[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS

[Rick Halperin]

July 23


TEXAS:

Amnesty International USA Press Release----For Immediate Release:


Harris County's 100th Execution, Set for Tuesday, Would be a Grim
Milestone, Says Amnesty International

Texas is preparing to execute Lonnie Johnson on July 24, the 100th
execution from a conviction in Harris County since the death penalty was
restarted in Texas in 1982. Jared Feuer, Southern Regional Director of
Amnesty International USA, released the following statement today:

"The 100th execution from Harris County would be a grim milestone for a
system that is costly, racially biased and may have put innocent men to
death. Harris County alone is responsible for more executions than any
state besides Texas itself, and that's not something to celebrate.

"It's sad that as Texas prepares to execute Lonnie Johnson, Houston
officials are rejecting any further independent review of the 180 cases
from the crime lab scandal that investigator Michael Bromwich said needed
more scrutiny. Their resistance conveys a message that proper justice is
not the goal. Refusing to acknowledge the great potential for error while
continuing executions at such a pace is a recipe for disaster.

"The overwhelming number of executions in Harris County, the history of
errors noted in the crime lab investigation and the eagerness to derail
further investigations paint a deeply disturbing picture. Houston
officials must address clear problems in the justice system and stop
Harris County's conveyor belt of executions."

(source: Amnesty International USA)

********************

Houston man killed after 'pummeling' police car----Mother, activist say
man's mental illness known; HPD says he was brandishing a pipe


The mother of a pipe-wielding man killed by Houston police said she
pleaded with officers not to fire at her son because he had a history of
mental health problems.

"I said, 'My son is schizophrenic, don't shoot him. He's bipolar,' " said
a grieving Joyce Guillory on Sunday, on the front lawn of her home in the
6600 block of Foster near Yellowstone. "They didn't listen to me. They
shot him anyway."

Houston police have not discussed in detail the incident Saturday night
that led to the death of Steven Guillory, 39.

In a statement released Sunday evening, Houston Police Department
officials said the incident "did not offer an opportunity" for sending
members of the police departments' Crisis Intervention Team to the scene.
The statement also said the shooting serves to "highlight the increasing
need for more mental health professionals and earlier intervention prior
to police involvement."

Earlier this month Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt told the Houston
Chronicle editorial board the department's dealings with the mentally ill
were an issue of concern and that all cadet classes are now required to
complete 40 hours of Crisis Intervention Team training.

Houston police said Guillory was shot after he refused orders to drop a
metal pipe he was carrying. Police said Guillory charged at officers while
holding the pipe "in a menacing manner."

On Sunday, a small, makeshift memorial marked the spot where Guillory fell
to the ground, dead from at least 1 gunshot wound.

Police may have known him

Guillory was well-known to police as someone with serious mental health
issues, said community activist Quanell X.

"This was the address of a known paranoid schizophrenic who they have
dealt with in the past (and) who they have 'talked down' in the past,"
Quanell said.

An HPD spokesman on Sunday said he wasn't aware if officers had dealt with
Guillory before, but said that would be part of the investigation into the
shooting.

Quanell wanted to know why officers trained in crisis intervention were
not sent.

"They knew what they were dealing with," he said.

Quanell said at least 20 minutes elapsed before the backup officers
arrived at the scene.

"When they pulled up and jumped out of their cars, they didn't negotiate
they didn't try to talk the young man down," Quanell said. "There were
multiple officers out here. They could have immediately requested a
(Crisis Intervention) team."

Joyce Guillory said she called police after her son struck her during an
argument at the home. When officers arrived, they saw him standing in the
front yard, brandishing a large pipe.

He appeared agitated, police said, and began moving toward them with the
pipe in his hands. Officer T.K. Richardson tried to use his Taser to
subdue Guillory but was unsuccessful, police said.

The officers backed away and called for assistance as Guillory began
striking an HPD patrol car, smashing out most of the windows and lights.

Local pastor Louis Jolivette lives nearby and saw portions of the violent
confrontation between Guillory and the police. The 1st responding officers
remained 15 or 20 feet away from Guillory as he attacked the car,
Jolivette said.

