be in his teens.
"I've always been a person to keep the crowd laughing," he said. "All that
killing and raping stuff, that ain't me."
Mr. Williams was raised by Lesley and Berlean Mack in a plain but tidy Oak
Cliff neighborhood. The Macks took him in as an infant when his birth
mother said she couldn't care for him.
Mr. Williams abducted Thai immigrants Kriangkrai Nilkamhaeng, 27, and
Pariya Kitsuwan, 24, from the parking lot of the Dallas apartment complex
where he lived with his mother. He forced them to drive to a field in Oak
Cliff. Mr. Williams sexually assaulted the woman and shot the couple. The
man played dead and survived.
"Bruce was brought up on church music," Mrs. Mack said. Every week he
attended Wednesday night prayer meetings, Saturday youth activities and
all-day Sunday worship.
Police records show that he was 4 when he set a grass fire that burned up
their car.
At home, his foster father preached good behavior. "Every night, there'd
be this conversation," Mr. Mack said. "I'd say: 'You don't want a police
record. Stay out of trouble.' Every night, every night."
'I got anger'
He ignored the advice, especially after his brother died from an allergic
reaction to a bee sting when Mr. Williams was about 10.
"Something just changed in my head. I just stopped listening to everybody
and started doing stuff my own way," he said. "I got anger, and I didn't
know any ways to release it."
When he was 14 he burglarized and ransacked at least three houses in his
Oak Cliff neighborhood. That same year he went to live with his birth
mother at a condo complex in northeast Dallas.
"I wish I'd kept him here," said Mr. Mack. "When he went over there with
her, he got out of hand."
Escaping jail
At age 15 he was sentenced to a juvenile jail for burglary. He soon
escaped from the West Dallas facility and returned to his mother's
apartment at 7525 Holly Hill Drive, east of Presbyterian Hospital.
She called the police. He held a handgun to her head, then pointed it at
the officer who answered the call. While the officer radioed for backup,
Mr. Williams fled.
Days later he set fire to an empty apartment where he had been hiding.
About the same time, he broke into Ms. Tydelski's condo.
"He had taken all my photographs and strewn them all over the bedroom and
had ejaculated all over them," she said. "He had written with lipstick all
over the walls, 'You honky whore, I'm going to kill you, death to the
pig.'"
On the bedside table he lined up three kitchen knives and several lengths
of rope. At some point he pulled a ski mask over his face.
Robyn Tydelski's screams scared Bruce Lee Williams away from her
apartment. "There's just something essentially wrong about the way his
brain functions," Ms. Tydelski says.
Ms. Tydelski, an insurance adjuster, came home about 10 p.m., walked into
her bedroom and found him waiting. Her screams and shouts sent him out the
front door.
Next he was sent to a Texas Youth Commission facility in Beaumont for
burglary. He did well there. When he was released in late 1998, after
serving about 9 months, Mr. Williams moved back in with his mother.
On Feb. 3, 1999, two newly married immigrants from Thailand came to the
complex on Holly Hill, looking for a car to buy. Kriangkrai "Jesse"
Nilkamhaeng, 27, and Pariya "Oh" Kitsuwan, 24, had seen a newspaper ad for
a 1996 Mitsubishi.
Both worked at a North Dallas restaurant. The husband had been in the
United States about four years, the wife less than that.
"We never dream to have any more than any other," Mr. Nilkamhaeng said
later. "Just have a normal life."
They inspected the Mitsubishi and decided they didn't want it. But as they
were about to leave, Mr. Williams approached, pointing a .38.
This is the story Mr. Nilkamhaeng told at trial:
Mr. Williams got into the couple's car, a Honda, and ordered Mr.
Nilkamhaeng to drive to Oak Cliff, exiting Interstate 35 at Camp Wisdom
Road. During the 19-mile trip he sat in the back, smoking cigarettes,
laughing and telling the couple to shut up as they begged for their lives.
