Oct. 30
TEXAS----impending execution
Death row inmate has little time----Family seeking 30-day reprieve; other
appeals have been rejected
Lorenzo Morris went to death row more than a decade ago for beating his
70-year-old neighbor to death and will be executed Tuesday unless the
governor intervenes.
Intervention seemed less likely Friday, when the Texas Board of Pardons
and Paroles voted 6-0 both against granting a temporary reprieve and
against commuting Morris' sentence to life. His family is requesting a
30-day reprieve from Gov. Rick Perry.
In their attempt to halt the execution, Morris' lawyers have pointed out
that Jesse Fields did not die until almost 9 months after the Aug. 5,
1990, attack in his Houston home - on May 11, 1991, one day after
undergoing surgery to remove a gangrenous leg - and that the nursing home
doctor attributed the death to natural causes.
Because the jury never heard from that doctor, Morris' attorneys argue
that it is new evidence - one of the few legal arguments that a condemned
inmate can use to try to challenge a death sentence in federal courts.
Appellate courts have disagreed. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
rejected the arguments earlier this year and the U.S. Supreme Court has
refused to consider them.
Morris, now, 52, has spent years wondering why his lawyer did not present
the other doctor's opinion about Fields' death or communicate with any of
Morris' own family members.
Morris admits beating Fields but contends, "I didn't kill him, he died of
natural causes."
Morris' original attorney, Jerry Guerinot, who has had 20 former clients
sent to death row, has acknowledged some mistakes in sworn statements
presented in Morris' appeal. In an interview with the Chronicle in 2003,
Guerinot called Morris a nice person and said he has regrets about the
case.
Prosecutor's view
Roe Wilson, the prosecutor handling Harris County's response to Morris'
appeal, says there was substantial evidence that Fields' death was the
ultimate result of the head trauma caused by the beating inflicted by
Morris.
She said there could be several reasons why his original attorneys did not
call the attending physician as a witness. There was, after all, a
confession, an eyewitness to the attack and testimony from other medical
experts who said Fields' death was the delayed result of the beating, and
thus a murder.
In their unsuccessful clemency petition, the appeals lawyers said, "Mr.
Morris' case presents this Board with the opportunity to correct an
aberration of the just application of a death penalty."
The attack came after Morris' girlfriend tried unsuccessfully to borrow
money from Fields, her neighbor, at Fields' home in the 2300 block of New
Orleans.
Morris, a drug addict, admitted he then beat Fields on the head with a
hammer and his hands, but the victim, apparently a tough man, seemed to
have survived it. Fields lapsed into a semi-coma, but eventually recovered
enough to be transferred to a nursing home.
Bedridden for 9 months
Fields, who had lived on his own before the attack, remained bedridden for
almost 9 months. He developed gangrene in his toes and doctors elected to
amputate one leg.
A day after surgery, May 11, 1991, Fields died. The nursing home physician
said it was due to natural causes, according to an investigator's report
from the Harris County Medical Examiners' Office.
But in an autopsy conducted later, an assistant medical examiner ruled the
death to be homicide. Two other doctors who had seen Fields at the
hospital before his death, including his surgeon, testified during Morris'
trial that Fields' injuries at the time of the beating were the root cause
of his death.
Carol Davies, who prosecuted Morris' case and is now a judge, declined
comment for this article. But transcripts show that at the time, she had
argued to keep the jury from hearing information about the nursing home
doctor's conflicting point of view.
In an interview with the Chronicle, that physician, Alfred Lewis, said he
could not comment about an individual patient's medical history. But he
said he has never been asked to testify in a capital murder trial about
any case.
Guerinot said in a recent affidavit filed as part of the appeal that he
"did review the medical records available prior to trial and did not
explore the possibility of a defense that Mr. Morris did not actually
cause the death."
Wilson, the Harris County prosecutor, said such testimony probably would
have made no difference and might have cost Guerinot some credibility with
the jury.
But defense attorneys who have been trying to save Morris' life have
located a medical expert, Dr. Anand Wasudeo Mehendale of Kerrville, a
board-certified neurologist, who now offers a written opinion that Fields
died as a result of post-operative complications from surgery, not from
his head injury. They have tried to argue that this is new evidence of
innocence, but the courts have rejected that.
Doctor was not witness
Defense attorneys also have argued that Guerinot provided ineffective
assistance of counsel to Morris not only by failing to call Dr. Lewis as a
witness but also by failing to present any witnesses or other evidence at
all in the post-conviction punishment stage of the trial.
Instead, only the prosecution presented its witnesses.
The victim's granddaughter testified that Morris' attack robbed them of an
elderly but healthy man whom they loved.
