Sept. 10
TEXAS----impending execution
Mark Soliz is set to be executed for a 2010 North Texas slaying. He's said
fetal alcohol disorder should exclude him from death.----Soliz and another man
were convicted in the shooting death of a Johnson County woman during a robbery
in her home. His lawyers pushed to stop his execution, saying fetal alcohol
spectrum disorder should be treated like an intellectual disability.
On Tuesday, Texas is set to execute Mark Soliz for the 2010 home robbery and
shooting death of a North Texas woman. If it proceeds, the execution will be
the 6th in Texas this year and the 3rd in the last month. 9 more are scheduled
through December.
Soliz, now 37, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2012 for the murder of
Nancy Weatherly, 61, and robbery of her Johnson County home, according to court
records. Prosecutors said the murder was part of an eight-day crime spree
during which Soliz and another man, Jose Ramos, robbed random people at
gunpoint, and Soliz killed another man.
Soliz and his lawyers have long argued that his life should be spared because
he has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which they claim is the “functional
equivalent” of an intellectual disability, a condition the U.S. Supreme Court
has ruled disqualifies individuals from execution. Both state and federal
courts have rejected the claim during Soliz’s relatively short 7 years on death
row.
After a federal appellate court denied his most recent appeal Monday, his
lawyer said no other court proceedings had been filed to stop the execution.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott could delay the execution for 30 days, though he has
never done so.
In June 2010, prosecutors said, Soliz and Ramos terrorized residents in the
Fort Worth area for 8 days before they were arrested on suspicion of one of
several crimes, including multiple robberies, carjackings and shootings,
another of which was fatal. When police interrogated Ramos about one stolen
car, he began talking about another crime — in which he said the 2 men forced
their way into Weatherly’s house in Godley at gunpoint, and Soliz shot her in
the back of the head as they robbed her home.
Soliz initially denied killing Weatherly, telling police he was outside by the
car when he heard a gunshot and then saw Ramos exit the house. Later during the
interrogation, he said he would confess “just to get this over with,” according
to a 2014 ruling from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. A friend of Soliz’s
later said he bragged to her about killing an “old lady.” Ramos received life
in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder.
At his trial and in his appeals to state and federal courts, Soliz has
repeatedly raised the claim that he should not be executed because of his
disorder. Several defense experts testified before the jury that he was
diagnosed with partial fetal alcohol syndrome, which his lawyers claim caused
mental impairments like lack of impulse control, serious adaptive learning
deficits and hyper-suggestibility. But the testimony did not keep the jury from
handing down a death sentence, and appellate courts have not interfered,
partially because the claim was raised at trial and failed.
But Soliz has argued his execution will go against his constitutional rights
and recently noted changes in what is clinically considered an intellectual
disability. Legal precedent prohibits states from executing people with
intellectual disabilities, but Soliz has sought to expand that, saying there
are so many similarities between intellectual disability and fetal alcohol
spectrum disorder that the conditions should be treated the same way in capital
cases.
“There are striking parallels between the diagnostic criteria for intellectual
disability and FASD,” Soliz’s lawyers wrote in a court filing last month.
“Those afflicted with FASD should be categorically ineligible for the death
penalty just as the intellectually disabled are, and Soliz’s death sentence
violates his Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.”
The Texas Attorney General’s Office, which won the backing of the courts,
countered that Soliz’s request to change legal precedent is “overbroad.”
“The Supreme Court has not held that individuals with FASD are exempt from
capital punishment. Consequently, Soliz seeks to create — not rely on — a new
rule of constitutional law,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Jefferson
Clendenin last week in response to Soliz’s last appeals.
Clendenin also argued that Soliz was the leader in the crimes and was
“sophisticated, calculated and dangerous.”
Soliz’s execution would be the 3rd carried out by Johnson County, which sits
just south of Fort Worth, since the death penalty was reinstated nationwide in
the 1970s. The last one was in 2004.
Texas’ 5 other executions so far this year make up more than 1/3 of the 14 that
have taken place in the country. Of the 17 executions still scheduled in the
country through December — including 3 federal cases — 9 are set to take place
in the Texas death chamber in Huntsville, according to the Death Penalty
Information Center. Last year, Texas executed 13 men.
