Nov. 8
TEXAS----impending execution
Killer who's to die this week had a football future
He was voted Mr. Aldine for his athletic achievements at that north Harris
County high school. He was about to start college on a football
scholarship.
Almost everyone agreed that Demarco McCullum was a young man who was going
somewhere.
Instead of college, however, he went to death row.
McCullum, 30, is scheduled to die Tuesday for abducting, robbing and
coldly shooting a gay man to death a decade ago.
He insists that a "supernatural miracle" will spare him and says he
doesn't dwell on the past or fear execution.
"Inside me, it's not like, 'This is it; these are my last days,' " he said
in a recent interview. "That hasn't took inside me yet. I don't know if it
will. We'll see as the days go down."
The execution is the first of two scheduled on consecutive days for
killers convicted in Harris County. Frederick McWilliams is set to die
Wednesday, and 2 more inmates from this county have execution dates before
the end of the year.
If his sentence is carried out, McCullum would be the 6th Harris County
inmate and the 21st in Texas to be put to death this year.
McCullum was condemned for the July 29, 1994, robbery and murder of
Michael Burzinski. 3 of his high school teammates - Terrance Perro,
Decedrick Gainous and Chris Lewis - also were convicted in Burzinski's
death and sentenced to prison.
McCullum's appeals, including claims that he is not a future danger, have
been denied. His slim legal hope is a request for clemency from the Texas
Board of Pardons and Paroles.
Full of promise
The murder for which he was convicted shocked coaches, teammates and
friends, many of whom still cannot understand how the person they knew was
capable of that slaying and a string of other violent crimes that were
linked to him.
McCullum was full of promise in 1994, the year he graduated from Aldine
High.
Friends envied him. Teachers admired his model behavior. Coaches praised
his athletic gifts.
"You couldn't help but envy him," said Perro, who was a receiver on the
football team. "He had everything at school. He was Mr. Aldine. He was the
quarterback, had girls. He dressed well."
Yet, McCullum hid a secret life.
Prosecutors said he took part in a violent crime spree in the summer of
that year. In addition to killing Burzinski, they said, he attacked
several people and shot a man in the spine, paralyzing him. McCullum
denied that shooting.
"The Demarco that we coached was not the same Demarco that did those
things he was doing after football season was over," said Richard
Whitaker, his former coach and now the head football coach at H.M. King
High School in Kingsville.
"The Demarco that we coached was a vibrant kid. He was totally different
than the Demarco that walked out of Aldine High School."
His other self emerged
Even McCullum was surprised by his vicious second self. He said
Burzinski's killing was a spur-of-the-moment act that he couldn't
stop,"like a ball going downhill so far, it just goes."
"The real Demarco McCullum was not a criminal out there, always
criminalizing," he said.
Burzinski, 29, a native of Toledo, Ohio, crossed paths with McCullum
outside a Montrose bar. Openly homosexual, he had moved to Houston in 1990
to initiate Fox Photo's new digital imaging process.
McCullum and his friends were loitering in the parking lot that night in
1994 when Burzinski came out of the bar and spoke to McCullum, police
said. The 2 walked to Burzinski's car and got in.
The others then jumped in, and the group sped off.
McCullum, Perro and Gainous said Burzinski wasn't targeted for gay-bashing
but because they thought gay men carried lots of cash and were easy to
rob.
Police said the teens beat Burzinski, drove to a bank and withdrew $400
with his ATM card. They then drove to a secluded area in the 15800 block
of Northview Park in north Harris County and pulled him out.
Begged for mercy
Burzinski begged for his life, police said. Perro said he told McCullum
there was no reason to shoot. He and the others told police that McCullum
said he had to kill Burzinski because he knew their names.
Assistant District Attorney Tommy LaFon, who prosecuted the case, said it
appeared Burzinski was shot once with a .380-caliber pistol as he knelt or
lay in front of his killer.
McCullum claimed he was about 8 feet from Burzinski when he fired. He said
he couldn't see him clearly and shot blindly into the darkness, then ran
to the car without knowing whether he had hit Burzinski.
"I didn't stand over somebody and execute somebody," he said. "It was
wrong. A shot shouldn't have been fired."
Burzinski's body was found the next day. His burned car was found in north
Houston.
Police arrested Gainous on Aug. 15 and the other three the next day.
McCullum was to have left the next day for Tyler Junior College, which had
given him a football scholarship.
