December 3
TEXAS----impending execution
Execution set for 'Texas 7' escapee
A member of the notorious ‘Texas 7’ prison escape is scheduled to be executed
this week, amidst clemency appeals, a federal lawsuit and a request for a
reprieve.
Joseph Garcia is scheduled to die at the Huntsville “Walls” Unit on Tuesday,
according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The 47-year-old inmate
was sent to death row in 2003, after being part of one of the largest prison
escapes in Texas history, which left a law enforcement officer dead.
According to pleas from defense attorney’s, Garcia was convicted to death under
the law of parties—the law allowing conviction based on the acts and intents of
others—and treated the ‘Texas 7’ as a “single unit.”
Now, nearly 2 decades after the escape, Garcia’s lawyers were hoping to stall
the execution with a plea for clemency to the Texas Board of Pardons and
Paroles along with a federal lawsuit filed against that same board.
The TBPP Board denied the clemency plea on Friday, but are still facing a
federal lawsuit filed against them by Garcia’s attorneys. The suit was seeking
to prevent the board from making a decision until a “more representative set of
members can be appointed.” According to the suit, the board is “stacked with
individuals whose background places them firmly on the side of the State and
law enforcement.” There are currently 2 former TDCJ members on the board, but
the suit claims that 7 of the 8 members on the board have backgrounds in law
enforcement.
According to state law, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles can have only 3
former TDCJ employees at any given time.
Garcia’s attorneys are also asking for a reprieve from Governor Greg Abbott in
light of recent reporting regarding the source of the state’s execution drug
pentobarbital.
BuzzFeed News reported late Wednesday, citing unidentified documents, that a
Houston compounding pharmacy is believed to be one of the two that mixes up the
lethal drug used in the Huntsville death chamber. The state has previously
confirmed that it uses a compounded form of the powerful barbiturate, which
indicates that TDCJ is turning to a compounding pharmacy to mix up the drugs —
as opposed to getting them directly from a drug manufacturer.
“The fact that Texas may be relying on a compounding pharmacy for
pentobarbital, which is a sterile injectable, subjects our client, Joseph
Garcia, to the unreasonable risk of a cruel execution,” Garcia’s defense
lawyers wrote in the letter to the governor.
As of Friday evening, no details on the federal court ruling or the Governor’s
ruling have been released.
Background of crime
On December 13, 2000 7 inmates escaped from the Connally Unit in Kenedy. The
inmates — George Rivas, Larry Harper, Donald Newbury, Randy Halprin, Michael
Rodriguez, Patrick Henry Murphy and Garcia — were all serving long sentences
for violent crimes. At the time of the escape, Garcia was serving a 50-year
murder sentence out of Bexar County, where he was sentenced for stabbing a man
at least a dozen times.
According to court records, the prison escape began during lunch when 6 of the
7 escapees subdued 14 employees and inmates and stuffed them in an electrical
room. 2 of the inmates — identified as Murphy and Harper — later showed up at
the back gate and overpowered the guard. From there, the 7 stole a variety of
firearms and ammunition and fled the prison in a stolen vehicle.
Court records indicate that the group then fled to Irving where they robbed
Oshman’s Supersports on Dec. 24. It was during the robbery that Officer Aubrey
Hawkins was shot and killed. Hawkins was shot multiple times after a gunfight
with the escapees.
The 7 escapees then fled to Colorado and were captured a little less than a
month later. Harper committed suicide before being taken, while the others were
brought back to Texas to face criminal trials.
Garcia is set to be the 4th of the group to be executed by the state of Texas
and 12th inmate executed by the state of Texas this year. Halprin and Murphy
are still on death row at the Polunsky Unit in West Livingston.
(source: Huntsville Item)
*********************
Death penalty considered for Laredo BP agent accused of killing 4 women----Juan
David Ortiz will face grand jury Wednesday
The Webb County District Attorney's Office is preparing to present their case
before a grand jury Wednesday to request formal charges against the Border
Patrol agent accused of fatally shooting 4 women and kidnapping another.
State law requires that a person who is in jail pending trial of a felony must
be released either on a personal bond or by reducing the amount of bail
required if the prosecution is not ready for trial within 90 days from the
initial arrest. The agent, Juan David Ortiz, 35, has been behind bars since his
arrest on Sept. 15, held on a $2.5 million bond. Wednesday will mark his 80th
day in jail.
After a bond reduction hearing for Ortiz held in October, District Attorney
Isidro Alaniz said his office planned to formally charge Ortiz by Dec. 5. He
said he and his office were preparing the case but still needed to wait for all
the evidence to come forward before deciding if it merited the death penalty.