The jury also was told about Morris' extensive criminal record. He had 3
prior convictions for robbery. At the time of his trial, Morris already
was serving a life sentence for a nonfatal shooting of a Vietnamese
immigrant during another armed robbery at a Houston washateria on March
19, 1991. He was arrested after that, and subsequently charged and tried
separately in connection with both crimes.
Guerinot, in the same affidavit, agrees that he should have presented
additional evidence about Morris' life to the jury.
In an affidavit, Morris' father acknowledged that Morris and his nine
siblings were neglected because he and their mother drank heavily and
frequently stayed away from home.
"My kids did have a hard life," he said. "There was not much good in it."
Kids raised themselves
Morris' brother, in another sworn statement, says the kids basically
raised themselves in a section of the Fifth Ward that was then "filled
with gangs, drugs, prostitution and violence." As a teen, Morris tried
unsuccessfully to save 2 toddler sisters who died in 1967 in a house fire
after their mother left the girls alone.
********************
Juror regrets role in capital conviction ---- A new trial could be ordered
if judge in Galveston finds evidence hidden
One of the jurors who convicted Texas death row inmate Anthony Graves of
capital murder 10 years ago says now that he made a mistake that keeps him
awake at night.
"I have lost a lot of sleep over my decision to convict Mr. Graves, and if
I had to do (it) over again, I wouldn't do it," Jim Hahn stated in a sworn
affidavit for the Texas Innocence Network last week.
In an interview this week from his home in Manvel, south of Houston, Hahn
said, "I don't think they proved the case beyond a reasonable doubt."
Graves, convicted in 1994 in the deaths of 6 family members in Somerville,
is awaiting a decision by a Galveston judge on whether prosecutors hid
evidence that could have persuaded jurors to acquit him. If the answer is
yes, U.S. Magistrate Judge John Froeschner will order a new trial.
If the answer is no, Graves could be executed for the 1992 slaying of
Bobbie Davis, 45, her 16-year-old daughter, Nicole, and Davis' four
grandchildren, ages 4 to 9. They were shot and stabbed inside a house,
which was burned to hide the crime.
Graves' attorneys, Jay Burnett and Roy Greenwood, said changes in the law
prevent courts from considering new evidence.
At the federal level, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of
1996 limits those sentenced to death to a single appeal, even if new
evidence is later discovered.
A state law adopted in 1995 imposes the same limit.
"You only get one bite at the apple," Burnett said.
Hahn, 56, said he and a female juror held out through a day and a half of
deliberations, but he finally agreed to go along with a guilty verdict
after concluding that the other jurors would never change their minds. The
woman also later gave in.
Hahn said he believed then that Graves would get a new trial on appeal.
Hahn said the evidence was circumstantial, no murder weapon was found and
that he had little confidence in testimony by a convicted killer and a man
who claimed to have overheard an incriminating comment by Graves in jail.
Hahn said the memories of that trial came back after he saw a TV news
broadcast about information indicating Graves' innocence in a two-year
investigation by students from the University of St. Thomas in Houston.
The students participate in the University of Houston Law Center's chapter
of the Texas Innocence Network.
Hahn phoned journalism professor Nicole Casarez, adviser to the St. Thomas
students, and she sent him an affidavit form that he signed Oct. 19.
Casarez said she has been looking for the other juror who Hahn said was
reluctant to convict Graves.
Of the 6 women on the jury, Casarez has found 3, all of whom say they have
no regrets about their verdict.
Hahn also was critical of Charles Sebesta, former district attorney for
Burleson and Washington counties, who prosecuted Graves.
"I always believed that Graves was set up by (Sebesta) because the
prosecutor needed someone to take a fall," Hahn wrote in his affidavit.
Sebesta told the Chronicle, "That's not unusual, to find a juror 10 years
later that wants to recant for whatever reasons. That's something the
courts will have to address."
(source for both: Houston Chronicle)
*******************
Death row inmate claims missing HPD evidence could clear him----Max Soffar
claims the confessions he gave police in 1980 were complete fabrications.
He confessed to a triple murder, but now says the confession was a lie. He
wants off death row. Prosecutors say "not so fast."
Max Soffar has spent the last 23 years on death row. His lawyers have
spent a lot of that time in court - twice winning rulings for a new trial.
Those were both appealed - and one is still pending. Now Soffar's lawyers
are telling prosecutors and the Houston Police Department there is
evidence missing in his case.
Soffar told Eyewitness News, "I walked in and just confessed to a crime
they no more had a suspect in than the man on the moon."
Max Soffar is a convicted killer who confessed to his crime decades ago
and then days after recanted, saying the confessions were complete
fabrications - that he wasn't there and neither was anyone he knew.
