Oct. 5
TEXAS----impending execution
Texas Set To Execute Inmate Who Murdered A Man Over $8----Juan Garcia is
scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday for fatally shooting a man
during a 1998 robbery in which he stole $8.
Texas is set to execute Juan Martin Garcia on October 6 for the 1998 murder of
Hugo Solano during a robbery.
Garcia, 35, is sentenced to die for fatally shooting Solano, a Mexican
missionary in Houston, during a robbery where then 18-year-old Garcia stole $8.
Garcia had 3 other accomplices, 2 of whom are serving sentences related to the
robbery and 1 was paroled after serving 14 years of a 30-year sentence.
Garcia's lawyers have unsuccessfully appealed to the courts that Garcia
suffered from ineffective counsel during his trial and is intellectually
disabled making him ineligible for the death penalty. In March, the Supreme
Court also refused to intervene in the case.
Garcia has appealed to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant him
clemency. He has no outstanding appeals, his lawyer told the Houston Chronicle.
Garcia's lawyers have argued that he had an "extremely poor school record"
according to his friends and family. His mother had testified that he was a
slow learner enrolled in special education classes. He also had "significant
limitations in his adaptive functioning," which he exhibited before committing
the crime, according to his lawyers.
However the courts have denied his appeals stating there was no evidence, such
as school records and IQ test scores, to prove his intellectual disability.
His lawyers also argued that Garcia's trial counsel had failed to show that he
suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of his
"tortured childhood" at the hands of an abusive stepfather.
Garcia would become the 11th inmate executed in Texas this year, the most of
any state.
While several states have faced a shortage in the supply of lethal injection
drugs, Texas has been consistently able to procure pentobarbital which it uses
in its 1-drug execution protocol. The state is making its own execution drugs
and supplied it to Virginia for the execution of serial killer Alfredo Prieto
on Oct. 1, the Virginia Department of Corrections confirmed.
Garcia, who started committing crimes at the age of 12, was involved in several
aggravated robberies by the time he was 18. He engaged in a crime spree with
his accomplices before and after the murder of Solano.
On Sept. 17, 1998, Garcia and his 3 accomplices approached Solano, 36, who was
walking to his van in the parking lot of an apartment complex. Garcia demanded
money from Solano and then fatally shot him 3 times in head as he sat in his
car. He took $8 in cash from the victim.
Garcia was arrested 11 days later when he was found with the murder weapon
while being pulled over in a traffic stop. He confessed to the crime after his
arrest.
In a 2010 post titled "Letters to a Future Death Row Inmate" featured on the
Minutes Before Six blog, Garcia wrote:
"People can sentence another to die only if they think he isn't human, so the
only thing a prosecutor ever has to do is make you a dog.
No, dogs get national campaigns to save them from the pound. They just have to
make you into something that can be killed free of guilt. That's all.
They don't want to hear about the hells of your childhood, the rough life you
had and it makes me so mad that I never tried to get help, maybe I would still
be out there, who knows."
(source: BuzzFeed News)
GEORGIA:
Justices reject appeal from inmate over juror's racial slur
The Supreme Court has rebuffed an appeal from an African-American man on
Georgia's death row over a white juror's use of a racial slur.
The justices did not comment Monday in rejecting Kenneth Fults' appeal. He was
sentenced to death for the 1996 killing of Cathy Bounds, who was shot 5 times
in the back of her head.
Fults has been trying for 10 years to get a court to consider evidence that
racial bias deprived him of a fair trial.
Fults' lawyers obtained a signed statement from juror Thomas Buffington in
which Buffington twice used the racial slur when referring to Fults. Buffington
died last year.
The case is Fults v. Chatman, 14-9740.
(source: Associated Press)
****************
Even with the pope in her corner, Gissendaner had no hope
Pope Francis had some mojo going. Adoring crowds thronged the streets during
his recent visit. It was in the wake of that communal enthusiasm that the
pontiff forwarded a plea to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles: don't
give Kelly Gissendaner the needle.
The board, which operates in a cloud of secrecy, was unmoved. Soon, she was
dead. Lobbying efforts from candle-holding crowds, Gissendaner's kids (who were
also the victim's) and even God's wingman himself didn't nudge the board to
sympathy. Nor did the countless legal appeals.
Gissendaner made news in February for ordering 2 cheese Whoppers for her last
meal (this time it was fajitas). She was convicted in 1998 of masterminding her
husband's vicious stabbing murder. Her boyfriend/henchman confessed, helping
strap Gissendaner on the gurney while he someday will be paroled.
That's not fair, her supporters contended, arguing there's something wrong when
the guy who battered and stabbed a man to death may one day be freed while she
ends up with poison in her veins. She was the 1st woman executed in the state
since 1945.
The recent execution - again - brought to the forefront the ongoing argument
about government's most ominous and grave duty: killing its citizens. Georgia
in recent years, and historically, has been at the forefront of that debate. In
fact, it was Peach State cases before the U.S. Supreme Court that unplugged
electric chairs across the U.S. (Furman v Georgia, 1972) and then fired them
back up (Gregg v Georgia, 1976.)
Having a pope weigh in on a Georgia execution is not new. In 2011 Pope Benedict
XVI appealed to save the life of Troy Davis, a convicted cop-killer whose life
became a worldwide cause celebre. Benedict, too, was unsuccessful.
William Neal Moore, a Rome, Ga., preacher, chuckled at the fact that the pope's
word was not sinking in. "Georgia is not a Catholic state," he said.
Instead, he sees a certain steadfastness in the state not changing course.
