Nov. 18
TEXAS:
Killer who cited Metallica song gets reprieve
For a 2nd time this year, condemned inmate Troy Kunkle avoided the Texas
death chamber when the U.S. Supreme Court stopped his scheduled execution
the same day he was supposed to receive a lethal injection.
About 40 minutes after he could have been put to death tonight, Texas
Department of Criminal Justice officials in Huntsville received word the
high court had blocked the punishment.
Vote from the court was 5-4 on an appeal where Kunkle's lawyers were
seeking a review of the case.
The justices in July also blocked the execution, although the ruling in
his case then came about nine hours before he was scheduled to die. The
same court last month had refused to review his case, clearing the way for
setting of Thursday night's execution date.
Kunkle was in a small holding cell next to the Texas death house when he
received word. He was condemned for a fatal shooting in Corpus Christi 20
years ago.
"Ecstatic," Kunkle said when asked to describe his feeling. "Praise God."
"He seemed completely surprised," Michelle Lyons, a Texas prison
spokeswoman said.
His lethal injection would have been the second in as many nights in Texas
and the 24th this year, equalling last year's total in the nation's most
active capital punishment state. A record 40 were carried out in 2000.
According to testimony at his capital murder trial, Kunkle was 18 when he
fatally shot Stephen Horton, 31, then chanted: "Another day, another
death, another sorrow, another breath" -- the refrain from the Metallica
song "No Remorse" on an album called "Kill 'Em All." A pool of blood is
depicted on the album cover.
"Well, to be honest with you, it was basically just a situation to where
it was a juvenile mistake made with juvenile peer pressure," Kunkle, 38,
told San Antonio television station KENS Wednesday from death row.
"There's nothing about this to be proud of. Really, it's kind of a shame
and an embarrassment."
Prosecutors also remembered him at one point playing an air guitar in the
courtroom at his trial as lawyers discussed whether the Metallica song
could be admitted into evidence.
Defense lawyers contended Kunkle, born in Nuremberg, Germany, where his
father was stationed in the military, was raised in a troubled home
environment and left mentally scarred by parents who had been treated for
depression. They said jurors were not properly allowed to consider.
In their appeal, Kunkle's lawyers argued the execution should be stopped
in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that held some capital murder
defendants in Texas were not given enough chance to present such
mitigating evidence.
"Plainly, Mr. Kunkle's sentencing hearing was marred by the same
constitutional flaw," attorney Robert McGlasson said. "The jury heard
evidence that could have persuaded it to spare Mr. Kunkle's life, but was
limited to instructions that gave it no vehicle for expressing that
conclusion."
Nolan Horton, 74, whose son was killed in the attack, said he was angered
by the appeal.
"The most stressful part to me is, I'm very upset with the court system,
the people sitting on those appeals courts," he said. "My name for a lot
of them is do-gooders. They're afraid they're going to step on toes. Some
of those toes need to be stepped on.
"It takes so long -- the little trivial things they come up with as
excuses."
Court records show on the evening of Aug. 11, 1984, Kunkle and four
friends got high on drugs and beer and drove from San Antonio to the beach
at Corpus Christi, 140 miles to the southeast. They robbed a man of $7 at
a convenience store, then drove around looking for someone else to rob.
Stephen Horton was walking home after playing pool at a bar and they
offered him a ride. When he got into their car, testimony showed Kunkle
shot Horton in the back of the head with a .22-caliber pistol. His body
was pushed out of the car and his wallet taken. It contained $13.
Kunkle and his friends were arrested in San Antonio.
Three companions received prison terms ranging from 30 years to life.
Kunkle got death. No charges were filed against a fifth person in the car.
One more execution is scheduled for this year. Frances Newton, 39, is set
to die Dec. 1 for the slayings of her husband and two young children in
1987 in Houston.
She would be the third woman to be executed in Texas and the 11th
nationally since the death penalty resumed in the United States in 1976,
according to statistics kept by the Washington-based Death Penalty
Information Center.
(source: Associated Press)