"C'mon, this whole thing is a lie," he said.
On July 13, 1980 4 young people were shot execution style in a robbery at
the Windfern Lanes bowling alley off the Northwest Freeway. Three of them
died.
Harris County Assistant District Attorney Lynn Hardaway said, "It was a
horrific crime."
It captured headlines, but no suspects until League City police officers
stopped Max Soffar - at that time a drug user and petty criminal - riding
a stolen motorcycle. At first, Soffar tells us he thought he could trade
information about the shooting - even if it was false - for leniency on
the stolen motorcycle. He tells us he wanted to implicate a friend he was
angry at and get reward money.
In an audio tape of the confession an officer asks, "Y'all parked at the
doors?"
Soffar can be heard answering, "Yeah, and I heard them shots and I moved
down. Then he came running. He came running out."
In that first confession, he told cops he was outside the bowling alley
and that friend did the shooting. But after three days of interrogations
without a lawyer, Max said he was coerced into saying he was inside, too,
and that the friend shot 2 people, threw the gun across the room to him
and Soffar shot 2 others.
Soffar's lawyer James Schropp explained, "They were all complete fiction."
For the last 12 years, Schropp has been Soffar's lawyer. Not only does he
say the confessions are made up, but says Soffar didn't look like the
shooter. As it was reported in 1980, the survivor couldn't positively
identify Soffar in a lineup. Now Schropp says there is more - crucial
evidence missing in the case.
"I think it's extremely important to the case," Schropp said.
In a letter this week to Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt, Schropp
demands a close look in the 280 boxes of recently discovered evidence for
polygraph results and audiotapes of Soffar's statements. That's evidence
the defense never had, that could help paint the picture of how the
confession was made.
"There is no way you can tell me that a triple homicide, quadruple
shooting has no evidence in those boxes," Soffar said.
Hardaway asserted, "I think that's an attempt to piggy back on problems
with the Houston Police Department crime lab."
The Harris County District Attorney's office doesn't buy it.
"I'm very comfortable with Max Soffar's guilt in this case," Hardaway
maintained. "They can proclaim his innocence. They can say it over and
over, but that just doesn't make it so."
Soffar told Eyewitness News, "I'm not going to die on that gurney, hear
me? I'm not going to die on that gurney. I'm innocent."
It is hard to understand why someone would confess to a crime he didn't
commit. And for many that is the end of the case. But according to the
Innocence Project, in 18% of death row releases there have been false
confessions.
We've had no response from the police department yet.
(source: KTRK News)
*******************
Doil Lane's accomplice in murder may get early release
A co-defendant of the only man on Texas death row to be sent there by a
Hays County jury is being considered for parole in his home state.
Donald Wacker, 41, had a parole hearing Thursday in Wichita, Kansas,
according to the Associated Press. He is serving a sentence of 16 years to
life in connection with the 1990 kidnapping and helping to kill
nine-year-old Nancy Shoemaker.
Doil Lane was convicted of Shoemaker's murder. Lane was also convicted of
kidnapping and murder in the 1980 death of 8-year-old Bertha Martinez of
San Marcos - though he was not arrested until 13 years after the crime; a
period of time in which he moved to Kansas, met Wacker and killed
Shoemaker.
The AP said more than 26,000 signatures of people opposed to Wacker's
release were delivered during a public meeting about his possible parole.
"He should stay where he's at," the AP quoted the victim's father, Bo
Shoemaker, as saying. "I think you should all consider when he gets out of
jail what he might do."
Lane was a former patient at the San Marcos Treatment Centers for the
Brown Schools who at the time of Martinez' kidnapping was living in San
Marcos with his mother and step-father. The step-father, Elga Broughton,
was also thought to be a suspect in the Martinez case but had died by the
time Lane was arrested and tried.
Bertha Martinez disappeared while riding her bicycle, prompting an
exhaustive search by police and neighbors. Her body was found over a week
later in a shed not far from her home in the Mill Street neighborhood.
Witnesses told authorities she and some friends had been approached by a
man who said he was looking for a lost dog.
Shortly after the slaying, Lane and the Broughtons moved to Kansas.
According to the AP, the Kansas Parole Board may consider Wacker's case
next month.
Lane remains on death row without a scheduled execution date, and there
has been some question about his mental capacity. 2 years ago, the Supreme
Court found it illegal to execute someone with mental retardation, which
Lane's trial and appellate lawyers both say he has.
Hays County District Attorney Mike Wenk has said he is in negotiations
with Lane's appeals lawyer, UT Law School Professor William Allison, but
has refused to reveal the nature of the negotiations.
(source: San Marcos Daily Record)