"When the second group of policemen came around, it seems that's when
things really got out of hand," said Jolivette. "We heard some shooting
and I saw (Guillory) fall down in the street."

Ordered him to drop pipe

The pipe Guillory was using during the melee broke in half as the backup
officers reached the scene. He threw one of the broken sections at them,
then began approaching officers T.D. Jackson and R.B. Wieners.

Police said the officers ordered Guillory to drop the pipe, then fired at
him. Richardson was struck by one of the officers' rounds. He was treated
at an area hospital, police said.

Guillory's mother said she was able to calm her son when he became
agitated in the past.

"I could have talked him back in the yard (but) they wouldn't let me get
nowhere near him," she said.

The Harris County District Attorney's Office and detectives with HPD's
homicide and internal affairs divisions are investigating the shooting.

(source: Houston Chronicle)

***************************

Man faces execution for murder he didn't commit


Fosters supporters rally at the State Capitol.

A man who never killed anyone but was present when another man did more
than 10 years ago in San Antonio is set to die by lethal injection on Aug.
30.

On Saturday, Kenneth Foster's family and supporters gathered at the State
Capitol and the Governor's Mansion to protest his death row sentence.

When Lawrence Foster heard the verdict handed down to his grandson, he
couldn't believe it.

"This can't happen. This can't be true. He should not be responsible for
the actions of another individual, especially when he did not know what
the intention of the other individual was," he said.

But according to the jury that convicted him, he did know the intentions
of Mauriceo Brown, who was found guilty of capital murder after he shot
and killed Michael LaHood in San Antonio in 1996. He executed last July.

Foster was the driver of the car Brown was in. The murder was committed
while Kenneth and two other men sat in the car, 80 feet away from the
spot.

"It's a series of legal misfortunes," attorney Mary Felps said.

Foster's family and supporters simply said he was in the wrong place at
the wrong time.

"Kenneth Foster was in the car. He did not know that Michael LaHood was
going to be killed. He had no way of knowing what was going to happened
and therefore the law of parties does not apply," Felps said.

The law of parties states that Kenneth should have anticipated that Brown
was going to kill LaHood. Earlier that evening the four had robbed 2
people at gunpoint.

Kenneth Foster will be executed on Aug. 30 for his role in a 1996 murder
in San Antonio.

"After they had done something that was illegal, Kenneth should have said
'I shouldn't have done this. I want to go home,'" Felps said.

But that never happened, and 11 years later he sits on death row for
something his supporters say he never did.

Foster will be executed on Aug. 30 unless the Criminal Court of Appeals
steps in.

(source: News8Austin)

********************

Protesters rally against upcoming execution


Friends, family and fervent activists against the death penalty marched
down Congress Avenue on Saturday and gathered in front of the Governor's
Mansion to demand that the state not execute Kenneth Foster Jr.

"This case seemed to be an opportunity not only save Kenneth Foster, who
is a magnificent human being, but to actually turn the tide in Texas,"
said Dana Cloud, UT associate professor and anti-death penalty activist.

On Aug. 30, Foster is scheduled to be executed for the 1996 murder of
Michael LaHood Jr. Keith Hampton, Foster's criminal lawyer, says his
client was more than 80 feet away when LaHood was fatally shot by Mauriceo
Brown.

Brown, Foster, Julius Steen and Dewayne Dillard were all in Foster's car,
and there was a gun in the vehicle. They had robbed several people at
gunpoint during the night of the murder. Brown himself was trying to rob
LaHood when he shot LaHood and ran to Foster's car. Since Foster was a
willing accomplice in the robberies, the court found him guilty of
attempting to rob LaHood, which inevitably led to his death.

"He did not hurt anybody, and he's not going to," said Foster's
11-year-old daughter, Nydesha.

On Oct. 2, 2006, Foster's final appeal was denied in the 5th Circuit Court
of Appeals. A date was set for Foster's execution in May of this year. The
approaching execution prompted dozens of people to gather Saturday evening
to protest the execution, a walk that began at the capital and ended in
front of the mansion.