"(Right now) we are at felony one," Alaniz said in October. "As we get closer
to December, once we have all of the factors, the history of the defendant, the
seriousness of the crime, the scheme of all of these things, we need to see if
we do in fact meet the elements to go forward on capital murder."
? It remains unclear if the District Attorney's Office will be seeking the
death penalty.
Alaniz said Friday through his spokesperson that "the evidence has not been
received and that we will be reviewing the evidence with the law enforcement
agencies next week."
A murder charge is elevated to a capital offense when a homicide occurs under
specific circumstances.
State law says that among the ways a capital murder charge can be filed is if a
person commits multiple murders during different criminal episodes but they are
committed in the same style or pattern.
Ortiz is accused of killing Melissa Ramirez, 29, on Sept. 3, Claudine Ann
Luera, 42, on Sept. 6, and Guiselda Alicia Hernández, 35, and Nikki Enriquez,
28, both around Sept. 14. All 4 were killed in roughly the same area near North
U.S. 83 and I-35 in the northwest part of Webb County. All 4 were shot in the
head.
Erika Peña is the 5th victim who escaped from Ortiz's vehicle and helped law
enforcement find him.
Alaniz said all the victims were sex workers.
"If it's something that I decide that this type of case merits, capital murder
or capital life, then we will make that decision, but (the date is) coming
pretty quickly," Alaniz said in October. "We keep working with law enforcement,
federal, state and local, to get our evidence together and we'll be ready to go
Dec. 5."
Ortiz was charged with four counts of murder, unlawful restraint and aggravated
assault with a deadly weapon.
If prosecutors do not seek the death penalty, Ortiz could face life in prison
without parole if convicted of capital murder.
According to affidavits released by law enforcement, the 1st victim was
Ramirez, a mother of two. Her body was found Sept. 4 in the 300 block of
Jefferies Road near the intersection of Texas 255, also known as Camino
Colombia Road. An affidavit states that Ortiz said he killed her Sept. 3.
The 2nd victim was Luera, a mother of 5. She was found barely alive at about 7
a.m. Sept. 6 near mile marker 436 of Texas 255, about a half-mile east of U.S.
83. She died at a hospital later that day.
Ortiz told law enforcement that he picked up Peña on Sept. 14, according to the
arrest affidavits.
When they stopped at a gas station, she began talking about Ramirez, the
criminal complaint states. Ortiz told investigators that he pulled out a pistol
and pointed it at her. They struggled inside his truck and she ran out, making
it to another gas station where she found a Department of Public Safety trooper
and asked for help, according to the affidavit.
In the 5 hours between Peña's escape and Ortiz's arrest, he confessed to
killing 2 more victims, the affidavit states.
Ortiz picked up Hernandez on San Bernardo Avenue, drove out of the city limits
and told her to get out of the car at the Webb County Interchange overpass, at
mile marker 20 on I-35, according to the document. He shot her multiple times
in the head and left her body there, the affidavit states.
Ortiz then picked up Enriquez, a transgender woman, also on San Bernardo
Avenue, and again left the city limits, stopping near mile marker 15 on I-35.
The affidavit states that he shot Enriquez once in the back of her head and
left her body behind the gravel pits at the mile marker.
Hernandez's body was found Friday night; the body of Enriquez was found after
Ortiz told officers where to look, the affidavit states.
Authorities said Ortiz was off-duty when he killed the women but that he may
have used his service weapon in the homicides.
During a news conference on Sept. 17, Carla L. Provost, U.S. Border Patrol
chief, said the killings were committed by just 1 "rogue individual" in her
agency.
"I'm here to support my men and women, on whom it obviously has had an extreme
impact. I'm sickened and saddened by the events that occurred," she said.
In a statement, Andrew Meehan, assistant commissioner for public affairs for
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said his agency's Office of Professional
Responsibility, the U.S. Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security
Office of the Inspector General are fully cooperating with all investigators.
"Our sincerest condolences go out to the victims' family and friends. While it
is CBP policy to not comment on the details of an ongoing investigation,
criminal action by our employees is not, and will not be tolerated," Meehan
said.
The slayings and arrest of Ortiz rocked the Laredo community this half of the
year. The news made national headlines, with reporters from numerous media
outlets descending on the Gateway City.
One of the first capital murder cases this decade in Webb County occurred in
2012 when Demond Bluntson killed his ex-girlfriend's 2 children in a hotel
room. In 2016, jurors sentenced him to death. That marked the 1st time in 25
years that a jury in Webb County had sentenced someone to death row.
