July 14
TEXAS----impending executions
Victoria County man scheduled for execution for 1st time in 86 years;
36-year-old will be 1st put to death from area in 86 years; convicted for
killing Edna man in 2002
For the 1st time in 86 years, a Victoria County man is set for execution.
John Manuel Quintanilla Jr., 36, is to be put to death Tuesday by lethal
injection after his conviction in the capital murder case of Victor Billings,
60, of Edna. The execution will be carried out at the state prison in
Huntsville.
Billings was at Action Amusement Center, a game room, in the 3800 block of
North John Stockbauer Drive on Nov. 24, 2002, with his wife, Linda Billings,
when Quintanilla and another man, Jeffrey Alan Bibb, attempted to rob the
store, said Dexter Eaves, the Victoria County district attorney when the case
was tried.
Billings was a former chief deputy for the Jackson County Sheriff's Office.
"Victor stepped in front of the ladies and put himself in danger," Eaves
recalled. "He grabbed the rifle and pulled it toward himself and said, 'If you
are going to do anything, it is me you are going to get.'
"And John, very cold, just pulled the trigger. Not once, not twice, but gave
him the last shot when he was on the ground."
A Victoria County district attorney had not pursued a death penalty case
originating in Victoria County since 1927, when Ed Joshlin, a 19-year-old black
man, was electrocuted on a rape conviction, according to information from the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice..
"That decision was a very, very difficult decision to make," Eaves said about
Quintanilla. "I made no bones about it to the jury - straight up, I am asking
you to kill this guy. And that is hard to do; I'm sitting 6 feet away from
him."
Eaves said there were multiple eyewitnesses identifying Quintanilla as the
murderer, forensic and physical evidence and a confession by Quintanilla.
Bibb, also convicted of capital murder, received life in prison because he did
not pull the trigger, Eaves said. Bibb will be eligible for parole after he
serves 40 years of his sentence.
The jury unanimously convicted Quintanilla in December 2004, and he has since
exhausted all appeal options, said Steve Tyler, current Victoria County
district attorney, who filed the death warrant for the execution.
Quintanilla also shanked, or prison-style stabbed, a guard while awaiting trial
for the murder in the Victoria County Jail and was convicted of attempted
capital murder, according to Victoria County Jail records.
"What was the jury to do? You have evidence, you have a confession, you have
forensics, they are on a violent crime spree, and then he continues to commit
violent offenses while incarcerated. You can argue a lot of things, but you
can't argue he is innocent," Tyler said.
An online petition, started in Germany, is advocating for Quintanilla's
innocence, but Tyler said the petition is not based on facts and was not
started by an individual in this county.
Eaves said he will attend the execution Tuesday at the request of Billings'
family.
"In this situation, I think the death penalty was the best thing for them. I
think there is going to be such a relief after next week, and when this thing
is over, they can put it behind them and get on with their life," Eaves said
about the Billings family, who declined to comment for this article.
Harrison Stafford, a friend of Victor Billings, said he was not surprised when
he heard Billings died protecting his wife and others.
"He was one of the good guys, and I think that was part of the community
reaction was that this happened to a really good guy," Stafford said.
Quintanilla's sister, Jennifer Martinez, said her family declined to comment.
"I really, really honestly feel for the Quintanilla family. No matter how bad a
thing he did at the time, they are still losing a son, a brother, an uncle, a
family member or a good friend. It is a life, and life is very, very precious,"
Eaves said.
(source: Victoria Advocate)
*****************
Death row inmate with Lubbock ties faces execution Thursday for 2001 double
murder; Supreme Court ended term without acting on petition for review.
In 4 days, Vaughn Ross is scheduled to be executed for killing a Texas Tech
library administrator and a young black woman in 2001. But a lot could happen
before 6 p.m. Thursday, July 18, when the 41-year-old Ross would enter the
execution chamber at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Huntsville
Unit, known colloquially as "The Walls."
Ross has been on death row since Oct. 1, 2002. Thursday will be his 3,944th day
among the state's condemned men assigned to the Allen B. Polunsky Unit near
Livingston.
A matched pair of unknowns involves his request that the U.S. Supreme Court
review his case and that Justice Antonin Scalia grant a stay of execution so
the decision could be made.
Ross' appellate attorney, Don Vernay, filed the requests in May, and the state
filed its objection 30 days later - both meeting their deadlines.
But the high court completed its 2012-13 term without a decision on whether it
would look at the case.
And that may leave Ross' fate, at least for a while, on the desk of Scalia, who
sits as the circuit justice for the federal 5th circuit - Texas, Louisiana and
Mississippi. And Scalia has granted last-minute stays in similar situations.
One recent decision involved another Texas death row inmate, John Balentine.
