June 30
TEXAS:
From America's Busiest Death Chamber, a Catalog of Last Rants, Pleas and
Apologies Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Karl Eugene Chamberlain went to his neighbor's apartment that night in Dallas
under the pretense of borrowing sugar. He returned later, forced her into a
bedroom, bound her hands and feet, raped her and then used a rifle to shoot and
kill her. His victim, Felecia Prechtl, 29, was a single mother with a
5-year-old son.
11 years after he was convicted of capital murder, Mr. Chamberlain, 37, was
strapped to a gurney in Texas' execution chamber at the Walls Unit prison here
and was asked by a warden if he had any last words. "Thank you for being here
today to honor Felecia Prechtl, whom I didn't even know," he told her son,
parents and brother on June 11, 2008. "I am so terribly sorry. I wish I could
die more than once to tell you how sorry I am."
His words did not die with him. Texas wrote them down, kept them and posted
them on the Internet.
The state with the busiest death chamber in America publishes the final
statements of the inmates it has executed on a prison agency Web site, a kind
of public catalog of the rantings, apologies, prayers, claims of innocence and
confessions of hundreds of men and women in the minutes before their deaths.
Charles Nealy asked to be buried not to the left of his father but to the right
of his mother. Domingo Cantu Jr., who dragged a 94-year-old widow across the
top of a chain-link fence, sexually assaulted her and then killed her, told his
wife that he loved her and would be waiting for her on the other side.
The condemned praised Allah and Jesus and Sant Ajaib Singh Ji, a Sikh master. 3
cheered for their favorite sports teams, including Jesse Hernandez, whose
execution last year made headlines after he shouted, "Go Cowboys!" They spoke
in English, Spanish, French, Vietnamese, Gaelic, German ("Meine schone
prinzessin," said Mr. Cantu, German for "my beautiful princess"). They quoted
the Koran and the Bible, but also Todd Beamer's phrase aboard United Airlines
Flight 93.
"Sir, in honor of a true American hero, 'Let's roll,'" said David Ray Harris,
who was dishonorably discharged from the Army and was executed in 2004 for
killing a man who tried to stop him from kidnapping the man's girlfriend.
The execution on Wednesday of Kimberly McCarthy - a 52-year-old woman convicted
of robbing, beating and fatally stabbing a retired psychology professor near
Dallas - was the 500th in Texas since December 1982, when the state resumed
capital punishment after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in
1976. In those 30 years, Texas has executed more people than Alabama, Florida,
Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma and Virginia combined.
The state's execution record has often been criticized as a dehumanizing
pursuit of eye-for-an-eye justice. But three decades of last statements by
inmates reveal a glimmer of the humanity behind those anonymous numbers, as the
indifferent bureaucracy of state-sanctioned death pauses for one sad, intimate
and often angry moment.
"I hope that one day we can look back on the evil that we're doing right now
like the witches we burned at the stake," said Thomas A. Barefoot, who was
convicted of murdering a police officer and was executed on Oct. 30, 1984.
Among the death-penalty states, Texas and California are the only ones that
make the last words of offenders available on their Web sites. But only Texas
has compiled and listed each statement in what amounts to an online archive.
The collection of 500 statements, which includes inmates' verbal as well as
written remarks, has been the subject of analysis, criticism and debate by
lawyers, criminal justice researchers and activists who oppose the death
penalty.
It has spawned at least one blog, Lost Words in the Chamber, which has
regularly posted the last statements since 2011. Officials with the prison
agency, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said there were 3 million
page views of inmates' final words last year.
"It's kind of mesmerizing to read through these," said Robert Perkinson, the
author of "Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire" and a professor at
the University of Hawaii at Manoa. "Most people about to be executed haven't
had a lot of success in school or life. They're not always so skilled at
articulating themselves. There are plenty of cliches, sometimes peculiar ones,
like the Cowboys reference. But I think many of these individuals are also
striving to say something poignant, worthy of the existential occasion."
The last statements are not uttered in a vacuum - they are heard by lawyers,
reporters and prison officials, as well as the inmates' families and victims'
relatives. But the power of their words to change the system or even heal the
hearts of those they have hurt is uncertain.
