Sept. 3
TEXAS----stay of impending execution
Texas Court Grants Execution Stay - State's8th Execution Delay In Recent
Months----Robert Jennings was scheduled to be executed in October for the 1988
murder of a Houston police officer.
On Friday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a stay of execution for
Robert Jennings.
Jennings was scheduled to be executed on Sept. 14 for the 1988 murder of Elston
Howard, a Houston police officer. He was sentenced to death after his trial in
1989.
The stay of execution means that this is the 8th consecutive scheduled
execution date in Texas to have been withdrawn, stayed, or moved to a later
date.
The unsigned opinion - from which 4 of the court's 9 judges dissented - was a
brief 3 pages, laying out the legal history of the case and Jennings' current
request before the court. Among Jennings' arguments is that improper jury
instructions prevented the jury from "properly considering and giving effect
to" the mitigating evidence raised at his sentencing.
The only explanation given by the court for granting the stay was a single
sentence: "After reviewing applicant's pleadings, this Court has determined
that applicant's execution should be stayed pending further order of this
Court."
This is the 2nd Friday in a row in which the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals -
the state's highest appellate court for criminal matters - issued a stay of
execution with little explanation for its action. A week earlier, the court
stayed the pending execution of Ronaldo Ruiz.
At this point, the next scheduled execution is the scheduled execution of
Barney Fuller on October 5 - nearly 6 months since the most recent execution in
the state, which took place April 6.
This long of a gap between executions in Texas - a state that has conducted
more than 500 executions since it began executing people again in 1982 - is
very rare. The only other time a gap of more than 5 months between executions
happened in Texas in the past 20 years was between September 2007 and June
2008, when executions across the country hit a standstill because the U.S.
Supreme Court had agreed to hear a case regarding the constitutionality of a
lethal injection protocol.
Unlike then, however, the reasons given for withdrawing, staying, or moving the
past eight execution dates in Texas have differed and have also at times, as
with Friday's order, been less than transparent.
(source: BuzzFeedNews)
****************************
State court hands Houston cop killer a stay weeks before execution
Texas' highest criminal appeals court Friday stayed the execution of a man,
sentenced to die for the 1988 fatal shooting of a Houston policeman during the
robbery of a Richmond Avenue adult book store.
Robert Jennings, 58, who has spent 2/3 of his life behind bars for various
felony convictions, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Sept.
14.
Friday's 5-4 ruling by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals marked the fourth
time in a month that the Austin court halted an execution. The court's
5-paragraph order offered no explanation for the ruling, noting only that the
execution had been stopped "pending further order of this court."
Jennings was convicted of repeatedly shooting 24-year-old Police Officer Elston
Howard. The officer was issuing a misdemeanor citation to an employee of the
Empire Book Store, 4330 Richmond, when the gunman entered to rob the business.
Late last month, Jennings' Houston attorney Randy Schaffer filed an appeal that
argued, in part, that prosecutors "destroyed, lost or suppressed" school
records that might have shown earlier indications of intellectual deficiency
and that the trial judge's directions to the jury improperly precluded
consideration of the killer's remorse as a mitigating factor.
Howard's relatives could not immediately be reached for comment Friday, but in
1988, the slain officer's mother, Era Howard, told reporters that lethal
injection was "too good" for Jennings. "He should be stood out and shot just as
close a range as my son was shot," she said. "I want him to see that gun before
he's blown out."
Testifying at Jennings trial, book store clerk Larry Overholt told jurors that
Howard was issuing a citation for the showing of movies without a license when
the gunman entered.
"He pulled a gun out of his jacket right away," Overholt testified. "He went
right toward officer Howard. By the time officer Howard noticed, Jennings was
right on him."
Overholt said Howard, who was attired in a vest bearing the word "Police,"
uttered the words, "Oh, no" seconds before Jennings fired 2 shots into his
neck. After the officer fell to the floor, Jennings fired two additional shots
into his head.
Then-District Attorney Johnny Holmes read jurors a statement Jennings gave
police in which he claimed he fired as Howard attempted to tackle him.
"When the dude charged me, he tried to tackle me and he put his head in my
stomach and was trying to knock me down and while he was tackling me, my gun
went off and I shot him in the back 2 times, " the statement read. "After I
shot him, the dude went to the ground between my legs and he was still holding
me by the legs."
Jennings told authorities he was unaware Howard was an officer.
As his execution date approached, Jennings rejected a request for an interview.
Accomplice was 'pretty upset'
His accomplice, David Harvell, however, spoke with reporters at Teague's Boyd
Unit, where he is serving a 55-year sentence for aggravated robbery.
Harvell, who waited at the wheel of a getaway car about a block from the store,
said Jennings told him he had shot a security guard.
"He came back with that story. I didn't believe him," Harvell said. "But when I
took the gun, I saw it had 4 spent shells. So, I believed it. ... I was pretty
upset. I took him down the street and tried to get him out of the car. He
didn't know whether he had shot a cop or not. He's never been all that sharp."
In an effort to force Jennings from his car, he shot the robber in the hand.
"I've dreamt about this," he said of the crime. "It's possessed my heart and
mind."
Harvell said he had driven the getaway car during several earlier robberies
with Jennings - prosecutors told jurors Jennings had committed at least 10
other robberies - and that the "jobs" were always low-dollar, easy targets.
'He didn't have a chance'
Jennings was troubled from earliest adolescence. At 14, he was declared
delinquent. At 16, he was sent to a youth detention facility. At 17, he was
sentenced to 5 years in prison for aggravated robbery. Released in 1978, he was
returned to prison months later on a 30-year sentence on 2 counts of aggravated
robbery and 1 count of burglary of a habitation.