"Because, I think, of the widespread outrage at this case, perhaps if we
put enough light on it and put enough pressure on the governor and the
board of pardons and paroles, that this could actually slow down the
machine of death in Texas," Cloud said.

Foster was tried with Brown, and on May 5, 1997, both were found guilty of
capital murder. Brown was executed for the murder of LaHood in July 2006.

"A life has been taken for a life," said Lawrence Foster, Kenneth's
grandfather. "Are we going to have to give two lives for one?"

2 weeks before his execution, Brown, who pleaded self-defense, confided to
Mary Felps, a civil lawyer who now represents Foster, telling her Foster
had no involvement in the shooting.

"Mauriceo Brown said Kenneth Foster had no idea that anything was going to
happen to Michael LaHood Jr.," Felps said.

Before the protest, Felps spoke on behalf of Foster, who sent his deepest
regards to the LaHood family for the loss of their son. Foster's
grandfather likewise echoed his sympathy but felt his grandson's
involvement was not enough for him to be executed.

"He should not even be on death row," said Foster. "You know, Texas
justice sometimes is not fair. This is one of the times, I think."

In addition to being tried with the shooter, Hampton said there are many
other inconsistencies in his client's trial. Dewayne Dillard and Julius
Steen, 2 other passengers in Foster's car that night, have both stated
that Foster was unaware that Brown was going to kill LaHood, let alone
that Brown even left the car with a gun in his hand.

Dillard testified in an evidentiary hearing, but his testimony was never
presented at trial.

Hampton also said that clarification of Steen's testimony would have
helped Foster's case, but Steen was never given the chance. Foster also
never testified in his trials.

"At every detail of this case is a rail on the tracks of injustice," Cloud
said.

Hampton has sent in a second appeal to the U.S. Court of Criminal Appeals
and has also sent a petition of clemency to the Texas Board of Pardons and
Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry, Foster's last hope.

"What is amazing in this case is that we're going to put to death someone
who didn't kill anybody," said Hampton.

Foster's family and supporters along with the Coalition to End the Death
Penalty began the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign on May 30, after the date
had been set for his execution. The group started a Web site called
www.freekenneth.com that gives details about the case and features some of
Foster's poetry.

"Kenneth is an incredible, eloquent, poet, writer, speaker political
activist," said Mario Africa, one of the speakers. "He's not somebody
who's just saying 'f the police' or 'this is messed up' or 'that's messed
up.' This brother has an analysis that has considerable depth."

Among the speakers at the at the protest were Shujaa Graham and Darby
Tillis, 2 exonerated death row prisoners.

"History tells us that struggle can call the system into question," said
Cloud, who also referenced Kevin Cooper and Troy Davis as two other men
who escaped execution.

Foster's family has been leading the fight to get him off death row and
are the heart of the campaign, said UT graduate student Bryan McCann, who
has been involved with several anti-death penalty groups.

"This isn't an innocence claim like any other," said McCann. "The state of
Texas will be the 1st to admit Kenneth Foster killed no one."

(source: The Daily Texan)

*****************************

Tomball killer is set to be executed Tuesday----Case again focuses
attention on race relations in community


Midnight came, midnight went and downtown Tomball seemed dead as dead
could be. From her post at the Stop N Go's cash register, Tammy Wynette
Durham scanned the bleak scene, enlivened only by the lights of an
occasional passing car. Then, about 1:30 a.m., she noticed something that
frightened her: a lone black man loitering at the store's front with his
hand concealed beneath a newspaper.

Durham, alone in the store, telephoned her friend Gunar "Bubba" Fulk, 16,
and asked him to keep her company. Minutes later, Fulk, a strapping
6-foot-plus Magnolia High football player, and his friend Leroy "Punkin'"
McCaffrey, 17, pulled into the parking lot.

The teens talked to the man  later identified as Lonnie Earl Johnson  then
told Durham they were giving the seemingly stranded motorist a ride.

Four hours later, about 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 15, 1990, a motorist spotted
Fulk's body beside FM 2920, about four miles from the store. He had been
shot 3 times in the head and once in the chest. McCaffrey's corpse was
found 350 feet away.