*****************
Mental patient pregnant again----Questions are renewed about the
effectiveness of state's system
A schizophrenic woman who killed her baby has again become pregnant while
incarcerated, renewing questions about the effectiveness of the state's
mental health system.
Evonne Rodriguez, acquitted in 1998 by reason of insanity after strangling
her 4-month-old son with rosary beads and dumping him in Buffalo Bayou, is
expecting a child at San Antonio State Hospital. She also became pregnant
in 1999 while at Rusk State Hospital after her acquittal.
"I was shocked to learn that she's pregnant again," said state district
Judge Caprice Cosper, whose court has lifelong jurisdiction over
Rodriguez. "Given that a child is a trigger (for her psychosis) and a
potential victim, this seems ludicrous."
The pregnancy troubled people on all sides of the case who learned about
it this week - not just Cosper, but the prosecutor, the defense attorney
and a psychiatrist who testified about Rodriguez's psychosis in the 1998
trial. Cosper said she plans to look into what can be done to prevent such
pregnancies, but acknowledged the matter is complicated because of
therapeutic considerations and constitutional rights.
"Our hospitals aren't prisons - they're there to provide appropriate
psychiatric care in a safe and stable environment," said Kenny Dudley,
director of the state hospitals section of the Texas Department of State
Health Services.
"And our patients have rights how they can be treated, which are related
to their condition, regardless of whether they came to us voluntarily or
following a criminal charge."
Up for adoption
State hospital officials would not talk about Rodriguez's case, but Cosper
said she apparently had sex with another patient, not a hospital employee.
She said plans call for the baby to be put up for adoption. (The child
conceived in 1999 is living with Rodriguez's mother.)
Cosper learned of Rodriguez's pregnancy only after calling San Antonio
State Hospital to look into a Houston Chronicle inquiry. She said she was
"appalled" to learn it from the media and scolded hospital officials for
not telling her Rodriguez was sexually active and refusing birth control.
Hospital officials had known that Rodriguez had been pregnant for 2 weeks
when Cosper called.
Rodriguez, 28, who testified that she killed her son in 1997 because she
believed he was possessed by demons, has been in the state mental health
system since a jury found her not guilty in 1998. A psychologist at the
trial said being around children triggers her to hallucinate.
In 1999, Rusk doctors recommended Rodriguez be released for outpatient
treatment. But Cosper rejected the recommendation after an independent
evaluation showed that Rodriguez had formed an "unhealthy relationship"
with another patient and said she was planning to have 4 children,
baby-sit others and work with pregnant women. A week later, Cosper found
out Rodriguez was pregnant by another patient.
Since then, Rodriguez has waived her right to appear at her annual reviews
and no doctor has recommended her release.
Improper supervision
No state agency keeps statistics on how often psychiatric patients become
pregnant while in state facilities. Officials said ascertaining whether
people came to them pregnant or gave birth after leaving would make it
difficult to keep track of such information.
All state psychiatric hospitals have policies forbidding patients from
engaging in sex, but San Antonio State officials emphasized they don't
have enough staff to constantly monitor everyone. They also said some
freedom on hospital grounds promotes patients' rehabilitation.
But some psychiatrists outside the Texas mental health system said the
pregnancy is evidence that such a patient isn't getting proper care and
supervision.
"How can Rodriguez give consent to have sex when she's being held against
her will and forced to receive medications and/or therapy?" said Dr. Seth
Silverman, a forensic psychiatrist who testified in Rodriguez's trial.
"Either the state's not allocating enough resources, or the hospital isn't
managing them properly."
Abortion opponent
Anticipating that Rodriguez's pregnancy might generate some calls for
eliminating the insanity defense, Silverman said: "This is a time to make
sure that the insanity laws are enforced, not changed."
No law addresses mental health patients having sex in state facilities,
said Paul Mascot, a lawyer for the state health services. He noted that
mental health law is very general.
Some psychiatric patients are kept in isolation, but they are violent and
considered a threat to themselves or others. Rodriguez is considered
rational, said Cosper.
Cosper said she would consider housing patients like Rodriguez in a
single-sex institution (no such facility currently exists) or instituting
forced birth control or sterilization. The latter, however, is "a very,
very sensitive issue" and not a measure she would entertain lightly.
It is not clear if Rodriguez refused birth control because of her Catholic
faith. She is an ardent abortion foe whose only arrest prior to the
killing of her son came at an abortion clinic protest.