(source: The Texas Tribune)
*************************
Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----45
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----563
Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #
46---------Sept. 10---------------Mark Anthony Soliz------564
47---------Sept. 25---------------Robert Sparks-----------565
48---------Oct. 2-----------------Stephen Barbee----------566
49---------Oct. 10----------------Randy Halprin-----------567
50---------Oct. 16----------------Randall Mays------------568
51---------Oct. 30----------------Ruben Gutierrez---------569
52---------Nov. 6-----------------Justen Hall-------------570
53---------Nov. 13----------------Patrick Murphy----------571
54---------Nov. 20----------------Rodney Reed-------------572
55---------Dec. 11----------------Travis Runnels----------573
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
*************************
USA----impending/scheduled executions
With the execution of Billy Crutsinger in Texas on September 4, the USA has now
executed 1,504 condemned individuals since the death penalty was re-legalized
on July 2, 1976 in the US Supreme Court Gregg v Georgia decision.
Gary Gilmore was the 1st person executed, in Utah, on January 17, 1977. Below
is a list of further scheduled executions as the nation continues its shameful
practice of state-sponsored killings.
NOTE: The list is likely to change over the coming months as new execution
dates are added and possible stays of execution occur.
1505-------Sept. 10-----------Mark Anthony Soliz-------Texas
1506-------Sept 25------------Robert Sparks------------Texas
1507-------Oct. 1-------------Russell Bucklew----------Missouri
1508-------Oct. 2-------------Stephen Barbee-----------Texas
1509-------Oct. 10------------Randy Halprin------------Texas
1510-------Oct. 16------------Randall Mays-------------Texas
1511-------Oct. 30------------Ruben Gutierrez----------Texas
1512-------Nov. 3-9-----------Charles Rhines-----------South Dakota
1513-------Nov. 6-------------Justen Hall--------------Texas
1514-------Nov. 13------------Patrick Murphy-----------Texas
1515-------Nov. 20------------Rodney Reed--------------Texas
1516-------Dec. 5-------------Lee Hall Jr.-------------Tennessee
1517-------Dec. 9-------------Daniel Lewis Lee---------Federal - Ark.
1518-------Dec. 11------------James Hanna--------------Ohio
1519-------Dec. 11------------Travis Runnels-----------Texas
1520-------Dec. 11------------Lezmond Mitchell---------Federal - Ariz.
1521-------Dec. 13------------Wesley Purkey------------Federal - Mo.
1522-------Jan. 13-----------Alfred Bourgeois----------Federal - Tex.
1523-------Jan. 15-----------Dusten Honken-------------Federal - Iowa
1524-------Jan. 16-----------Kareem Jackson------------Ohio
(source: Rick Halperin)
****************************
Coalition of Jewish Organizations Seeks New Trial for Jewish Death-Row Prisoner
in Texas Tried by Anti-Semitic Judge
A coalition of national and local Jewish organizations and lawyers have asked
the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stop the scheduled October 10, 2019
execution of a Jewish death-row prisoner to review his claim that the judge
before whom he was tried was racist and anti-Semitic. Randy Halprin (pictured)
was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial presided over by Dallas County
Judge Vickers Cunningham, who referred to Halprin as a “f***ing Jew” and a
“G*dd**n k**e” and called Halprin’s Latino co-defendants “wetb***s.” On
September 5, 2019, the American Jewish Committee, the Union for Reform Judaism,
the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and Men of Reform Judaism, and more
than 100 Jewish members of the State Bar of Texas filed an amicus brief with
the state court in support of Halprin’s request for a stay of execution and a
new trial free of bias.
Halprin was sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer who responded
to a robbery committed by a group of inmates, later dubbed the“Texas 7,” who
had escaped from a Texas prison in 2000. Halprin has long maintained that he
was not involved in the shooting, but was convicted under Texas’ law of
parties, which permits the death penalty based upon the actions of other
participants in a felony, even if the defendant himself did not commit the
killing or intend that a murder take place.
Halprin’s lawyers first learned of Judge Cunningham’s possible racial and
religious bias as a result of news reports by the Dallas Morning News in 2018
that revealed that Cunningham had established a financial trust that rewarded
his children if they married a white Christian of the opposite sex. Subsequent
investigation by Halprin’s defense lawyers discovered that Cunningham had made
bigoted comments about Jews in general and about Halprin personally. Halprin
filed an appeal in May detailing Judge Cunningham’s bigoted speech and actions
and arguing that Cunningham’s bias violated Halprin’s constitutional right to
due process. In the stay application, they wrote, “Because the Supreme Court
has held that a biased judge is structural error, …the evidence of bias, in and
of itself, is more than sufficient to invalidate the conviction and sentence….
A biased judge constitutes a basic defect in the ‘whole adjudicatory framework’
of the trial.”
