Oct. 20
TEXAS----impending execution
Man to be executed for Dallas murder----Man to die today for 1982 slaying
of worker at North Dallas bank
Loan officer Mark Frazier had been in Texas for 5 months when an
obscenity-spewing armed robber came into his North Dallas bank.
The 26-year-old Massachusetts native sought to calm the angry man, Ricky
Eugene Morrow, and protect a frightened fellow employee.
His decision got him killed.
"Mr. Morrow leveled out on Mr. Frazier, shot him square through the
temple, and he walked out of the bank laughing," said former Dallas County
prosecutor Dan Hagood, who won a capital murder conviction against Mr.
Morrow in 1990.
Mr. Morrow, 53, is scheduled to die by injection today for killing Mr.
Frazier during the holdup at First Texas Savings & Loan Association on
Berkshire Lane in Preston Center.
Barring a last-minute stay by the U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Morrow will be
the 3rd man executed in Texas this month and the 17th this year, prison
officials said.
"We're in the bottom of the 9th inning, and we're behind," said appellate
attorney Randy Schaffer Jr. of Houston.
The Jan. 19, 1982, armed holdup at the now-closed bank was the 2nd that
day for Mr. Morrow, who already had a record of convictions for burglary,
drug possession, theft and aggravated robbery, records show.
He and his girlfriend, who was later convicted of a lesser role in the
robbery, were caught not long after the shooting when a 24-year-old
University Park police officer, Richard Acree, spotted the getaway car at
a hotel on Hillcrest Avenue.
Mr. Morrow exchanged gunfire with police and FBI agents before
surrendering. One bullet missed Sgt. Acree, now a deputy sheriff in
Colorado, by about a foot.
A Dallas jury gave Mr. Morrow a death sentence in 1983, but the Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a new trial in 1988 after finding that
prosecutors erred in questioning potential jurors. In 1990, he was
sentenced to death again, and the appellate court affirmed the conviction.
At the 2nd trial, Mr. Morrow didn't dispute robbing the bank or firing the
fatal shot from 1 of 2 pistols he carried that day. He testified that the
gun accidentally went off and that he didn't intend to kill Mr. Frazier,
whose family couldn't be reached for comment for this story.
He also denied smiling as he left the bank.
Mr. Morrow's defense attorney argued during the trial that his client was
intoxicated during the robbery and therefore reckless in handling the gun,
according to newspaper accounts and interviews.
Mr. Schaffer, who already lost an appeal in the case to the federal
circuit court in New Orleans, argues that prosecutors withheld pretrial
statements from witnesses that differed with their trial testimony.
Mr. Hagood, now a defense attorney who is investigating the Dallas police
fake-drug scandal for the district attorney's office, said he remembers
the case "like it was yesterday." He disputed Mr. Morrow's accident claim
during the trial.
Mr. Hagood said testimony and physical evidence showed that the shooting
was coldblooded and deliberate. He also said prosecutors acted
appropriately.
"Nothing was withheld from the defense. That's just nonsense," he said of
Mr. Schaffer's allegation.
Mr. Frazier, described as likable and ambitious with a distinctive laugh
and Boston accent, got involved when Mr. Morrow began "terrorizing"
another employee, Mr. Hagood said.
Bank employee Jo Brown told jurors that Mr. Morrow was shouting, cursing
and demanding money. Just after getting a sack of cash, Mr. Morrow shot
Mr. Frazier at point-blank range without provocation.
"He looked, raised the gun and shot," Ms. Brown said, according to an
account in The Dallas Morning News.
Mr. Hagood said Mr. Frazier, a former Marine - who, friends said, got the
job 3 days after moving to Texas from Boston - might have saved the
woman's life.
"He got killed for his good work," he said.
(source: Dallas Morning News)
*******************
Victim's family pleads for inmate's life--Wife and sons of slain man say
capital punishment is unfair in case
She lights candles at her church for Dominique Green, a Houston man
preparing for execution next Tuesday. Her sons have corresponded with
Green on death row, an exchange of remorse and forgiveness. On Tuesday,
one of them issued a public plea for Gov. Rick Perry to spare the
condemned man's life.