Forced sterilization
Forcing Rodriguez to be sterilized or take birth control, presumably by
injection or implantation, would require asking the court to put Rodriguez
under guardianship, ending some of her rights, said a legal expert. Noting
that a judge ruled against forced sterilization in a 1969 precedent, he
said it's hard to know how a modern judge would respond.
Some psychiatrists and legal experts said they think pregnancies like
Rodriguez's are more common than people think, but state health officials
disagreed.
They said the average length of stay for patients at state psychiatric
hospitals is 30 days. Of a total population of nearly 2,300 patients in
Texas, only 355 have been in for more than a year, they said.
San Antonio State Hospital Superintendent Robert Arizpe said he'll look
into whether any grievous errors in judgment led to Rodriguez's pregnancy,
but he said he doesn't anticipate any.
Rusk reviewed its policies after Rodriguez became pregnant there and
stepped up patient monitoring.
Patients' rights
Rodriguez's last pregnancy also involved a patient. During that time, a
man previously found insane after gouging out his girlfriend's eyeball
testified that Rodriguez was 1 of 2 women there with whom he'd had sex. He
was not believed to be the father of that baby, a son.
"I'm not certain there's anything that can be done, without a change in
the law," said Cosper. "I don't know if this reflects a systematic problem
or not, but it clearly merits looking at the facilities, their procedures,
the laws.
The question is, can you fashion legislation that takes into account a
patient's unique circumstances and doesn't impede on constitutional
rights?"
(source for both: Houston Chronicle)
*******************
Mail call held seeds of inmate's salvation
The captain of the guard summoned Ernest Willis to his office when the
inmate had just 15 days left to live.
Visits to the office usually meant an inmate was in trouble for breaking
prison rules. This time, death row's disciplinarian simply needed
paperwork completed and a question answered:
What do you want to wear at your execution?
"I had a choice," Willis recalled.
Blue or black. Free of charge and a change from standard prison whites,
the second-hand slacks and collared shirt were meant to be a final
courtesy to a cold-blooded killer.
Willis, convicted of setting a fire that burned two women asleep in bed in
Iraan in 1986, was scheduled to be the 42nd visitor to Texas' execution
chamber since capital punishment was restored.
Now, more than a dozen years later, he is known by a different number.
Released last month from Huntsville, he is the 1st inmate to walk free
from death row in 7 years.
The exoneration followed several discoveries suggesting Texas nearly made
a deadly error. The trial had been unfair. And, instead of arson, the
fatal fire might have been caused by faulty wiring. But in 1991, inmate
No. 000881 was close to lethal injection, not liberty. So in the captain's
office, he picked blue - his favorite color -and made short work of the
paperwork.
Where it asked him to list as many as 5people who would witness his final
moments, Willis wrote, "No one."
Where it offered free legal help to draft his will, he refused; and where
it asked who should be allowed to collect his remains, he named a brother
in Odessa.
Then, handcuffed and escorted by two guards, he went back to his cell and
waited.
Drug questions
Mail was what Willis waited for on most days. Letters were life's central
pleasure in prison. And in Willis' case, the mail carried the seeds of his
salvation. Among the dozens of people Willis regularly wrote was the
mother of a mentally ill inmate who refused to communicate with his
family. Grateful for updates on her son, the mother forwarded Willis'
letters to a lawyer.
The lawyer contacted other attorneys until, eventually, the New York
office of Latham & Watkins agreed to represent Willis for free.
One of the nation's 5largest law firms, with branches as far away as Hong
Kong, the firm's resources dwarfed what most inmates could ever hope to
have on their side.
One of the first things the lawyers did was to review Willis' medical
records.
Not surprisingly, they found continual treatments for chronic back pain -
Willis had ruptured a couple discs while working on an oil rig - but other
entries made no sense.
5 months before the July 1987 trial, while Willis was in Pecos County
Jail, the inmate began receiving a brand name version of haloperidol, a
drug used to treat psychotic disorders.
3 months later, a second dosage of a similar medication, perphenazine,
began appearing in the log.
At times, Willis had received 40 milligrams - nearly 3 times the dosage
recommended for patients who were "barking at the moon."
"It's the pharmacological equivalent of being hit on the head with a
cosh," the neuropharmacologist Jonathan J. Lipman would tell lawyers.
It has never been explained why Willis received the drugs alongside
painkillers and muscle relaxants for his back.
"All I can tell you is I took the man to the doctor and the doctor
prescribed it," says Willis' jailer, now-retired Pecos County Sheriff
Bruce Willis, "and I have no other choice than to give him what the doctor
prescribed."