The amicus brief supports the stay and seeks further judicial review of the
issue for Halprin. “If Judge Cunningham is the bigot described in the
application, a fair trial has not yet happened,” the brief states. “Well into
the twenty-first century, it is beyond dispute that a trial conducted before a
racist judge who boasts of his bigotry is no trial at all. If the allegations
here are true—and they unfortunately ring true—the trial was no trial, and the
verdict no verdict, because the judge was no judge.”
The brief addresses the numerous ways in which Cunningham’s bias could have
altered Halprin’s trial: “Even if Judge Cunningham were unaware of how his bias
affected him, his prejudices—thinking of a Jewish defendant as a ‘k**e’ and his
Latino co-defendants as ‘wetb***s’—rendered him unable to be neutral on
pretrial motions, challenges to jurors, objections to evidence, proposed jury
instructions, and his interactions with the lawyers, defendant, and jurors,
regardless of whether they may appear facially neutral in the record.”
2 letters of support were also delivered to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
and Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot, one from a group of interfaith
leaders and another from a group of rabbis. The interfaith letter says, “As a
diverse group of faith leaders, we stand united against any expression of
hatred…. We are called to speak out against this bias and demand that our state
leaders actively address anti-Semitism when it infects any public office or
proceeding. In Mr. Halprin’s case, it is unacceptable that his legal
proceedings were led by an official who appears to have harbored anti-Semitic
beliefs.” The faith leaders continue, “There is no room for the possibility
that the race, ethnicity, gender, or religious beliefs of the accused play a
role in the proceedings. Any erosion of this basic right to be judged fairly
and neutrally threatens the freedom and safety of all citizens.”
The rabbis’ letter describes Cunningham’s anti-Semitic actions, saying,
“Drawing on enduring hateful and hurtful stereotypes about the Jewish people,
Judge Cunningham attended a costume party dressed as a ‘Jew banker,’ and was
quoted as having said that Jews ‘needed to be shut down because they controlled
all the money and all the power.’” It cites biblical commands regarding the
impartiality of judges, then goes on to link them to the ongoing importance of
judicial fairness: “Judaism’s commitment to pursuing justice calls us to insist
no judge can perform his or her tasks with integrity while holding religious or
ethnic bias, discrimination or bigotry. Justice is only possible when we look
at the actions of a person accused of crime, not who they are, where they come
from, the color of their skin, or where they worship, if they do. And the
possibility of justice is only possible if impartial courts hear out claims of
judicial bias.” In June, the Anti-Defamation League filed a brief in support of
Halprin, explaining the bigoted nature of Cunningham’s actions. It wrote that
Cunningham’s “use of the term ‘Jew’ as a pejorative, and his apparent belief in
the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jews control money and power make it
impossible to avoid the conclusion that he is an anti-Semite.”
In June, Halprin commented on the newly-discovered information, saying, “I’m
still in shock and reflecting on the news that I had a judge who hated Jews.
It’s just a weird thing to have someone hate you for a religious view or how
you were raised, or whatever. I can only hope the court is fair and pays
attention to this.”
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
********************************
Fresh statement from witness delays start of capital murder trial in death of
Little Elm pregnant woman
A witness in the capital murder trial of Daniel Greco sits outside the 431st
District Court Monday morning. He gave fresh testimony Monday morning that
delayed the start of the trial.
The capital murder jury trial for Daniel Greco stalled just as soon as it began
Monday morning, when a prosecutor going over questions with witnesses outside
the courtroom stumbled upon new information minutes before the start of the
trial.
A man scheduled to give testimony in the case told the Denton County District
Attorney’s Office that he spoke to a neighbor of Greco’s who had knowledge
about a “tool” that allegedly was used to kill Anjanette Harris and her unborn
child in March of 2016.
Investigators in 2016 found Harris’ body in a wooded area in Little Elm
strangled and with stab wounds around her neck. In her purse was a sonogram;
she was pregnant. Greco is accused of killing them both.
For the 1st time since 2011, the district attorney’s office is seeking the
death penalty if Greco is convicted of capital murder. Monday morning, Judge
Jonathan Bailey temporarily dismissed the jurors just as soon as they were
seated inside the 431st District Court so the DA’s office could find the
neighbor the witness told the prosecutor about and bring the man in for
questioning.
Around noon Monday, the court was called back without the jury. The district
attorney’s office by then had located the neighbor, who described himself as a
good friend and former co-worker of Greco’s. Greco and the neighbor worked at
the same cabinet shop for about 6 months.