Detectives traced Johnson to Austin, where he was arrested at a topless
bar Aug. 30. Although the Tomball landscape worker said he killed the
teens in self-defense, a Harris County jury found him guilty of capital
murder and sentenced him to die.

Barring favorable action on last-minute appeals accusing prosecutors of
illegally withholding crucial information from defense attorneys, Johnson,
44, will be executed Tuesday. In a recent death row interview, Johnson
likened himself to James Byrd Jr., the 49-year-old Jasper man whose
racially motivated dragging death in 1998 gained international notoriety.

"The only difference between me and James Byrd," Johnson said, "is that I
lived."

The case, which has attracted interest from as far away as Canada, again
focuses attention on race relations in the tiny northwest Harris County
community, which 2 years ago hosted a Ku Klux Klan function in a
city-owned building.

Racially charged period

The Tomball murders occurred during a racially charged summer as a
campaign in neighboring Montgomery County to free Clarence Brandley from
death row moved toward success. Brandley, a black high school janitor
condemned for the 1980 rape-strangulation of a 16-year-old white student,
was released from prison after almost 10 years.

Austin attorney Jodi Callaway Cole last week launched an appeals strategy
at state and federal levels arguing that prosecutors withheld
investigators' reports and other documents that could have buttressed
Johnson's claim of self-defense.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday rejected Cole's application
for a writ of habeas corpus, and Cole said she would file petitions with
the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court.

"The chain of deception utilized by the state is at best gross
incompetence and at worst flagrant misconduct," Cole said in the state
petition, which also alluded to the region's history of racial prejudice.
In perusing prosecutors' files, she said, she found police reports of
racial conflict in the Harris County town immediately before and after the
killings.

One day before the double murders, two white youths and a black teenager
clashed at a service station across the street from the Stop N Go. Days
after the killings, a white teen was injured in a fight with a black teen.
Hours later, a black gunman fired shots at a car occupied by Durham,
McCaffrey's brother and other white youths. No one was injured.

Had they been aware of the Tomball incidents, Johnson's lawyers said,
jurors might have given more credence to his self-defense claim.

'It was disclosed'

Roe Wilson, chief of the district attorney's post-conviction writs
division, responded that offense reports and related documents were
available to defense attorneys.

"There is really nothing there at all," Wilson said of Cole's allegations.
"It was disclosed. In 99 percent of capital cases, the state's file is
open to defense counsel  offense report, supplements, everything."

Robert Morrow, 1 of 2 lawyers representing Johnson at his 1990 trial, said
that he can't remember if he found the offense reports in the district
attorney's file.

"I can't swear that I didn't see them," he said.

But Austin lawyers Karyl Krug and David Schulman are certain the
exculpatory documents were not present when they sifted through boxes of
files at the district attorney's office while preparing a state habeas
corpus petition.

"It is impossible we overlooked them," Schulman said. "They were not
there."

Johnson's story

In the death row interview, Johnson said he had gone to the Stop N Go
early on the morning of the killings while jogging. A former high school
and college athlete, he said he hoped to get into shape to try out for a
position with the Houston Oilers.

He said he was talking on the telephone with a girlfriend when Fulk and
McCaffrey offered him a ride.

"The district attorney's theory is that I robbed these guys," Johnson
said. "The lady at the store said I had a newspaper rolled up. If I was
walking around with a rolled up newspaper, as late as it was, why didn't
she call the police? Does that make sense?"

Johnson dismissed prosecution allegations that he was motivated by a
desire to rob his victims as "a theory with no merit."

"When homicide came to the scene, they found these guys and all of their
belongings. Their pockets weren't turned inside out," Johnson said.

"If I robbed them for their vehicle, why not take the truck and sell it?"

Authorities found Fulk's truck abandoned in San Marcos.

In a statement to authorities, Johnson said the teens drove several miles
before stopping the truck in the roadway. One of the youths told him his
ride had ended and pressed a pistol to his side, Johnson said.