No future danger
As the appeal chugged forward, investigators stumbled onto another
discovery. When the lawyers sent a psychologist to evaluate Willis, the
inmate remembered sitting through a similar interview before his trial.
Oddly, the visit was not mentioned in the case file.
The evaluation was, however, documented in the records of San Angelo-based
psychologist Jarvis Wright, who provided a copy of his report to Willis'
lawyers.
The report, issued after Wright visited Willis a few days into jury
selection, concluded Willis was competent to stand trial.
Had Wright stopped there, the report would have been unimportant. But the
psychologist went on to write that the trial testimony would prove crucial
to determining whether he posed a risk of future danger - a key question
in any capital case.
If witnesses said Willis had been slowly becoming increasingly violent, he
would be a prime candidate for capital punishment. But if the evidence
showed no history of violence, the fire could safely be called an isolated
event unlikely to be repeated.
Furthermore, when questioned, Wright recalled having told the district
attorney, "This is not a good death penalty case."
Willis did have convictions for drunken driving, indecent exposure and
placing obscene or harassing phone calls, but he did not have a history of
lashing out violently, and none was presented at trial.
Additionally, the lawyers lined up friends and relatives who said they
would have testified Willis was not violent. He was generous, hard-working
and once even dived into a lake to pull a boy from a submerged car.
Life inside
A decade had passed by the time all this reached a courtroom. And, in the
meantime, Willis had found friendship in prison and romance in the mail.
Willis became fast friends with the inmate 2 cells away, Ricky McGinn, who
arrived in 1995 after being convicted of the rape and murder of his
stepdaughter.
The 2 inmates played dominos and daydreamed about living in remote
mountain cabins during their 3 hours of recreation time. And McGinn played
matchmaker.
McGinn urged his sister Verilyn to write Willis and pestered Willis to
write Verilyn. Both refused at first. Then, a letter arrived for Willis,
about a dozen pages long. Willis wrote back the same night.
Days later another envelope came from Verilyn. The pattern repeated and
the pace accelerated until they wrote every day - sometimes twice a day.
Verilyn saved almost every word. Pages of cooing, squabbling and
reconciling now fill boxes in her home.
"Hello my sweet darling," a typical one from Willis began. "I sure hope
you're safe and well on this very early lonely Monday morning."
"I cannot stand it when you're upset with me," he said in another letter
after Verilyn had complained about him responding to a letter from one of
his ex-wives.
The love affair sustained Willis while death row moved to a sparer prison
in 1999 and when the state executed McGinn the following year.
Still waiting
A year after death row relocated, a large envelope arrived in the New York
office of James Blank, the lawyer for Latham & Watkins who had worked the
longest on the Willis appeal. The packet postmarked in Texas came without
warning. But Blank knew immediately what the envelope held.
The lawyer's hand trembled slightly as he pulled out the document from
state District Judge Brock Jones, who presided over Willis' trial and was
now reviewing the challenge to his conviction.
Blank read a few paragraphs, then dashed off to find his colleagues.
"Mr. Willis is entitled to ... relief," Jones wrote.
The judge went on for 33 pages, spelling out why Willis deserved a new
trial. Most of the findings focused on the mysterious medication and the
psychologist's report.
4 months later, Willis obtained a copy of his birth certificate and used
it to apply for a marriage license. During the ceremony, the bride's older
brother stood as proxy for the groom.
Soon, Verilyn bought a Posturepedic mattress for her house, anticipating
it would soon soothe Willis' chronic back pain. She also got a green
Samsonite suitcase.
Packing men's socks, razors and other staples, as well as the gold wedding
ring that had been turned away by prison officials because it was too
expensive, she stashed the bag in the living-room closet.
"I knew sooner or later he'd come home," she said. "And when he came, I
wanted to be ready."
The courts, however, were not in the same hurry.
Jones' conclusions were only recommendations to the state's highest
criminal court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
6 months later, the unanimous court needed just 6 pages to say Judge Jones
was wrong. Willis had been fairly convicted and sentenced. The unsigned
ruling said:
The psychologist's report would not have helped Willis; it was simply
inconclusive about whether Willis was dangerous.
If Willis' primary attorney performed poorly, there was no evidence about
the 2nd attorney assigned to the case. Absent any evidence, he was
presumed competent.
Willis never objected to the mind-numbing doses of medication he received
during trial; there was therefore no evidence the pills were taken
involuntarily.
"That was absolutely the low point in the case," Blank said.
The only recourse lay in federal court.