Ortiz is the 2nd Border Patrol agent in Laredo to be arrested on murder charges
this year.
On April 9, suspended Border Patrol Agent Ronald Anthony Burgos-Aviles was
accused of fatally stabbing his alleged 27-year-old lover, Grizelda Hernandez,
and their 20-month-old son, Dominic Alexander Hernandez. He was indicted on 2
counts of capital murder June 27. He was denied bond and remains at the Webb
County Jail until the outcome of his case is decided by a jury. Prosecutors are
seeking the death penalty.
(source: Laredo Times)
TENNESSEE----impending execution
'A simmering rage': David Earl Miller's path to Tennessee's electric chair
He started drinking in the womb, abused from his first moments by a mother who
wished he'd never been born.
He grew up in a household of "unspeakable horror" and made his 1st suicide
attempt at age 6.
When his mother died this year, her obituary didn't even list his name.
David Earl Miller came to Knoxville in 1979 a 22-year-old drifter - homeless,
jobless and friendless. He might never have stayed had he not been picked up on
Interstate 75 by a preacher looking for sex - and Lee Standifer might be alive
today.
Miller's set to die Thursday in the electric chair in Nashville, more than 37
years after he beat and stabbed Standifer to death the night of May 20, 1981.
"It was just a series of random events that led him here and to her and to her
innocent life," said Jim Winston, a retired Knoxville Police Department
lieutenant who worked the case from the first night. "She was just starting a
life on her own, and he took all that away from her. What she could have been
or what her future might have been if she could have lived ... we'll never
know."
A life of rage
Miller was born July 16, 1957, in Bowling Green, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo. His
mother met his father during a one-night stand in a bar, drank throughout her
pregnancy and was later diagnosed with brain damage from exposure to toxic
fumes at her job in a plastics plant. He was 10 months old when she married his
stepfather, an alcoholic who routinely beat him with boards, slammed him into
walls and dragged him around the house by the hair, according to court records.
Miller told social workers he had his first sexual experiences when abused by a
female cousin at age 5, by a friend of his grandfather's at age 12 and by his
drunken mother at age 15. He tried to hang himself at age 6 and began drinking,
smoking marijuana and huffing gasoline daily by age 10. By age 13, he'd landed
in a state reform school where counselors regularly whipped boys with rubber
hoses and turned a blind eye to sexual molestation.
He later said he couldn't remember a single person from his early years ever
telling him they loved him.
"Being beaten by his stepfather is the earliest memory that Mr. Miller can
recall, and beatings are the rhythm of his childhood," a clinical psychologist
wrote after a court-ordered examination. "Mr. Miller, from a very early age,
harbored a simmering rage. He hated his stepfather for the brutality and
humiliation he was subjected to, and he loathed his mother for first failing to
protect him from his stepfather and later for turning him into her sexual
plaything. .... His rage has also been enacted on many other innocent
'stand-ins' for his mother."
Miller joined the Marine Corps in 1974 at 17 and made it through boot camp but
deserted when he learned he wouldn't be sent overseas to fight in Vietnam. He
came home to Ohio, got a girlfriend pregnant, and left again when she chose to
marry another man and raise their child, a daughter, without him.
He bounced between Ohio and Texas, working odd jobs as a welder and bartender.
He was hitchhiking through East Tennessee when a car driven by the Rev.
Benjamin Calvin Thomas stopped on the shoulder of Interstate 75.
In the pastor's house
Thomas, the principal of Sam E. Hill Elementary School and pastor of Thorngrove
Baptist Church, took Miller into his South Knoxville home on Wise Hills Road in
exchange for sex. He told neighbors Miller worked as a handyman around the
house and later insisted he'd treated Miller like a son. Miller, he complained,
proved cold.
"You know, I would have liked to redeem him," the pastor told police. "I just
wanted to help him by showing that there was somebody in this world that cared
for him. I am sorry that I failed."
The pair developed a daily routine: Thomas would drop Miller off each morning
as he drove to school near the Broadway viaduct downtown. Miller would give
blood or show up at a bus station cafeteria to bus tables and work in the
kitchen for enough cash to blow at the pool halls and bars that then dotted
downtown. He built a reputation fast as a violent drunk who once tried to fight
an entire house band at once.
"Everybody that has ever seen him hates him yet," a vice squad detective said
at the time. "A psychopathic misfit if you ever saw one."
Twice officers arrested Miller on charges of rape. Each time the women failed
to prosecute, saying they were scared of Miller, and the charge was dismissed.
Defense lawyers argued Miller was venting the rage he still harbored at his
mother. Prosecutors said he was working up the nerve for the crime that
followed.