Unlike many death penalty critics, however, Bernatte Luckett Lastrapes and
her 2 sons have more than an academic interest in the case.
The man they have chosen to forgive was one of the robbers who shot
Lastrapes' husband 12 years ago, leaving her sons, Andre and Andrew,
fatherless.
"Killing him," explains the younger of the 2, "ain't going to bring my
daddy back."
When Andre Luckett, 22, appeared at the University of Houston Law Center
on Tuesday to plead that Green be spared lethal injection, it was the
culmination of a 6-month process that began with a visit by Murder
Victims' Families For Reconciliation-Texas. Luckett said he hadn't thought
about forgiveness until David Atwood, a member of the group and a longtime
death penalty activist, knocked on his door unannounced.
Punishment called unfair
Atwood talked with Lastrapes' family about the death penalty and passed
along the message that Green had asked for the family's forgiveness.
The family was quick to accept, Atwood said, and Green responded with a
long letter.
The family now is convinced that Green, who was 18 at the time of the
crime, was put on death row unfairly.
They worry that unexamined evidence recently found at the Houston Police
Department might contain something that could cast doubt on his
conviction. They are troubled by allegations of racial unfairness in the
prosecution. And they want the governor to forgive Green, just as they
have.
"He made a mistake," Andre Luckett said Tuesday. "Everybody should have a
chance to make up for their mistakes."
Green was sentenced to death for the Oct. 14, 1992, shooting of
41-year-old Andrew Lastrapes Jr. during a three-day robbery spree. He
admitted to participating in the robbery, but maintains he wasn't the
triggerman in the killing.
2 of his co-defendants received shorter prison terms for reduced charges
and testified against Green.
Luckett said he fears the others "turned" on Green, and he thinks it is
unfair that a 4th man, the only white person alleged to be in the group,
never was charged.
"To this day, nobody really knows who did it," he said.
David Dow, a University of Houston law professor and a noted critic of the
death penalty, called it "a mystery."
"The police reports we have reviewed indicate police officers expected he
would be charged with aggravated robbery," said Dow, who is helping to
represent Green. "He was not. There has not been any satisfactory
explanation at all."
Allegations of racism
In a letter to Perry and to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles,
Lastrapes wrote that she, too, is troubled.
"I was especially disturbed at the trial that the white boy involved in
the crime did not spend any time in jail," she wrote. "And yet Dominique
received the death penalty! Where is the justice in that? There was
something very, very wrong with what happened in that trial in my
opinion."
Lastrapes, who is disabled and did not attend Tuesday's news conference,
said in her letter that other things bothered her at the trial. She
recalled hearing testimony about Green's abusive home life and seeing the
defendant's mother sleeping during the trial.
Dow also raised questions about a ballistics test performed by the HPD
crime lab that linked a gun found in the car Green was apprehended in
several days after the murder to the Lastrapes slaying.
He urged a delay of the execution until Houston police finish their review
of 280 boxes of mislabeled and improperly stored evidence from 8,000 cases
dating back more than a decade. The files were discovered in August.
DA's office backs evidence
Assistant District Attorney Jack Roady, who is working on responses to
Green's appeals, said no DNA or serologic testing was used in the case and
all of the evidence gathered in the case was accounted for. He added that
ballistics testing was not an issue at the lab.
"The problems at HPD don't relate to this case, so it's not an issue
here," Roady said.
Concerning the man who wasn't charged, Roady told the Associated Press
that the decision was made at the time of the trial and was "based on
evidence that was available."
Dow said Lastrapes' family's plea should be reason enough to grant
clemency to Green.
Luckett said the issue is not even Green's guilt.
"I used to be harsh about what happened but I'm older and a lot wiser
now," he said. "I try to have a relationship with God and I have
forgiveness in my heart for him, whether he's innocent or not that isn't
up to me to prove."
(source: Houston Chronicle)