Willis' case was filed in 2001 and assigned to U.S. District Judge Royal
Furgeson, then based in Pecos. It still would be under review in 2003 when
the judge relocated to San Antonio.
Still another year passed before Verilyn came home to find the New York
phone number of Willis' lawyers on her Caller ID. Furgeson had overruled
the court of criminal appeals.
Verilyn moved the suitcase from the closet to the car trunk. But the wait
wasn't over.
Texas had 4 months to decide whether it would retry him.
The choice fell to Ori T. White, the district attorney in the 112th
Judicial District, which includes Pecos County. White had inherited the
Willis case from his predecessor and he wanted a second opinion.
Arson investigation had advanced in the nearly 2 decades since the house
burned in West Texas.
Months passed. Then, one arson investigator concluded the fire could have
many plausible causes. A 2nd consultant was more forceful.
"There is not a single item of physical evidence in this case which
supports a finding of arson," he wrote.
More than 17 years after condemning Willis to die, the justice system was
considering another culprit. Electrical problems could have started the
fire.
White announced Oct. 4 that he would drop the murder charge.
"I cannot sleep," the inmate wrote his wife the day of the announcement.
"I've got so many things going on in my mind."
Walking away
Guards started to come by and say goodbye. They felt sure Willis would be
gone when they returned for another shift. But two days later, Willis
still was waiting for the bureaucracy of justice to let go. Instead of
coming to fetch Willis, Verilyn drove to the prison to celebrate their
fourth wedding anniversary.
Willis had been looking forward to the food in the visiting-area vending
machines and had just decided on lunch - a salad, a sandwich, a couple of
Diet Pepsis, bottled water and a pack of M&M's - when one of the majors
interrupted.
The major said the visit would have to end early. A moment later, the
warden walked into view and the major asked the inmate, "Are you ready to
leave?"
Willis had been ready for 17 years.
He went to a holding cell where he waited for a van to take him to the
Walls Unit in Huntsville, where most Texas prisoners are released.
Willis would never get the blue slacks he was offered for execution.
Before walking out of the Walls Unit a free man, he would be handed
2nd-hand gray pants and a plaid shirt.
But as he waited in the holding cell, he still wore the prison whites with
"DR" on the back and leg.
Time dragged. 30 minutes passed, then 60, then 90.
Finally, a white van arrived.
Officially exonerated, Inmate No. 000881 was a car-ride away from freedom.
Death row was about to disappear in the rearview mirror.
But the rules were still the rules.
Before Willis climbed into the van, the guards one last time fastened the
leg irons, chain and handcuffs.
(source: San Antonio Express-News)
*******************
URGENT ACTION APPEAL
----------------------------------
UA 298/04 Death penalty 05 November 2004
USA (Texas)
Demarco Markeith McCullum (m), black, aged 30
Frederick Patrick McWilliams (m), black, aged 30
Anthony Guy Fuentes (m), Hispanic, aged 30
The three men above are due to be executed in Texas in the next two weeks.
All were prosecuted in Harris County, the leading death penalty county in
the leading death penalty state of the USA.
Demarco McCullum is scheduled to be executed on 9 November. He was
sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Michael Burzinski in Houston
in July 1994. Michael Burzinski, a 29-year old white male, was abducted,
robbed and shot dead. Demarco McCullum was 19 years old at the time of the
crime, which involved three other defendants. He is reported to have been
a model prisoner.
Frederick McWilliams is scheduled to be executed on 10 November. He was
sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of Alfonso Rodriguez, a Hispanic
male who was shot dead during a robbery in Houston in September 1996.
Frederick McWilliams was 22 years old at the time of the crime, which
involved two other men. Concern has been raised about the performance of
the lawyer appointed for his state-level appeals. He reportedly never met
with McWilliams and did no investigation into the case. The quality of
legal representation for death row prisoners during their state appeals is
a serious problem in Texas (see
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510102003).