On a May day downtown in 1981, he met Lee Standifer.
'An innocent child'
Standifer, born with mild brain damage, was learning to live on her own at age
23. She worked at a food-processing plant, stayed in a room at the YWCA on
Clinch Avenue and called home every day to talk to her mother.
Just before her death, she told her mother she felt like she'd just started to
live. She didn't tell her she was going on a date.
No one's sure to this day just how the pair met. Standifer never turned down a
chance to make a new friend.
"She was naive and trusting, like an innocent child," said Winston, the retired
investigator. "He was a handsome guy. They were about the same age. She would
have had no idea. A date to her was probably a walk around the mall (at Market
Square), holding hands or him buying her a Coke - and probably buying it with
her money."
Standifer called her mother for the last time around 5:30 p.m. on May 20. She
walked out the door at 7 p.m. with a friend. Miller stood waiting on the corner
of Clinch and Gay.
Police later retraced their steps: from the YWCA to the Hideaway Lounge, a
favorite hangout of Miller's on Gay Street, now torn down; to the library on
Church Avenue, where he checked out a book that included descriptions of murder
during sex; to the bus station, where Miller finagled a taxi ride to the
pastor's home on Wise Hills Road.
The body in the woods
The taxi driver dropped them off just after 9:30 p.m. The pair had the house to
themselves, with the pastor at a Wednesday night prayer meeting.
Miller claims not to remember what happened next. An autopsy determined he
struck Standifer across the face with a fire poker twice with enough force to
fracture her skull, burst one of her eye sockets and leave imprints on the
bone. He stabbed her over and over - in the neck, in the chest, in the stomach,
in the mouth.
Some of the wounds went so deep, piercing bone, they could only have been made
by driving the knife with a hammer, the autopsy found.
Thomas came home from church around 10 p.m. to find his carpet soaked with
blood and Miller hosing out the basement with a story that he'd bloodied his
nose in a bar fight. Thomas ordered Miller out but gave him until the next day
to leave; Thomas even drove him to a truck stop off I-75 and gave him $25 in
traveling money.
The pastor told police he had no idea Standifer's body lay just a few yards
away in the woods beside his house, not until he drove home from dropping
Miller off and his headlights caught the outline of Miller's bloody T-shirt
hanging from a tree. Standifer's corpse lay underneath.
Winston still remembers the sight.
"It was like he just wanted to destroy her as a person," he said. "In all
honesty, I think she died after that first stroke."
'A caught rat'
Miller's run didn't last long. Police in Columbus, Ohio, arrested him a week
later when he tried to pay a bar tab with a counterfeit $10 bill. He soon found
himself sitting across the table from detectives in an interrogation room.
"He didn't really want to talk about it at first," Winston recalled. "He tried
to deny it, but when he saw what kind of evidence we had, he knew he was just a
caught rat. I think he realized he'd done wrong, but I don't think he thought
he'd face capital punishment for it."
Miller told police Standifer, whom he'd given alcohol, grabbed him and sent him
into a blind rage when he told her he was leaving town.
"I turned around and hit her," he said in a taped confession. The blood "just
sprayed all over when I hit her. ... She quit breathing. ... (I) drug her
downstairs through the basement and out through the yard and pulled her over
into the woods."
Miller's attorneys have argued he lashed out in a burst of psychotic fury,
driven by years of pent-up anger from a lifetime of abuse. Winston's not
satisfied with that story, then or now.
"It's hard to explain, but how do you ever explain something like that?" the
retired detective said. "I think he saw an opportunity to exploit the power he
had over her. Maybe he'd been abused, but that doesn't change what he did."
Miller tried to hide his face from the cameras on his return to Knoxville. 2
juries ultimately sentenced him to die - the first in 1982, the last in 1987
after the Tennessee Supreme Court ordered Miller resentenced.
Decades of appeals followed. Miller turned 61 this summer and is the
longest-serving inmate on Tennessee's death row.
The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals turned down Miller's latest challenge to
Tennessee's death penalty law last week. He's chosen to die in the electric
chair.
Winston won't be there. Neither will anyone from Standifer's family.
"I don't take any joy in it," he said. "It's just a shame that it's taken this
long and he's gotten so much publicity while Lee has been forgotten. I hate he
has to die, but those are the rules of our society. He broke the rules, and the
rules say that he has to die."
(source: Knoxville News Sentinel)
OKLAHOMA:
Judge to consider whether trooper-killer who received death penalty should be
resentenced
A federal judge is considering whether to approve a report that calls for a new
sentencing hearing to be held for a Vian man convicted and sentenced to death
in the 1999 fatal shooting of an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper.