Nearly 7 years after he murdered a Houston city marshal who caught him with
cash and loose change stuffed into his pockets from the bar he had just robbed,
Charles William Bass refused his last meal and told the warden in 1986, "I
deserve this." "I think he was correct," said Mr. Baker, 63, a minister at the
Church of Christ in Emory, Tex., who was 29 when his father was killed. "It's
called capital punishment for a reason."
Strapped to a gurney in a spare brick room painted dark green, the inmates
nowadays speak into a microphone attached to the ceiling, their arms stretched
out and buckled into a T-shaped gurney so the drugs flow easily from the IVs
into their veins. With the victims' and the inmates' witnesses in place in 2
separate rooms, the warden asks the inmate if there is a last statement. The
last words are not recorded, but transcribed by hand by staff members listening
inside the warden's office.
Jim Willett, 63, a retired Walls Unit warden, said none of the 89 statements he
heard from 1998 to 2001 changed his support for the death penalty.
"You can hear it in their voices sometimes and in their delivery that they are
sincerely hurting for the pain that they put their own family through," said
Mr. Willett, the director of the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville. "I saw the
strangest thing one night. You got this little wall here like this, separating
those 2 witness rooms. One night I saw the daughter of the inmate and the
daughter of the victim, and they were both leaning against that wall. They were
that far apart and didn't even know it."
Jason Clark, a spokesman for the prison agency, said the last statements were
posted to respond to the demand for that information by the public and
journalists. But opponents of the death penalty call it a perverse tradition.
"The death penalty is a process, not an act, and posting the final words of a
condemned person after a process which has usually lasted a decade or more is
simply a disservice," said Rick Halperin, director of the Embrey Human Rights
Program at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "How is one to assess the
phrase of 'Go Cowboys!' from a man on a gurney?"
Freddie Webb said 1 word - "Peace" - but James Lee Beathard, who murdered his
accomplice's father, stepmother and half-brother, said 684 of them in December
1999, in a rambling statement that mentioned the embargoes against Iran and
Cuba. He viewed his final minutes the way others had - as a fleeting moment on
a stage, with a silent, watchful audience. "Couple of matters that I want to
talk about," he said, "since this is one of the few times people will listen to
what I have to say."
(source: New York Times)
CONNECTICUT:
Serial killer Steven Hayes boasted of killing 17 people in prison letters;
Horrifying details of Hayes' history emerges
Steven Hayes, the Connecticut man convicted of killing a mother and her 2
daughters in a brutal home invasion has boasted about how he killed 17 others
in letters revealed to the press yesterday.
Hayes admits in horrifying detail that in 2 of the attacks he tied up,
tortured, and killed 2 women - even making a 16-hour video of him murdering one
of them.
Hayes, 48, who is now on death row for his role in the fatal 2007 Connecticut
home invasion, boasted in a series of letters that he had collected the
sneakers of each of his victims as trophies.
In 2010 Hayes was convicted of raping and strangling Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48,
then tying her young daughters, Hayley, 17 and Michaela, 11, to their beds and
setting the house on fire.
Hayes' accomplice Joshua Komisarjevsky was also convicted for his role in the
killings and is due to be sentenced today. Hayes is currently appealing his
conviction.
(source: Irish Central)
NORTH CAROLINA:
NC Racial Justice repeal leaves questions in wake
With the repeal of North Carolina's Racial Justice Act after just 4 years on
the books, it's uncertain how quickly the state will resume executions or what
the legacy will be for the law that proponents say was intended to rid capital
punishment of racial bias.
Gov. Pat McCrory's signature of approval for the repeal capped off a debate
over the law's intent and effectiveness that started even before it passed the
state legislature in 2009 almost entirely along party lines.
But experts and advocates say the issue of promoting racial equality in the
criminal justice system will remain salient, especially in light of a growing
number of states taking steps to abolish the death penalty completely - which
was always the goal at the heart of the RJA, opponents say.
As approved under then-Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat, the RJA allowed
convicted murderers to use statewide and local statistics to argue that racial
bias in court proceedings and jury selection tainted their convictions, earning
them life sentences instead of lethal injection if a judge agreed.