Greco wore a navy-blue suit and a necktie Monday morning while in front of the
jury. He returned to the fourth-floor courtroom wearing a standard orange
jumpsuit from the Denton County Jail and in chains.
After a whirlwind morning that sent the prosecution scrambling to find the man,
and the defense team for answers, Greco looked on as his friend and former
neighbor denied ever hearing anything about what the witness told the
prosecutor.
The witness had said the neighbor told him sometime after the 2016 death that
Harris was stabbed with a “a tool” and that the neighbor in question threw away
the tool. The neighbor, however, said he did not know anything about that and
said rumors about how Harris died had been floating around his neighborhood
since her death 3½ years ago.
“This is news to me,” the neighbor said about the witness’s claim. He said he
talked with the witness one time about Harris’ death, and that was more than a
year after her death, the neighbor said in court.
Asked if he came into possession of said tool or disposed of it, the neighbor
said, “Absolutely not.”
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled that Harris died by
strangulation and received stab wounds to her neck secondarily.
The neighbor said he saw Greco the morning of March 6 getting out of his truck
and walking toward Greco’s home. The men waved at each other. Nothing more, the
neighbor said.
The witness who gave the prosecutors the new information met twice with the
district attorney’s office in 2018 but never before mentioned what he shared
with them Monday morning.
“It didn’t occur to me how important that might be until later,” the witness
said in court Monday morning.
His revelation did not bear much fruit for prosecutors Monday morning. The
state’s prosecutors told the judge they did not intend on calling the neighbor
to take the stand before the jury. Greco’s defense team, however, said they
might call the neighbor back to testify.
The trial is scheduled to start again at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the 431st District
Court. Judge Bailey told all attorneys involved to be in court at 8:30 a.m. to
go over any new developments before the jury comes to court.
Greco’s lead defense attorney said over the weekend he expects the trial to
last at least two weeks. Bailey indicated in court Monday the trial could last
as long as a month.
(source: Denton Record-Chronicle)
********************
The Texas Death Penalty Machine Has Become Increasingly Grotesque----There’s
something dishonest in the state’s bureaucratic approach to killing its own
citizens.
Governor Greg Abbott tweeted last week that “expedited executions” for mass
shooters would make a “nice addition” to the package of policy proposals he was
assembling in the wake of massacres in El Paso and Midland-Odessa. It was a
curious proposal, as my colleague Dan Solomon noted, given that 2 of the 4 most
prolific recent shooters were killed in their attacks, the 3rd is too young to
be executed, and the fourth had previously expressed a desire to die as soon as
possible. But it was also a reminder that the death penalty retains a strong
psychic hold on ideas about justice and public safety, even as capital
punishment has evolved to become more and more, at least in the United States,
a singularly Texan institution.
The use of the death penalty has slowed precipitously across the U.S. Only 13
states have executed anyone since 2013. Last year, just 8 states had an
execution, and Texas was responsible for more than 1/2 of the total number
nationwide. Though the pace has slowed even here, Texas’ death penalty machine
is still chugging along. The state’s next execution is scheduled for September
10, followed by 1 on September 25. 4 more are scheduled for October, followed
by another 4 through the end of the year. There are 218 people on death row.
Abbott’s statement implied that execution is a just reward for a mass murderer,
but also that it would deter others from similar atrocities. That’s been the
historic intention behind the death penalty—showy warnings, in the form of
crucifixions, drawing-and-quarterings, burnings at the stake, hangings in the
town square. But that’s not the case in Texas anymore. In some ways the death
penalty in Texas has never been more grotesque—more bureaucratic, more
antiseptic.
Last month, the state of Texas executed Larry Swearingen, a 48-year-old man
from Montgomery County. In 1998, Swearingen raped and murdered
nineteen-year-old Melissa Trotter, then a friend and college classmate. Or
maybe he didn’t. No biological evidence ever tied Swearingen to the killing,
and there’s plenty of reason for doubt if you’re looking for it, as laid out in
this Washington Post summary of his defense team’s counterclaims.
Perhaps most significantly, a succession of forensic pathologists and others
testified that Trotter seemed to have been killed after Swearingen had been
arrested and was waiting in jail—which, as alibis go, is pretty good.
Prosecutors, of course, think all that’s hogwash, and Trotter’s parents are
convinced of Swearingen’s guilt too. They have their own set of compelling
evidence and a record of things Swearingen did after he was arrested that imply
guilt.
They may well be right, of course. We don’t know for sure, and we will likely
never find out. We do know that a truly unimaginable thing happened to Trotter.