"The state of Georgia isn't going to let anyone bully them," he said. "The pope
isn't going to tell us what to do. It becomes political. If we stop for this
person then we'll have to stop for that person. They're saying, 'We kill white
people. We kill black people. We even kill women. We kill everybody to show we
are fair.'"
Moore was a soldier who killed an elderly man in a shootout while Moore was
burglarizing his home in 1974. But while he's cynical about Georgia's killing
apparatus, he himself received mercy. In 1990 the parole board commuted his
sentence while prison crews were readying the electric chair. The victim's
family lobbied for his release, as did a little lady from Calcutta - Mother
Teresa.
I guess a future saint has more cred than the pope when it comes to winning
over the board. In 1991, Moore, clearly a changed man, was released from
prison.
Wayne Garner, a man with a varied career - undertaker, legislator, hard-nosed
prisons chief, parole board chairman and small-town mayor - disagrees with
Moore on the parole board's intention.
He believes the current parole board members are thoughtful people who are not
interested in sending a message or thumbing their noses to the pontiff. Garner
said they simply believed they were doing their duty in carrying out the
sentence a Gwinnett County jury meted out 17 years ago.
The board "has a ton more information about the case than the public," he said.
From what he knows, however, Garner says he would have commuted Gissendaner's
sentence.
Garner is well-versed in the execution process. He oversaw 3 electrocutions as
the corrections chief in the late 1990s and, as he remembers, 4 clemency
hearings before that. None was granted.
As Parole Board Chairman, Garner met with condemned killer Nicholas Lee Ingram
for 20 minutes in April 1995. "How can I make a decision to execute a man
without at least looking him in the eye?" he said at the time.
The British-born Ingram's execution was front-page fodder for the Brit
tabloids. A corrections spokeswoman said of the foreign press, "I get the
impression that they think we're a bunch of barbarians who just want to nuke
everybody."
Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills last year witnessed the lethal injection of
Robert Wayne Holsey, who murdered a deputy named Will Robinson. "It's like
watching someone go to sleep," he said of the event.
Sills' county is in one of the toughest judicial circuits (Ocmulgee) and he is
resolute in his support for the ultimate punishment. "I know how hard it is to
get the death penalty and anyone who gets the death penalty serves the death
penalty. It's a necessary part of the system. It's necessary consequence."
Americans still favor the death penalty. But support has dropped as sentences
of life without parole give juries an alternative from meting out an execution.
A 2013 Gallup Poll found 60 % of Americans in favor, down from 80 % in 1994,
when crime was rampant. A Pew Research Center Poll from the same year said 55 %
of Americans were in support, down from 78 % in 1996.
"It's still over 50 % because our generation hasn't died out yet," said former
DeKalb County DA J. Tom Morgan, who is now a law professor and thinks the death
penalty should be abolished. He sought the death penalty several times but all
cases ended up with life without parole sentences, either through plea deals or
his urging.
Within a decade or so, Morgan, Garner and Sills predict, executions will be a
thing of the past.
Moore, the former inmate turned preacher, disagrees. There's too much emotion
tied to it, especially in Georgia.
"I think we'll see more," Moore said, especially in the next few years.
And, so, the argument will continue.
(source: Bill Tropy, Columnist, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
*********************
Gissendaner execution stokes death penalty debate
The recent execution of Kelly Gissendaner has again brought to the forefront
America's ongoing argument over the death penalty.
Gissendaner was convicted of orchestrating her husband's murder in 1997. Last
week, her children implored the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to spare
their mother's life, as did candle-holding crowds outside the prison walls.
Even Pope Francis weighed in, forwarding a plea to the board to not give
Gissendaner the needle.
The board remained unmoved, and so Gissendaner became the 1st woman executed in
Georgia since 1945. Americans may still favor the death penalty, but support
for it has fallen in recent years. And some experts predict executions may
become a thing of the past within the next decade.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
USA----impending executions
Who will be executed next? 5 executions scheduled in US in next 2 weeks
After 2 death row inmates died by lethal injection last week, there are 5
executions scheduled in 3 states in the next 2 weeks.
In Georgia, Kelly Gissendaner was executed on Wednesday. A day later, Alfredo
Prieto, a twice-condemned serial killer who claimed he was intellectually
disabled, was executed in Virginia.
Richard Glossip was to be executed in Oklahoma on Wednesday for ordering the
1997 killing of Barry Van Treese, but his execution was delayed when prison
officials said 1 of the 3 drugs they had received to carry out the lethal
injection was the wrong one.
These 5 inmates are scheduled for execution between Tuesday and Oct. 21.
--Juan Garcia is scheduled to die in Texas on Tuesday for his role in the 1998
robbery-murder of Hugo Solano, according to the Houston Chronicle.
--Licho Escamilla is to be executed Oct. 14 for gunning down officer
Christopher Kevin James during a brawl outside a Dallas club on Thanksgiving
weekend 2001. James and 3 other officers were off duty but in uniform working
security at the club. 1 other officer was wounded in the gunfire and survived.
--Michael Ballard has an Oct. 19 execution date set for killing four people in
Pennsylvania in 2010, according to WNEP TV. He was convicted of stabbing his
ex-girlfriend, Denise Merhi, her father, grandfather, and a neighbor in the
borough of Northampton. Gov. Tom Wolf is likely to issue Ballard a reprieve.
2 inmates are scheduled to be executed in Arkansas on Oct. 21.
--Bruce Earl Ward, a former perfume salesman, was convicted in the 1989 killing
of 18-year-old Rebecca Doss, whose body was found in the men's bathroom of the
convenience store where she worked.
--Don William Davis, who had an execution date set in 2006 that was later
stayed, was sentenced to death for the 1990 robbery and death of Jane Daniels
in northwest Arkansas.
(source: al.com)
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