The law aimed to address bias in jury selection and sentencing, which has been
uncovered in at least 25 states, according to the nonpartisan Death Penalty
Information Center. Studies have shown that juries are far more likely to seek
the death penalty for black-on-white murders and that prosecutors are more
likely to strike African-Americans from juries.
Republicans, who always opposed the idea of commuting individual sentences
using statistics, successfully restricted the use of capital punishment
statistics to the local level with a 2012 amendment that also required other
forms of evidence to overturn a death-penalty ruling.
Before Republicans weakened the law, though, a Cumberland County judge granted
a life sentence to death-row inmate Marcus Robinson under the act largely on
the strength of a Michigan State University study of North Carolina that found
black jurors were more than twice as likely to be struck from juries than their
white counterparts. Judge Greg Weeks also found other evidence of bias among
prosecutors, and he ruled in favor of 3 more inmates under the Racial Justice
Act after the 2012 rollback.
Robinson's case was appealed by the state to the North Carolina Supreme Court,
which agreed in April to review it. Tye Hunter, executive director of the
Durham-based nonprofit Center for Death Penalty Litigation, said he expects the
court will hear the case in late fall. The court hasn't yet agreed to hear the
three other RJA cases.
This year Republicans with supermajorities in both chambers of the General
Assembly mounted a full repeal. They've argued that the law allowed most of the
153 death-row inmates to challenge their sentences regardless of their race,
creating a logjam that amounts to a de-facto moratorium on executions.
Hunter said he doesn't expect executions to begin in the near future because of
existing appeals and all-but-certain challenges among inmates that their due
process rights were violated with the repeal of an act they used to contest
their sentences. Rep. Paul Stam, R-Wake and an attorney, said due process
violations are bogus because the inmates were convicted before the law existed.
He said he would give the state many months, not years, before executions
resume because an appeal about the legality of lethal injections is expected to
be resolved soon.
The state Supreme Court case was once considered a defining test for the Racial
Justice Act with the potential for broader implications. Even with the repeal
of the act, that review could send a signal that either bolsters the case RJA
advocates tried to press for four years or prop up the status quo, said Bryan
Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and an expert
on racial inequality in the criminal justice system.
"We'll see if that becomes a legacy of this law and litigation or if people
become more comfortable engaging in race-conscious decision-making because they
can do it with impunity," he said.
Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, noted that
national efforts to create legislation along the lines of the Racial Justice
Act and in other states haven't fared well, but at the same time six states
have abolished the death penalty since 2007 in large part because of the costs
of administering capital punishment and questions of fairness.
"The next solution might be: Is the death penalty incompatible with our
fairness to justice and equality?" he said. "We don't seem to be able to fix
it, but yet we know the problem persists."
States have taken a skeptical view toward considering statistics in capital
cases since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1987 that studies showing
racial disparities in sentencing couldn't be used to overturn a death penalty
conviction alone, said John Donohue, a Stanford University legal scholar who
specializes in criminal justice. Donohue prepared statistical analysis for a
recent Connecticut Supreme Court effort to commute the sentences of 11 inmates
who remain on death row after the state abolished the death penalty.
Connecticut, like other states, decided the millions of dollars and decades
spent pursuing capital punishment wasn't worth it, Donohue said. There's a
recognition that money could be spent better elsewhere, he said.
"I think the evidence is sort of overwhelming that the way to stop murder is
swift and certain punishment, and Connecticut is only solving about half their
murders," Donohue said.
But Dieter noted that the states that have abolished the death penalty in
recent years were more politically receptive or had strong minority voices in
state government. Stam noted that public opinion in North Carolina sides with
capital punishment.
"I don't see that changing in the next several years," Stam said.
(source: The Associated Press)
GEORGIA:
20 YEARS LATER: Serial killer made Douglas County his killing field
Editor's note: This story contains graphic descriptions of the actions of a
serial killer.
June 30, 1993, was a hot humid day, like most summer days in Atlanta. That day,
Peggy Lynn Grimes was a 22-year-old woman, eight months pregnant and still
doing what she had been reduced to doing to survive - selling herself on
Stewart Avenue.