“A bad man got what he deserved tonight,” said prosecutor Kelly Blackburn,
claiming vengeance. “Larry Swearingen needs to be removed from the annals of
history as far as I’m concerned.”
It’s a curious turn of phrase: removed from the annals of history, as if
Blackburn were a censor in a bureaucrat’s office instead of a prosecutor. What
Larry Swearingen leaves behind in the annals of history, as the excellent Keri
Blakinger of the Houston Chronicle pointed out on Twitter, is paperwork:
I had never seen these forms before. They’re remarkable, above all else, for
their banality. They’re what you get when you make killing boring, like
combining murder with the DMV.
The first set of documents, the “Death Watch,” contains the careful notation of
how citizen Swearingen spent his last 72 hours. After midnight, he stood at the
door of his cell talking, then went to a desk to write. He packed up his
belongings, to save someone the trouble, and presumably for the same reason, he
cleaned his toilet too. (Blakinger’s podcast interview with Swearingen is worth
a listen—among other things, he describes the way prisoners on death row make
their own Magic: The Gathering cards, shouting plays at each other through the
door.) On the last day, the notes stop abruptly. They’re no longer needed.
The second document is much stranger. The “Execution Recording” for prisoner
No. 999361 picks up some time after the first document leaves off. It looks
indistinguishable from every dumb government form you’ve ever filled out, from
the Times New Roman type to the blanks made with the underline key to the
office fax number at the bottom. On here, state employees record that
Swearingen was “STRAPPED TO GURNEY” at 6:23. At 6:35, the “LETHAL DOSE BEGAN,”
and seven minutes later, a time was registered for “PROCESS COMPLETED.”
The comments section is blank. Apparently nothing about the day’s events seemed
worth mentioning. Swearingen kept his own record. “I can hear it going through
the vein—I can taste it,” he said. There was a burning sensation in his right
arm, something others executed have mentioned as well. Eventually, he started
snoring.
I’d much rather be shot. Wouldn’t you? Death by firing squad seems more honest
and might even involve less pain than this bizarre pseudo-medical ritual. But
because the Supreme Court held that the Constitution’s prohibition on “cruel
and unusual punishment” implies a directive to minimize “unnecessary pain,”
states settled on a lethal injection process that puts prisoners to sleep
before stopping their hearts. Pharmaceutical companies won’t sell the necessary
drugs to Texas, however, so the state uses home-brew, locally-procured
substitutes. And it all happens in private, so that the public can be spared
the indignity of watching.
Part of the desire to make it a rigid, clinical process, of course, is that
state employees must be involved in the government’s state-sanctioned killing—a
cruel thing, even if they volunteer for it. The result is something strange and
alienating. In the replies to one of Blakinger’s tweets, a former Houston
Chronicle reporter commented that “Texas excels at making executions workaday
affairs. I covered one for the Houston Chron many moons ago. When it was over,
a guard said, ‘That was a quick one,’” she wrote. “And then we went to the
communications [director]’s office to write our stories while he watched Wheel
of Fortune.”
Even the little traditions that used to connect the old death penalty to the
new one are being rolled back. In 2011, Texas ended the practice of serving
convicts a last meal of their choosing before their execution, after one person
ordered a large meal he didn’t eat—a trivial expense. And there was pressure
during the most recent legislative session to end the practice of reading
convicts’ last remarks to the media. (Both originated with pressure from state
senator John Whitmire, a Democrat.)
Conservatives tend to support capital punishment more than liberals, even
though government is never bigger than when it’s flushing poison through
someone’s veins. If the state can’t be entrusted with tax dollars, how can it
be trusted with the ability to decide which of its citizens deserve to die?
When France abolished the death penalty in 1981, it did so because, as Francois
Mitterand’s justice minister argued, executions create a totalitarian
relationship between the state and the individual. “The true political
signification of capital punishment is that it results from the idea that
State” owns its people, he said.
Free countries tend not to employ the death penalty—unfree countries do. Today,
the world leader in executions is China. Human rights organizations believes
that the Chinese state kills thousands each year, some of them in mobile
“execution vans.” The Chinese executioners in the vans use the American
three-step lethal-injection process, first demonstrated in 1982, in Texas.
After Swearingen died, a prison official closed out the process at a press
conference. The event of the day “was the 12th execution in the United States
this year, the 4th in Texas, and there are eleven additional executions
scheduled between now and the end of this calendar year,” he said. “Any
questions?”
(source: Texas Monthly)
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