Johnson told his lawyer the teens forced him to the ground and urinated on
him. When the youths allowed him to stand, Johnson grabbed the pistol. The
gun discharged, striking Fulk. Johnson then fired 3 more times before
taking aim at McCaffrey, who died as he attempted to cross a fence.
Authorities found a knife in McCaffrey's hand.

Johnson then drove to Austin, where he told a girlfriend, an exotic
dancer, that he had killed two youths. The girlfriend later told
authorities the teens had owed Johnson money for a drug transaction.

"I recognize that I screwed up when I fled. I knew I should never take
rides with strangers, but these were kids," Johnson said. "It's an
unfortunate situation. I lost 17 years."

"My son was just 17," said Chris Schultz, Fulk's mother. "Johnson's been
on death row as long as my son was alive ... I want to watch him die. I
want to see he will never hurt anyone again."

Schultz said her son had taken a night job at an area supermarket in part
to pay for his 1st vehicle, a used white 1980 Chevrolet pickup. He had
owned the truck only a few weeks before his murder.

"He was a big boy, like over 6 feet and 220 pounds, but he was the
sweetest thing," she said. "He would do anything to help anyone."

Fulk and McCaffrey enjoyed hunting and fishing and hoped to join the
military.

McCaffrey's mother, Laura McCaffrey, said her son had spent the summer
working with her husband as a printer.

She dismissed Johnson's claims of self-defense and his assertion that he
was the victim of a racially motivated attack.

"He has changed his story so many times," she said. "It's only natural
that he's going to try this. There wasn't a prejudiced bone in either one
of their bodies."

McCaffrey said she plans to witness Johnson's execution.

"Yes. Yes, sir, I will go. But I will say that it's not something I'm
really looking forward to," she said.

"I'm sorry that his family has to go through what basically we went
through, but he made a mistake. He did wrong and he needs to pay."

*******************************

CPS caseworker burned to death knew abuse cycle well


Terry Lee was trained to recognize abuse. A savvy caseworker for Child
Protective Services, the 44-year-old was once named Texas' caseworker of
the year.

Like social workers everywhere, she was familiar with Lenore Walker's
cycle theory of violence, a staple of the field since 1979. Every day, in
her work with children, Lee saw the cycle.

Walker first described it in The Battered Woman, a study of male batterers
and their female victims. The cycle, she wrote, starts with tension. The
abuser is angry, and the victim is careful not to stoke his anger. Maybe
he thinks her clothes are too sexy. Maybe he demands to know who she's
been talking to. Maybe he doesn't like the pillows on her couch. It
doesn't matter.

The tension builds, over hours or days or years, culminating in an
explosion: verbal, physical or sexual abuse. At first it's minor. Maybe he
curses at her. Maybe, in traffic, he slams his hand against the dashboard
so hard that it scares her. Maybe he kicks her cat.

A honeymoon phase follows. He's sorry. He doesn't know what came over him.
He won't do it again. He's attentive and sensitive and sweet. She doesn't
tell anyone.

But the tension returns. The explosions grow more violent. And still, she
doesn't tell.

'Most traumatic week'

About 3 months ago, Terry Lee met John Marshall Dodd at the gym. She was
blond and pretty. He was a personal trainer, buff, a few years younger
than she was. Sometimes he'd spend the night at her place in Conroe.

Many of Lee's friends were social workers  some at the Montgomery County
CPS office, one at the Montgomery County Women's Center. Lee gave money to
the women's center.

She told friends that her relationship with her boyfriend was fine. But on
July 14, it clearly wasn't. That night, police say, Dodd struck Lee in the
face. They say that in her kitchen, he doused her with gasoline, then set
her on fire. She died at the hospital.

The story made the Chronicle's front page and the TV news, and in the days
that followed, calls flooded the Montgomery County Women's Center hot line
callers whose distress was often extreme. "We saw the most traumatic week
there ever," said Donna Wick, the center's outreach program manager.
Callers would say that their batterer was in the next room, or on his way
home. Almost every caller, she says, needed shelter.

The attacker you love

Wick credits the surge to Lee's story. "Maybe they thought, 'That will be
me, if I don't get some help.'"