U.S. District Judge James H. Payne is weighing whether to accept a
recommendation from a magistrate that Kenneth Eugene Barrett, 57, be granted a
new sentencing hearing.
U.S. Magistrate Steven P. Shreder in an August report found that Barrett
received ineffective counsel during a sentencing hearing in which a jury
recommended the death penalty on 1 of the Barrett’s convictions.
The Muskogee federal court jury in 2005 convicted Barrett in the Sept. 24,
1999, shooting of Trooper David “Rocky” Eales.
Eales and other members of the OHP tactical team were carrying out a no-knock
search warrant just after midnight in search of methamphetamine at Barrett’s
Sequoyah County cabin when they came under fire.
The 10th U.S. Court of Appeals in 2015 ordered an evidentiary hearing be held
in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma regarding whether
Barrett’s trial attorneys were deficient in not investigating Barrett’s
background and mental health during the penalty phase of the 2005 trial.
After listening to 7 days of testimony in 2017, Shreder issued a report and
recommendation Aug. 10 that said Barrett should be given a new sentencing
hearing.
Shreder, in his 34-page report, wrote “based on all of the evidence presented
both in mitigation and in aggravation, there is a reasonable probability that
the result of the penalty phase of the defendant’s trial would have been
different.” Testimony in the 2017 evidentiary hearing indicated that Barrett’s
mental issues began before he was born and continued well into his childhood.
Evidence was offered that Barrett’s mother drank alcohol during her pregnancy
with him and that Barrett suffered a series of head injuries as a youth,
including being hit in the head with a steel ball. Barrett was also diagnosed
with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Another doctor
testified that test data indicated Barrett suffered from impairments in
multiple areas of the brain.
“The undersigned Magistrate Judge thus finds that this evidence regarding the
defendant’s brain could have had a ‘powerful mitigating effect’ on the jury in
this case,” Shreder wrote.
While generally supporting Shreder’s recommendation, attorneys for Barrett have
objected in court filings to limiting the rehearing to only the death penalty
count.
“Mr. Barrett was entitled to the effective assistance of counsel at the
sentencing, the entire sentencing trial, not only as it related to the death
sentence imposed,” attorneys for Barrett argued.
In addition to the death sentence, Barrett was sentenced to life in prison on
counts of drug trafficking and committing a crime of violence.
Meanwhile, attorneys for the prosecution have objected to the report’s
recommendation, citing what it claimed was Barrett’s substantial planning and
premeditation of the murder as evidence that any mental health issues shown to
jurors would not have affected the trial’s outcome.
“Although the experts identified issues that supposedly compromised Barrett’s
ability to process information under pressure, the defendant had resolved to
murder Trooper Eales long before the opportunity arose,” the government stated
in its objection to the Shreder’s findings.
(source: Tulsa World)
UTAH:
Death row inmate Floyd Maestas dies of natural causes
Death row inmate Floyd Eugene Maestas has died, the Utah Department of
Corrections announced Sunday.
Maestas, 63, who has been awaiting execution for the 2004 murder of 72-year-old
Donna Bott, died Sunday of natural causes. Bott was murdered in a robbery.
Maestas was convicted in 2008 and has been awaiting execution ever since. With
his passing, there are now 8 men on Utah’s death row.
(source: Fox News)
USA:
Death penalty should be abolished
Sister Helen Prejean, author of “Dead Man Walking” and opponent of the death
penalty, has spoken at several events in the Philadelphia area over the past
few weeks. I was lucky enough to attend a talk about her experiences of serving
as a spiritual adviser to 2 death row inmates before their executions.
Ultimately, Sister Helen’s talks are about the trauma caused by America’s death
penalty system.
During one of her talks, she said something that has stuck with me: “Most
people have never thought about the death penalty because it doesn’t touch
their daily lives.” This statement is true.
But the death penalty does have a direct impact on someone’s life. Sister Helen
spoke about witnessing an execution and the physical toll that it took on her.
She also spoke about effects that executions have on the lives of prison
guards. These prison guards, who are doing their jobs, are having to put people
to death by order of the state. They have to live with the trauma of killing a
person, in the name of the law, on their conscience for the rest of their days.
We continue to sentence people to die without understanding the full weight of
this decision on the lives of those involved. However, we continue to be
blissfully ignorant to the effects that the death penalty has because it
doesn’t directly involve us.
I stand with Sister Helen and agree that the death penalty should be abolished
because it should not involve anyone.
— Sydney Smith, Glenside
(source: Letter to the Editor, Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser)
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