The Potter County convict, on death row since June 1999, has received 3 stays
of execution. Scalia issued the most recent stay just one hour before Balentine
was scheduled to be executed in August 2012.
It was the 2nd time a stay had been issued in what could have been Balentine's
last hour.
In that case, Scalia ordered an indefinite stay until the high court decided if
it would review the case.
The high court took, and in June remanded the case to the 5th Circuit - along
with 6 other Texas death penalty cases - to be reconsidered in light of the
Supreme Court's May 2013 decision that expanded the opportunity for defendants
to raise claims of ineffective representation by attorneys.
Ross' execution is the 2nd one scheduled this week in Huntsville.
On Tuesday, John Manuel Quintanilla Jr., a convict sentenced from Victoria
County, is scheduled to be executed for shooting a man who tried to disarm him
while Quintanilla and 2 other men were robbing customers at an amusement center
in Victoria in 2002.
Although his appeals and his state and federal habeas corpus petitions have not
raised issues of innocence, Ross has maintained in recent media interviews that
he didn???t kill Douglas Birdsall, 53, and Viola Ross, 18, on Jan. 30, 2001.
Viola Ross and Vaughn Ross are not related. Viola Ross was the sister of Vaughn
Ross??? girlfriend, Liza Ross McVade.
At trial, however, prosecutors offered substantial inventory of incriminating
evidence:
Police examining Birdsall's car near Canyon Lakes No. 6 - where it was found on
Jan. 31 with the two bodies inside - found a fingertip of a latex glove. It had
Birdsall's blood on the outside, and sweat and skin cells inside that proved a
match to Vaughn Ross' DNA.
Investigators backtracked to check "shots fired" calls from the day before.
That led them to an alley outside Ross' apartment. Officers found 2 blood
pools, glass shards matching the glass from Birdsall's car, and a shell casing
that matched others found in the car. The blood in 1 pool matched Birdsall's.
Officers searched Vaughn Ross' apartment and found a sweatshirt with a smear of
Birdsall's blood outside and Ross' DNA on the inside.
Ross also made some statements that prosecutors presented as potentially
incriminating comments at trial.
Investigators hadn't found a gun, and in a play to Ross' decency, suggested
they were concerned that if it was simply ditched somewhere, a child might find
it.
Ross said "the gun was secure and wouldn't cause any harm."
And when investigators detailed the evidence mounting against him, he replied
that if police "had what they had, then they had the truth."
At trial, jurors were also told that during a telephone conversation he had
from jail with his mother, she asked him if he had done it. His answer was that
he "might have."
(source: lubbockonline.com)
*****************
Executions under Rick Perry, 2001-present-----261
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982-present----500
Perry #--------scheduled execution date-----name---------Tx. #
262-------------July 16-----------------John Quintanilla Jr.---501
263-------------July 18------------------Vaughn Ross----------502
264-------------July 31-------------------Douglas Feldman-----503
265-------------Sept. 19------------------Robert Garza--------504
266-------------Sept. 26------------------Arturo Diaz--------505
267-------------Oct. 9---------------------Michael Yowell-----506
268------------Nov. 12---------------------Jamie McCoskey-----507
269------------Jan. 15---------------------Rigoberto Avila, Jr.----508
(sources for both: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
********************************
It's Debatable: Death penalty: Necessary or evil?
[Vaughn Ross is scheduled to be executed July 18 for a 2001 double homicide in
Lubbock. Texas recently executed its 500th prisoner. This week, Arnold Loewy
and Don May debate the death penalty. Don writes an independent blog for
lubbockonline.com and Arnold is the George Killiam Professor of Law at Texas
Tech University School of Law.]
Don: Capital punishment is a necessary and vital component of a civilized
society. The primary purpose of the death penalty is to rid a society of
violent criminals so they will have no further opportunities to harm others.
Liberal parole boards, judges, governors and presidents are quick to release
violent criminals for almost any reason and often push to return criminals to
the street as soon as possible. Execution dates are delayed for as long as
possible, with the continued pursuit of reprieve.
Imprisonment without execution gives criminals the continued hope of a parole,
an early release, a pardon or even a chance to escape.
Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed a law in March 2011 banning any further
convicted criminal executions. He also commuted the sentences of death row
inmates to life sentences without the possibility of parole or release.
Quinn wanted to make sure a future conservative governor would not have the
chance to execute anyone currently on death row.
He offered this excuse for signing the bill, "I have found no credible evidence
that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on the crime of murder and that
the enormous sums expended by the state in maintaining a death penalty system
would be better spent on preventing crime and assisting victims' families in
overcoming pain and grief."
The death penalty is indeed a deterrent. Executed criminals no longer pose a
danger to civilized society. No executed criminal has ever committed another
crime.