A dark path
He directed them to 7300 Library Lane, where the dark street reached a
dead-end. At gunpoint, Mr. Williams ordered the couple to walk down a
vacant lot's weedy path, past abandoned shopping carts and old carpet
rolls. When the couple tried to hug each other, he forced them apart with
the gun.
Mr. Nilkamhaeng testified that he told his wife: "Don't cry. Just be
yourself. We got to get out."
Mr. Williams ordered the husband to lie face down on the ground. With his
gun to Ms. Kitsuwan's head, Mr. Williams sodomized her.
When he heard a shot, Mr. Nilkamhaeng turned to look and saw the gun
pointed at his head. He raised his arm just as Mr. Williams fired again.
It hit him in the shoulder.
He played dead. There were 2 more shots. When he was sure Mr. Williams was
gone, Mr. Nilkamhaeng crawled to his wife.
"She didn't say anything," he testified. "I told her to hold on, not die.
I go get some help."
Police came and found Ms. Kitsuwan dead in the brush. Only 5 feet tall and
weighing just 88 pounds, her body looked like that of a child.
The next day, back at the Holly Hill condo complex, officers recovered the
victims' abandoned Honda. They found the murder weapon in Mr. Williams'
apartment, in the pocket of his coat.
Mr. Williams quickly confessed. He then said, according to the detective
who questioned him, "Go on and put me to sleep real quick because I don't
want to suffer in jail long."
Before trial, attorneys had a psychiatrist examine Mr. Williams, producing
results not favorable to the defense. "Bruce blew out the test on
predictive future dangerousness," said defense attorney Byck. "He [the
psychiatrist] said, 'This guy's going to be dangerous for another 40
years.'"
Jurors didn't take long to find Mr. Williams guilty.
"Three minutes," said Mr. Byck. "After a jury goes out, I always stand up,
take my coat off and go out to have a cigarette. I didn't even get to the
swinging door before there was a knock [from the jury coming back]. It was
mind-blowing."
'Messed over'
Mr. Williams lives now in the Polunsky Unit, just outside Livingston in
East Texas. He believes he has been "messed over" by the legal system.
He was asked what he would say to Mr. Nilkamhaeng if he had the
opportunity. His answer: "If the dude was sitting right across from me?
I'd tell him he did something and got away with it. I'm sitting here for
something I didn't do."
Mr. Williams says now that he was having an affair with Ms. Kitsuwan, and
that her husband showed up with a gun. For inexplicable reasons, they
drove to Oak Cliff, Mr. Williams said, where he and the husband exchanged
gunfire.
When he fled the scene, Mr. Williams said, the woman was still alive. He
said he ran to a nearby auto repair shop, stole a car and drove home.
Nothing in this withstands the barest scrutiny. Mr. Williams can provide
no evidence he had an affair with Ms. Kitsuwan, other than "I got 2
cousins that remember me saying I was messing with a Chinese girl."
He also can't explain how, if he stole a car so he could return to his
apartment, the victims' Honda made it back there as well. "His [the
husband's] friends could have followed us, that's the only thing I know,"
Mr. Williams said. "They drove the car back [to the condo] because they
needed the evidence that I had something to do with it."
Nothing to support any of Mr. Williams' claims was introduced at trial.
And no such evidence has surfaced since then. His appeals lawyers have
made no claim of actual innocence.
Mr. Nilkamhaeng still works at the same restaurant where he and his wife
were employed. He did not want to talk about the case.
Just the mention of it stopped him in his tracks. His eyes began to tear
up. "It still hurts," he said.
Ms. Tydelski, whose apartment Mr. Williams invaded, testified during the
punishment phase of the trial. She recalled sitting next to Mr.
Nilkamhaeng during some of the proceedings "He held onto my hand the whole
time and wept," she said.
Mr. Williams now spends his time much like any other death row prisoner:
23 hours a day in his cell, one hour in a solitary exercise period. He
likes to draw pictures of tigers, he said. He sometimes receives legal
papers from his lawyer, but doesn't really understand them.