While it wasn't the life she had envisioned, she never expected what the day
would bring. Grimes was brutally attacked, stabbed, slashed and left for dead
in a wooded area near the quarry on Vulcan Drive in Lithia Springs. Gerald
Patrick Lewis picked up Grimes as she walked near the notorious Alamo Motor
Hotel. He said he'd pay her $50 for sex and was going to take her to his house
to do it. Grimes probably thought nothing about it - she had done the same
thing with the same man before,
But this time was different. Lewis killed Grimes, a woman he had picked up for
sex before. He said he did it because "putting herself out there on the street
and pregnant just wasn't right."
Lewis drove down I-20, got off on Lee Road, pulled off in a wide place off
Vulcan Drive and pulled a knife that had been hidden under his left leg. Lewis
made Grimes undress. Then the stabbing and slashing began. Lewis later told
Douglas County District Attorney's Office Investigator Scott Cosper that he
thought she was dead, but then "she kept waking up and screaming."
So the stabbing continued, including one to the throat "so she would shut up."
He moved her over the bank and into the woods and drove to Thornton Road to a
gas station to clean the blood and death off. Lewis then went home and dropped
the knife in a support pipe that ran down the side of his carport.
That was the sick mind of Lewis, a serial killer who on that night 20 years ago
secured himself a dark, evil place in Douglas County history.
Grimes might have been forgotten about if not for Cosper, Douglas County
Sheriff's Office investigators, a truck driver and the fact that Lewis just
couldn't stop killing.
Grimes' mother Lynn reported to Atlanta police that her daughter was missing on
July 10, and said she hadn't heard from her "in almost 2 weeks." No one had
heard a thing and there was no sign of her, police said.
But on Sept. 10, 2003, a truck driver pulled into that same spot to knock the
stray rocks off his dump truck before leaving the area so as not to break a
window as he drove away. That's when he spotted what he thought was a human
skull and called the law. Cosper was with the team that responded to the scene.
"It was right there, not far off the road," Cosper said. "There's no telling
how many people had stopped there, driven by there and never saw a thing. But
the more we looked, the more bones we found. It was unreal, looking back at it
now."
Medical examiners were able to figure out pretty quickly that it was a female,
between the ages of 18 and 35, between 5 feet and 5-feet-4 and most likely with
reddish-blonde hair. Cosper went to the missing persons list and the 1st name
on the list was Peggy Lynn Grimes.
"The description was right, but it said that Grimes was pregnant and the
medical examiner didn't say our victim was pregnant," Cosper said, holding up
that list. "You can see right there, I X-ed her out right then and kept
looking."
He hit nothing but dead ends until Lewis and his spree picked up in Alabama
after some twists and turns and a stint in jail after a fight with his
girlfriend in December of 1993 outside the Crystal Palace just off Stewart
Avenue. Neighborhood sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Lewis killed another call girl, Misty McGugin, in Room 18 at Woody's Motel in
Mobile on Jan. 31, 1998. Lewis choked her and then stabbed her, wrapped her in
a tarp, and took her body to be dumped on a rural road. He later confessed that
he had sex with the body before dumping it.
Then it was the killing of Kathleen Bracken, a prostitute, at the Twilite Motel
Lounge in Baldwin County, Ala., on April 11, 1998. There were other attempts
and a composite sketch was developed. Then that sketch led to a girl, who knew
Lewis, named Lisa Pierce. She had been to the home of Lewis' mother and police
went there looking for Lewis. When they found him, he began to sing and
confessed to everything, even to killing a pregnant girl near Atlanta and
leaving her near a rock quarry off I-20.
That made Cosper's phone ring.
"They said they had a guy who was singing like a bird and said he killed
someone in our area and that the girl was pregnant," Cosper said. "But my
victim wasn't pregnant. At least that's what I thought. I called the medical
examiner and asked them to check again. They did and confirmed that some of the
bones were that of a fetus. Bam. Then I knew who we had. I went and talked to
her mother and told her what we thought had happened. We were able to get some
DNA and that confirmed it. 5 years later our victim had a name - Peggy Lynn
Grimes."
In May 1998, 5 years later, they had answers. A local funeral home and the DA's
office helped arrange for a funeral. Cosper and a victim's advocate were among
the 5 people there for the graveside service.