After Dodd's arrest, many mysteries remained. Lee's social worker friends
wondered: What could set a man off like that after only three months? He
was a body builder. Could he have been using steroids? Did she know that
he had a terrifying criminal record? What signs of his temper had she
seen? Did her social worker training encourage her to try too hard to find
the good in her man, to rehabilitate a hard case? Were there warning signs
that she hadn't mentioned?

Intimate attackers

They were surprised that something so terrible had happened to her, but
down deep, they knew almost anyone could fall prey. They'd seen victims up
and down the social ladder, male and female both. They'd seen victims in
places most people don't expect to find domestic abuse, upscale enclaves
like The Woodlands and Sugar Land, victims with jobs and college degrees,
victims reluctant to leave their $300,000 houses though staying might cost
them their lives.

The social workers, of all people, knew how hard it is for a victim to
break the cycle  to call the police, to call a shelter, to tell a friend.
And, most of all, to leave.

Thursday night, the Montgomery County Women's Center sponsored a
self-defense class, free to all comers. Despite pelting rain, the class
drew nearly 50 people, almost all women and girls. An aikido instructor
showed them how to wriggle free of a surprise attack by a stranger, the
parking lot rapist who grabs you from behind.

After the session, a few women approached Wick, who'd organized the class.
Next time, they hoped the instructor would address more intimate
attackers.

How do you get away from your husband when he has you by the hair,
dragging you into the bedroom? one asked. What if your man comes at you
with a kitchen knife? asked another.

They didn't say outright that they'd been abused, and they weren't asking
to escape abuse. They simply wanted to know how to survive it, to live
with it a little longer.

Terry Lee would have recognized the cycle.

(source for both: Houston Chronicle)

********************

Mendoza appeals court date set


A man who First Assistant District Attorney Greg Davis characterized as
"one of the most violent, sadistic men I have ever encountered" has a date
set for his appeal to go before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

A Collin County jury sentenced Moises Sandoval Mendoza, of Farmersville,
to death for the murder of Rachelle O'Neil Tolleson, 20, of Farmersville,
whom he strangled, raped and stabbed then tried to dispose of her body by
burning and dumping it in an eastern Collin County creek bed in March
2004.

According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Mendoza, who has
been sitting on death row for more than 2 years, became the 12th defendant
sentenced to death in Collin County since 1976.

Mendoza's appeal will go before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in
Austin on Sept. 12.

The appeal asks the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to "reverse judgment
of the trial court and remand for a new trial" while the Collin County
District Attorney's Office's rebuttal asks the state court to affirm
Mendoza's conviction and sentence.

The 165-page appeal report filed in the Collin County District Clerk's
Office last April lists a total of 81 issues with the state's case and the
trial held in 401st District Court during the voir dire, trial and
punishment phases. One of the issues states the evidence presented to the
jury was "legally" and "factually insufficient" to support a guilty
verdict of capital murder, according to the report.

The statement of facts for appellant's issue no. 23 states that "there is
no conclusive evidence that Ms. Tolleson was abducted rather than having
left her home on her own volition."

The statement cited testimony from former Farmersville police Officer
Scott D. Collins about the condition of Tolleson's house and Texas Ranger
A.P. Davidson about photographs of the home, one of which depicts a stack
of clothing "as if someone was in the process of moving."

The statement also cites testimony from Tolleson's mother Pam O'Neill who
found Tolleson's infant daughter, Avery, alone on a bed in Tolleson's
bedroom with 2 pillows "propped up beside the baby," all of which the
statement said does not "suggest that she did not prop the pillows around
the baby and was going to leave her for a short period of time."

The Collin County District Attorney's Office offered their rebuttal to the
appeal in early June. It cites testimony from Davison that Mendoza told
him Tolleson left her home with him to get some more cigarettes even
though there was a pack of cigarettes "3/4 full" in the house and a 2nd
pack in her car.

The report also claims Mendoza lied about being in Tolleson's home that
night after investigators found Mendoza's bootprint on some divorce
paperwork left in the house, and that the condition of the house was
"uncharacteristic of Rachelle, most importantly that Avery had been left
uncovered and alone on a bed."

(source: McKinney Courier-Gazette)