Liberals claim Judeo-Christian theology mandates criminals be forgiven and not
executed. This is not the case, and liberals dance around the issue hoping
conservatives do not understand the Bible.
The words of Genesis 9:6 tell us why murderers should be executed, "Whoever
sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in His
own image."
There is no record Christ ever said thieves and murderers should not be
executed. Christ did not tell the thieves being crucified with him they did not
deserve to die.
Executions are the only way to eliminate the worst criminals. Murderers,
rapists, armed robbers, child molesters, terrorists and other doers of evil are
permanently eliminated when executed, never again to commit another atrocity.
Executions ensure a liberal judge, governor, president or parole board will not
release a dangerous criminal back into society in the future.
Criminal executions should be swift, frequent and inexpensive.
Arnold: Whatever else might be said for or against capital punishment, it most
certainly is not "a necessary and vital component of a civilized society."
Almost every society other than the United States that we consider civilized
have abolished the death penalty (e.g., Canada, Australia, England, France, and
Germany.)
And all of these countries have a significantly lower homicide rate than we do.
Indeed, there have been times when they have refused to return a fugitive from
justice out of fear he will be subject to capital punishment.
As for Governor Quinn's observations, they are absolutely true. There is
neither credible evidence nor logic to believe the death penalty deters
murderers.
If there were, it would be hard to explain the lower murder rate in countries
that do not have capital punishment and even the generally lower murder rate in
the U.S. among states that have abolished capital punishment as opposed to
Texas and Florida, which are among the leaders in both their murder and
execution rates.
The governor was also quite correct in regard to the cost of maintaining
capital punishment. During the recent economic crisis, some states have
abolished capital punishment in the name of fiscal conservatism.
Dr. May's explanation of why he thinks the death penalty is a deterrent goes to
the issue of restraint, not deterrence. He is quite correct an executed
offender (or for that matter a wrongly convicted innocent) will not offend in
the future.
The question is whether such restraint is necessary given the cost of capital
punishment. I suggest it's not. We have a super-max prison in Colorado where we
send the worst of the worst offenders (e.g. shoe bomber Richard Reid).
So far as I am aware, no one has ever escaped from that prison or harmed an
innocent person outside.
Given we do sometime convict innocent persons, such as Timothy Cole, it seems
to me those supporting capital punishment have the burden of proving some good
will come from the administration of capital punishment that would not come
from life without parole.
Frankly, I have difficulty finding any, and certainly none that's worth the
risk that, under our fallible system, some day a state official will have to
tell a mother: "We're terribly sorry we executed your son, who we now know was
innocent."
Don: There is no evidence even a single innocent person has been executed in
the United States since the death penalty was reinstated. If there were, the
left would remind us at every opportunity.
Even though innocent people are sent to prison, that is no reason to close our
prisons and to release dangerous criminals into society. Most releases from
death row have been on legal technicalities. As far as is known, those who were
innocent of a capital crime have consistently been identified and released by
the legal appeals system in place.
The left tries to equate the physical act of a criminal murdering a victim with
the physical act of the state executing the murderer and uses this
"equivalence" as a reason to end the death penalty.
While each act of killing may be a physical equivalence, there is no moral
equivalence because the state is removing a violent menace from society.
A life sentence without parole for a violent criminal is not equivalent to
executing the criminal. With a life sentence without parole, the condemned has
no reason to avoid killing other prisoners, guards and prison employees, as he
already has the maximum sentence allowed by law.
Many Europeans describe the death penalty as a barbaric ancient relic with a
thirst for vengeance.
Such feelings ignore the barbaric and evil nature of crimes deserving of the
death penalty, deny the value of the lives of the victims and their families,
and elevate the importance of the criminal above that of the victims.
The claim Britain and other European countries have fewer violent crimes than
the United States is a myth.
Eurostat, the European Commission's database, revealed a "77 % increase in
murders, robberies, assaults and sexual offenses in the UK" between 1997 and
2009.
Violent crime has increased 67 % in France over the past decade, with a rate of
504 violent crimes per 100,000 population.
There are more than 2,000 violent crimes a year per 100,000 population in the
UK and 1,677 per 100,000 population in Austria.
The violent crime rate continues to decrease in the United States, with the
2011 FBI Crime Statistics report listing "386.3 offenses per 100,000
inhabitants."
Opinion polls show the American people favor capital punishment by more than 2
to 1, with 67 % favoring the death penalty and only 28 % opposing.
Research has shown racial minorities have been treated fairly when it comes to
the death penalty. Research from Emory University has shown "capital punishment
has a strong deterrent effect; each execution results, on average, in 18 fewer
murders."
A polite and safe society is well-armed and eliminates its violent criminals.