The months and years after included trips to talk to Lewis, where he told it
all. He claimed to have killed more than 20, so while local authorities had
Lewis they pushed for more information. At one point while in the car, Lewis
told Cosper that he would tell him where another victim was dumped. All he
asked for was a Big Montana sandwich from Arby's. With his sandwich in hand, he
led Cosper to an area near Charlie Brown Airport where eventually more bones
were found. That victim is still unidentified to this day.
But locally, the Douglas County grand jury indicted Lewis on Feb. 23, 2001, for
malice murder, felony murder (2 counts), feticide, aggravated battery, and
kidnapping with bodily injury in the death of Peggy Grimes.
The sentencing trial in March of 2003 led to him being sentenced to death. His
appeal failed and the conviction stuck, just like the one in Alabama had
before.
"He wanted to die," Cosper said. "He told me once that he was a young man and
that he didn't want to die old and in prison. 'I did what I did and I deserve
to die. I want to die,' is what he said."
He got his wish, but not by an executioner. Lewis died on Alabama's death row
on July 24, 2009. Cancer is what officials say killed him.
Douglas County District Attorney David McDade said he just hopes that death
gave some people some closure after being haunted by "as evil a man as ever
lived."
"Gerald Patrick Lewis was an evil serial killer who admitted to the torture and
murder of 5 young women, 1 of whom, Peggy Grimes, died here in Douglas County,"
said McDade, who prosecuted the case that gave Lewis a 2nd death penalty.
"Lewis was the evil monster every parent warns their children about, every
husband warns their wife about. Peggy Grimes was a young 22-year-old woman,
eight or nine months pregnant, who Lewis killed and left her body in the woods
for animals is scavenge. That's about as dark and evil as it gets."
(source: Douglas County Sentinel)
INDIANA:
Death penalty not about closure, it's punishment that keeps us safe
I could not disagree with Brandon Harris of Boonville more if I tried. First
let me say congratulations to the jury in the Jeff Weisheit case that did their
job and they did it well. The death penalty is not about closure, but
nevertheless, it does help to bring closure to those families that agree to
allow the prosecutor to prosecute the case as a death penalty case.
Do not be too hasty to pass judgment on cases that involve the mentally ill,
but guilty as charged. As long as the person with mental illness understands
the difference between right and wrong, he or she is just as deserving of their
sentence as anyone else.
It does not cost more to execute a convicted murderer than it does to keep them
until the day they die of old age in prison. This is has been proven time and
time again. When the prisoner develops cancer, heart disease, or any other
expensive illness, the state gets stuck with the bill. If the criminal would
stay in prison until the day they die of natural causes, it would be a just
sentence, but it would be a very expensive one. Consider the enormous costs for
elderly care such as prescriptions, operations, diseases, and illnesses.
Trust me when I say that "life without parole" does not mean that the criminal
will die in prison. Murderers that were supposed to receive the death penalty
in the past have been released only to murder over and over again.
The people they viciously murdered would still be alive if the state had not
turned them loose. The laws can change at any time because some group of
politicians may release these scalawags into our unsuspecting society again.
The death penalty is not about getting even or about stopping others from
committing the act of murder. The death penalty is about punishment. If you
murder someone, you will be killed by the state on behalf of its citizens so
that you can never kill again.
As for Bill Benefiel, go to the Clark County Prosecutor???s website and read
about this crime. You tell me how mentally ill and developmentally disabled
this criminal was. The world is a better place without the Weisheits and
Benefiels. I feel for their families, but I feel more for the victims???
families.
In 1990 I worked a murder case where Timothy Anderson tossed his 3-year old son
into Moutoux Lake and drown him. I will never forget this case. Anderson was
convicted of murder and the jury recommended the death penalty, but the judge
did not follow that recommendation. He sentenced Anderson to 60 years in prison
and a few years from now, Anderson will be released.
The reason for the judge making this decision had to do with the fact that
Anderson suffered from bi-polar disorder. Sadly for us, Anderson will one day
walk the streets again. The death penalty does work as it was intended to work.
It kills the murderer.
(source: Guy Minnis is a retired Evansville Police detective; Courier & Press)
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