Anthony Fuentes is scheduled to be executed on 17 November. He was
sentenced to death in 1996 for the February 1994 murder of Robert Tate, a
white male who was shot dead during a robbery of the Houston shop where he
worked. Anthony Fuentes was 20 years old at the time of the crime, which
involved three other defendants, all of whom received prison terms. There
are reported to be serious questions surrounding the reliability of the
evidence used to convict Anthony Fuentes as the gunman.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Texas accounts for more than a third of all US executions carried out
since judicial killing resumed in 1977. Of 940 executions nationwide,
Texas has carried out 333, many in violation of international legal
safeguards. Texas has carried out 20 of the 55 executions in the USA so
far this year. The current governor, Rick Perry, has overseen 94
executions since taking office in December 2000. There were 152 executions
during the five-year governorship of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Demarco McCullum, Frederick McWilliams and Anthony Fuentes were all
prosecuted in Harris County, where the city of Houston is located. Of the
446 people now on death row in Texas, 158 were prosecuted in Harris
County. Seventy-eight people prosecuted there have been executed. If
Harris County was a state it would be ranked third, behind Texas and
Virginia, in the number of people executed since 1977. Five men prosecuted
in Harris County - four African Americans and one Latino - have been put
to death this year.
In March 2003, an independent audit of the Houston Police Department (HPD)
crime laboratory revealed serious defects in the lab's DNA analysis
section, including poorly trained staff relying on outdated scientific
techniques. The DNA section was shut down, and hundreds of criminal cases
opened for review. In a number of cases, discrepancies between new tests
and the original HPD analysis emerged. Several cases suggest that the
lab's problems extended beyond its DNA section, for example into its
ballistics expertise (see Dead wrong: The case of Nanon Williams, child
offender facing execution on flawed evidence,
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510022004).
A Texas Senator and the Houston Police Chief have urged executions of
people prosecuted in Harris County to be suspended until a full
re-examination of all evidence. Most recently, on 21 October 2004, a judge
on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said that there should be ''a
moratorium on all executions in cases where convictions were based on
evidence from the HPD crime lab until the reliability of the evidence has
been verified''. His was the only dissenting voice when the Court denied
death row inmate Dominique Green's request for a stay of execution on the
basis of concern around the accuracy of the HPD's ballistics work in his
case, and the recent discovery of 280 boxes of mislabeled evidence that
could impact thousands of criminal cases. A federal judge granted a stay
until the HPD could complete the cataloguing of the boxes. The stay was
overturned by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and Dominique
Green was executed on 26 October 2004.
Before it can pass a death sentence a Texas capital jury must decide that
the defendant would likely commit future criminal acts of violence if
allowed to live, even in prison - the so-called ''future dangerousness''
question. A recent study reviewed disciplinary records of 155 Texas
current or former death row inmates and concluded that in 95 per cent of
cases the prediction of future dangerousness was inaccurate: ''many
inmates sentenced to death based on predictions of future dangerousness
have proven to be non-assaultive, compliant inmates who pose no risk to
other inmates or prison guards''.
Unconscious racial biases may also infect a jury's determination of future
dangerousness. A study published in 2001, for example, concluded that
white jurors believed black defendants were more dangerous than white
defendants. Studies have consistently shown that race plays a role in
capital sentencing, particularly race of victim. A person who kills a
white victim is most likely to receive a death sentence, a situation
exacerbated if the defendant is not white. In Texas, for example, 79 per
cent of those executed were convicted of crimes involving white victims.
One in five of those put to death were African Americans convicted of
killing white victims.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases. It is an
affront to human dignity and a symptom of a culture of violence rather
than a solution to it. It is a punishment that denies the possibility of
rehabilitation or reconciliation. Today 118 countries are abolitionist in
law or practice.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible,
in your own words, using any of the above information as you see fit:
- expressing sympathy for those affected by the crimes in these cases,
explaining that you are not seeking to condone the crimes or minimize the
suffering caused;
- expressing deep concern that executions of Harris County defendants are
continuing despite the problems surrounding the Houston Police Department
crime laboratory;
- urging the governor to reflect upon the damage being done to the USA's
reputation by its continuing resort to executions in the face of the
global abolitionist trend, and on the failure of the death penalty to
offer a constructive solution to violent crime, noting evidence that the
US capital justice system is marked by arbitrariness, discrimination and
error;
- calling on the governor to do all he can to stop these and other
executions and to support a moratorium on executions in Texas.
APPEALS TO:
Governor Rick Perry
Office of the Governor
PO Box 12428
Austin; Texas 78711-2428
Fax: 1 512 463 1849
Email: (via webpage)
http://www.governor.state.tx.us/contact#contactinfo
Salutation: Dear Governor
PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. All appeals must arrive by 17 November
2004.
Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and
defends human rights.
This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact
information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help
with this appeal.
Urgent Action Network
Amnesty International USA
PO Box 1270
Nederland CO 80466-1270
Email: [email protected]
http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/
Phone: 303 258 1170
Fax: 303 258 7881
----------------------------------
END OF URGENT ACTION APPEAL