"I don't know about all these big words that's been printed down," he
said.
Studies cited
The brief submitted to the Supreme Court by the various medical and
psychiatric associations cites numerous neurological studies on teenage
brain function.
"Researchers have found that the deficiencies in the adolescent mind ...
are especially pronounced when other factors - such as stress, emotions
and peer pressure - enter the equation," the brief states. "These factors
... operate on the adolescent mind differently and with special force."
Whether such an argument applies to Mr. Williams is a question that
baffles even those who knew him well.
"I really don't know what went wrong with Bruce," said his mother, Ella
Williams. "You'll have to ask him about that."
******
THE TEENAGE KILLER'S BRAIN
In briefs filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, lawyers on both sides of the
juvenile death penalty have argued the issue of adolescent brain
development and capital punishment. Some excerpts:
"The adolescent's mind works differently than ours. ... Their brains are
physiologically underdeveloped in the areas that control impulses, foresee
consequences and temper emotions. ... This insight emerges from
sophisticated and noninvasive brain imaging techniques." -The American
Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and others
"There is no magic in the age 18. ... At least some 16- and 17-year-old
killers most assuredly are able to distinguish right from wrong and to
appreciate fully the consequences of their murderous actions." - The
states of Alabama, Delaware, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Virginia
"To execute 16- and 17-year-old offenders is to presume full adult
responsibility and to hold them accountable not just for their acts, but
also for the immaturity of their neural anatomy and psychological
development. ... Adolescents rely for certain tasks, more than adults, on
the amygdala, the area of the brain associated with primitive impulses of
aggression, anger and fear." - The American Medical Association
"If the line is 18, why not 21? Or 35?" - Attorney general of Missouri
"Fully developed and properly functioning frontal lobes play a critical
role in a person's capacity to be a rational moral actor, capable of
mature decision-making. It is precisely this part of the brain that is not
yet fully developed in late adolescence. ... MRI studies provide
compelling evidence that the maturation of the frontal lobes ... is not
complete at least until age 18." - Lawyers for Christopher Simmons, whose
case is before the Supreme Court
"Age does not define one's character, judgment, maturity, personal
responsibility or moral guilt. ... 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds can possess
the requisite mental state to merit the ultimate penalty." - Justice for
All Alliance TEENS SENT TO DEATH ROW
Texas has 29 inmates under the sentence of death who were convicted of
crimes committed when they were 17 years old. These are 6 of their
stories.
RAUL VILLAREAL
Born: Sept. 25, 1975
Date of offense: June 24, 1993
County: Harris
Race: Hispanic
Race of victims: One white, one Hispanic
He and fellow gang members attacked a 14-year-old girl and a 16-year-old
girl as the 2 took a shortcut through a park in northwest Houston. The
girls were raped and strangled. Mr. Villareal later bragged that he
stepped on the neck of one of them because "the bitch wouldn't die" when
he tried to strangle her with a belt.
LEO LITTLE
Born: July 14, 1980
Date of offense: Jan. 25, 1998
County: Bexar
Race: White
Race of victim: Hispanic
He and another man kidnapped Antonio Christopher Chavez, 22, a devout
Jehovah's Witness, from the parking lot of a San Antonio restaurant. They
drove him to a rural area. Mr. Little shot him in the back of the head and
escaped with several hundred dollars in church offerings.
CHRISTOPHER SOLOMON
Born: Jan. 30, 1980
Date of offense: Sept. 19, 1997
County: Bowie
Race: Black
Race of victim: White
Drunk and high on marijuana, Mr. Solomon and three others spotted Jason
Erie stranded at roadside near Texarkana, unable to start his car. The
group helped him with his car. When he gave them $5 to thank them, they
tried to rob him. The man resisted and was shot in the head by one of Mr.
Solomon's accomplices.