Arnold: Although it is true that current system has worked to save many
innocents from execution (e.g. Juan Melendez, a former guest speaker at one of
my symposia, who spoke after being released from death row in Florida after
spending 20 years there for a crime of which he was eventually found to be
innocent), the system advocated by Dr. May would not.
Under his view, trials should be swift, and the appeals process short.
Under his system, we would not tolerate saving an innocent man from death if it
took 20 years to establish his innocence.
Thus, instead of riveting my audience with his harrowing story of surviving the
process, he'd be dead, and Dr. May would continue to claim there is no proof we
have ever executed an innocent person because the proof wouldn't be there. Who
spends time trying to prove a dead man is actually innocent?
Have we ever executed an innocent person under the current system? Well one
cannot be sure, but I do know that a few years ago we executed a man from
Texarkana named Willingham, who had been convicted of murder of his 3 children
by burning down their house with them in it.
We later learned that the evidence upon which the arson/murder was predicated
was junk science and totally unreliable. Nevertheless the state of Texas went
through with his execution, evidently believing in his guilt despite the lack
of evidence to prove it.
So, was he innocent? Who knows? The only thing we know for sure is there was no
credible evidence to prove him guilty.
Any thought victims' families are better off with capital punishment is belied
by the evidence.
In jurisdictions that do not have the death penalty, family members typically
feel vindicated when their loved one's killer receives life in prison. But in
jurisdictions with the death penalty (e.g. Texas), frequently a jury verdict of
life (which is more common than death) causes the victim's family to believe
that his/her life was undervalued.
Finally, those studies which show for every execution there are a certain
number of lives saved (one says 8, another says 18) have been debunked by other
studies as methodologically flawed.
Indeed, if they were true, it would be hard to know why the murder rate is as
high as it is in Texas and Florida. So, I am inclined to credit those studies
which challenge the life-saving power of capital punishment as flawed.
So, because capital punishment is not a meaningful deterrent, is fiscally
irresponsible, and is administered by us, flawed human beings, it should be
abolished immediately.
(source: Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)
********************
Preventing the Texecution of Duane Buck, Sentenced to Death Because Black
To even the most casual observer, it is clear that Texas' justice system is
plagued by serious racial inequalities. The case of Duane Buck is an outrageous
example of racial discrimination in Texas' death penalty. At Mr. Buck's capital
sentencing hearing sixteen years ago, the prosecutor elicited testimony from a
psychologist who said Mr. Buck posed a future danger to society because he's
black. Based on this testimony, the prosecutor then urged the jury to issue a
death sentence -- which they did. Neither the judge nor Mr. Buck's attorney at
the time objected to this testimony, belying a larger national problem in which
defense for the indigent is horribly lacking and under-funded.
This testimony was so egregious that in 2000, Senator John Cornyn, who was then
Texas' Attorney General, identified seven cases in which the state
unconstitutionally relied on testimony linking race to future dangerousness.
All of the defendants -- except Mr. Buck -- were awarded new sentencing
hearings. Mr. Buck was arbitrarily and unfairly singled out in this instance.
Texas' long history of applying different standards to black and white capital
defendants is on display in Harris County. At the time of Mr. Buck's trial, the
Harris County District Attorney's Office was over three times more likely to
seek the death penalty against African American defendants than against
similarly-situated white defendants in cases like Mr. Buck's. And, Harris
County juries were more than twice as likely to impose death sentences on
African American defendants in cases like Mr. Buck's. The Lone Star State
recently celebrated its 500th execution, a macabre reminder of how eagerly
Texas doles out capital punishment.
But many people are fighting to grant Mr. Buck a fair sentencing hearing,
including Linda Geffin, one of the trial prosecutors who sought the death
penalty for Mr. Buck. She has started a change.org petition which has amassed
over 50,000 signatories in support of a new, fair sentencing hearing. And she's
in good company. Others calling for a fair trial include former Texas Governor
Mark White, the surviving victim of the crime, and a host of civil rights
leaders. If this diverse choir of people isn't enough to convince the Harris
County District Attorney's Office, I'm not sure what is.
As former Texas Governor Mark White stated succinctly, "It's unfair to have
someone on death row if they're not supposed to be there." The idea that
someone's race can be a reason for applying the ultimate penalty of death
undermines the foundations of our entire judicial system. There are no 2nd
chances when it comes to capital punishment. The Harris County District
Attorney's Office has a chance -- and a choice -- to do what's right.
Sign prosecutor Linda Geffin's petition at:
https://www.change.org/petitions/sentenced-to-death-because-he-is-black-grant-duane-buck-a-new-hearing
Watch a powerful video about the case and its widespread support at:
http://youtu.be/tD6WWN38ZGc
(source: OpEdNews)
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