EDWARD CAPETILLO
Born: May 13, 1977
Date of offense: Jan. 16, 1995
County: Harris
Race: Hispanic
Race of victims: White
Mr. Capetillo and 4 others went to the Houston home of Mathew Vickers, 19,
to sell a gun. Mr. Vickers declined, so he was shot in the head. A visitor
at the house, 20-year-old Kimberly Williamson, tried to flee. Mr.
Capetillo chased her through the house and shot her 3 times in the neck,
back and chest at point-blank range.
ANZEL JONES
Born: Feb. 4, 1978
Date of offense: May 2, 1995
County: Lamar
Race: Black
Race of victim: White
Mr. Jones broke into the Paris house of 49-year-old Sherry Kay Jones and
her 76-year-old mother, Edith Jones. The women offered to give him $125
and their car if he would not harm them. Mr. Jones took the money and then
stabbed both women with a kitchen knife. Before fleeing, he set the house
on fire. The older woman survived.
SON VU KHAI TRAN
Born: May 11, 1980
Date of offense: Oct. 25, 1997
County: Harris
Race: Asian-American
Race of victims: Hispanic and Asian
Mr. Tran and 3 others lured a man to a Houston nightclub and murdered him
because of his relationship with a woman. A woman who worked at the club,
and who knew their identities, was also murdered. Mr. Tran and 2 of the
killers grew concerned that a fourth person involved in the murders might
turn them in. That accomplice and a friend of his were shot and killed.
(sources: Texas Department of Criminal Justice; Dallas Morning News
research)
ABOUT THIS SERIES
As the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether execution of under-age
murderers is unconstitutional, The Dallas Morning News explores the legal
and social issues posed by this question through the cases of some
youthful killers who are awaiting execution in Texas.
Tuesday: The state admits to multiple mistakes in the prosecution of Nanon
Williams - including botched lab work and a lying witness - but says that
doesn't mean his life should be spared. This is, after all, Harris County,
which puts far more juvenile offenders on death row than any other county.
Wednesday: The drug dealer and the kid enjoyed some fun times, at least
until the teenager - striving to repay a debt to his criminal mentor -
shot a beloved high school teacher between the eyes. The dealer moved on
to other states and additional felonies; the kid went to death row.
Thursday: Now that the Supreme Court has heard arguments, what are the
legal issues facing justices as they weigh a decision that could have a
significant effect on Texas' death row?
(source: Dallas Morning News)
*******************
Scandal grows over false and hidden evidence
The death penalty in the United States has come under intense scrutiny in
the last few years--and for good reason. The number of people who have
been exonerated and freed from death rows across the country now stands at
116.
Collectively, they spent over 1,000 years locked up for crimes they did
not commit.
More than 1/2 of these exonerations occurred in the South, the region that
accounts for most executions in the United States. Sixty-one per cent of
those exonerated were people of color.
As the pace of executions has increased in recent years, death sentences
around the country have dropped by 50 %. Public opinion is almost evenly
split between life without parole and the death penalty.
But innocence is not the only reason the death penalty is wrong.
On March 31, the International Court of Justice ruled in favor of Mexico,
finding that the United States violated the rights of most of the 51
Mexican citizens on U.S. death rows. The Vienna convention on consular
relations, which the United States has ratified, says that foreign
citizens have the right to speak with diplomatic officials upon arrest.
The ICJ said the United States must review the convictions and sentences
in each case.
The death penalty is used against juveniles in defiance of international
laws. It is used against the mentally disabled, who desperately need
health care and not lethal injection. It is racist.
Those who kill whites are 6 times more likely to get the death penalty
than those who kill African Americans or Latinos.
In the landmark Atkins case in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the
executions of people with mental disabilities. On Oct. 13, the court will
hear oral arguments in Roper vs. Williams, a case that could eliminate the
execution of those who were juveniles at the time of the crime.
The cops and the courts that arrest and try working-class people and
people of color are racist. They are absolutely biased against the poor.
The cops and prosecutors lie, conspire, conceal evidence, and allow
witnesses to lie--all in order to get a conviction.
The Houston Police Crime Lab is now notorious for presenting totally false
evidence in court that sent innocent people to prison.
In 2002, an audit of the lab turned up so many irregularities that
countless convictions are now in doubt. The DNA and blood division was
shut down.
Josiah Sutton was released last year after spending over four years in
prison. An African American, he was arrested at age 16 for a rape it is
now proven he did not commit.
Now, in another case with questionable scientific evidence, George
Rodriguez, a Houston man who has served 17 years for rape, moved a step
closer to freedom after Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal
said new tests showed that another suspect had been improperly ruled out
by "unfounded and inaccurate testimony." The district attorney is not
opposing bail for Rodriguez, but has said he might still retry him.
165 on death row in just one county!
There are 165 persons from Harris County on death row in Texas. Execution
dates have been set for nine of them.
Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt, 2 state senators and a former Texas
governor have signed a letter to George W. Bush's successor, Texas Gov.
Rick Perry, asking him to halt executions of all prisoners from Harris
County until the Houston Police Department can examine evidence recently
found in a storage room that could be connected to death penalty cases.
Perry has rejected all calls for a delay of executions.
A month ago, the police chief announced that investigators had found
almost 300 boxes of lost evidence, including a fetus and body parts,
involving as many as 8,000 Houston cases. The boxes were mislabeled and
improperly stored.
Activists with the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement have issued a
news release stating in part: "We agree with the chief on his call for a
halt of Harris County executions, but we also call for an independent
investigation of all 165 cases of those from Houston currently on death
row. We know of cases where police witnesses have either presented false
testimony in court or have lied in court. No one knows how many from
Harris County have been sent to death row based on flawed police lab
work."
Two cases the Abolition Movement has called attention to are those of
Nanon Williams and Johnnie Bernal. Both were sentenced to death based on
the testimony of the Crime Lab's ballistics examiner, Robert Baldwin. Both
were also juveniles when arrested.
In each of the 2 cases, Baldwin used methods that other experts say are
unsound. In Williams' case, the lab's initial ballistics findings were
later retracted by Baldwin himself.
Robert Rosenberg, an appeals lawyer for Johnnie Bernal, says: "In these
cases we have an examiner who is not following any recognized set of
standards, and he didn't have any problem taking the stand to get
convictions. Why should we trust him or anyone else in the department who
is reviewing his work?"
Other firearms examiners have said these cases suggest more than just DNA
problems at the HPD Crime Lab. Attorney Morris Moon, who represents
Williams, has filed an appeal in the Federal District Court in Houston and
hopes to have an evidentiary hearing soon.
The Abolition Movement also questions the Houston Police Department
examination of clothing worn by Frances Newton, who was sentenced to death
for killing her husband and children. Newton is scheduled to be killed on
Dec. 1. The Texas Innocence Network at the University of Houston Law
School is working on her appeal.
"There are just too many questions about the veracity of the HPD Crime
Lab's testimony in death row cases. Everyone on death row from Harris
County should have their cases re-examined," activist Njeri Shakur said.
"The scandal of the Houston Police Crime Lab is just one more reason the
death penalty should be abolished.
"There is now one person released from U.S. death rows for every 8
executed. With this high percentage of wrongful convictions, we must
determine that capital punishment is too fraught with error to be
continued.
"On Oct. 30 the Abolition Movement will be participating in the Fifth
Annual March to Stop Executions, in Austin. We will raise all these issues
about the crimes of the Houston Police Crime Lab, about innocence, about
juveniles.
"We will not forget Shaka Sankofa and Kamau Wilkerson. The world must know
that in the U.S. the death penalty is only used against the poor. It is
racist and must be abolished immediately," Shakur said.
(source: Gloria Rubac, Workers World)