He was paroled 2 months before he fatally shot Jennings.
Howard, the father of a 3-year-old girl, had wanted to become a policeman since
childhood.
When he was 8 years old, his father, Alcono Howard said in 1988, the boy saw a
policeman on the street and said, "That's what I want to be. Doesn't he look
great?"
Howard joined the department in 1983, and by the time of his death had achieved
a reputation as a star undercover narcotics officer. More than 100 drug cases
were developed through his work, authorities said after his death.
Howard's partner on the fatal night was officer Milford Sistrunk, who said he
was unaware of the shooting until emergency vehicles arrived at the scene.
"I was parked at the far end of the strip center with the air conditioner
running," he said. The night's tragedy marked the low point of his career, he
said.
"He didn't have a chance," he said of Howard. "That guy came in with a drop on
him."
Interviewed before Friday's stay, Sistrunk said he planned to witness Jennings'
execution.
"Justice delayed is justice denied," he said. "For him to live this long on
death row - longer than my partner - I don't see the point. He should have been
gone long ago."
Still, said the retired officer, "I have no real malice toward him. I did at
one time, but that's behind me ... I hope he gets to heaven. He's a kid who
went wrong."
(source: HoustonChronicle)
*****************************
Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----19
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----537
Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #
20---------October 5----------------Barney Fuller---------538
21---------October 19---------------Terry Edwards---------539
22---------November 2---------------Ramiro Gonzales-------540
23---------December 7---------------John Battaglia--------541
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
*******************
We can argue about whether death penalty is too 'cruel' to be legal, but it's
certainly too 'unusual' to be fair
The death penalty is too expensive. It is not a proven deterrent. And it fails
to recognize the very human nature of our justice system, one where mistakes
are too common and well-documented to comfortably co-exist with the finality of
the electric chair or the gas chamber or lethal injection.
And as it gets more and more rare, it's increasingly likely that the death
penalty is simply too unusual to be permitted by our Constitution. That's an
argument advanced last year by Justice Stephen Breyer, who noted in a
dissenting opinion that among the more than 3,000 counties in America,
defendants in only a tiny fraction of them were sentenced to death.
He cited only 15 counties - including Dallas and Harris in Texas - that have
imposed the sentence 5 or more times since 2010. Last week, The New York Times
noted that in the subsequent year, that number has risen by just 1, to 16.
But in the 40 years since the justices decided in 1976 to reverse its
conclusion that the death penalty was unconstitutional, both its popularity and
legal standing have steadily fallen. In 1986, the court outlawed executions for
the insane, for example. In 2002, it ruled out executing those with mental
retardation. And in 2005, it barred its use against anyone whose crime was
committed while under the age of 18.
In Texas and elsewhere, questions about the reliability of convictions, even in
capital cases, have multiplied yearly. In his dissent, Breyer notes that even
in the past 3 decades mounting evidence suggests innocent people have been
executed. 2 of the cases he cites happened in Texas.
For those reasons, he has urged his colleagues to stop arguing at the edges of
the death penalty and confront head-on new questions about its
constitutionality. In doing so, he urges a new focus on whether the fact that
the vast majority of courts have moved away from the death penalty means that
it is too unusual to be legal in the places, like Dallas County, where it is
still regularly handed down.
His colleagues, who have been whittling away at the death penalty for years,
should follow his lead.
(source: Editorial, Dallas Morning News)
*****************************
My friend on death row: How a Toronto mom befriended a death-row inmate----In
November, a Toronto singer-songwriter who befriended a death-row inmate will
fly to Texas to watch him die.
In early November, Bri-anne Swan, a Toronto singer-songwriter and 33-year-old
mother of two, will fly to Texas to witness the execution of a man with whom
she has developed an unlikely friendship.
Swan has been exchanging letters with death-row inmate Ramiro Gonzales for 2
years. They had never met before she wrote her 1st note to him in 2014. They
were born and raised 5,000 kilometres apart - she in small-town Ontario, he in
poverty in rural Texas.
Gonzales, 33, has been in prison for his entire adult life. He was sentenced to
die after he confessed to the 2001 murder of an 18-year-old woman in Medina
County, Texas. Now he draws pictures for Swan's children in his cell. He pens
poetry. He uses an ultrasound image of her son as a bookmark. He writes to her
about his faith in God and his regret.
"People aren't just the worst thing they have ever done or the best thing they
have ever done," Swan says.
Swan lives in Leslieville with her husband, Jason Meyers, and their 2 boys -
Simon, 2, and Isaiah, 4. She is training to be a psychotherapist. Meyers works
in the non-profit sector and is studying to be a minister in the United Church
of Canada. They are members of the Rosedale United Church, a congregation with
a strong tradition of community service and advocacy.
Despite the demands of her studies and home life, Swan has lately been writing
to Gonzales every other day. She has petitioned Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the
state's board of parole and pardons to grant him clemency. In June, after
Gonzales invited her to his execution, she held a church concert to fundraise
for her trip. In August, after his original execution date was postponed, she
kept her travel plans and flew south to meet him.
Theirs is not a typical prison pen-pal relationship. For one thing, Swan made
it clear from the outset that she is happily married and interested only in
friendship, and Gonzales told her he preferred it that way.
"Please do not think that I wish for you to pity me at any level," he wrote in
his 1st letter. "Initially, I requested a friend and I hope that we can become
just that."
Though Swan's husband and church congregation have been supportive, some
friends and family members do not understand what has driven her to do this.
Those who don't get it have avoided voicing their disagreement, but Swan can
feel their questions hanging in the silence:
Why did she initiate a friendship with a faraway stranger who committed
terrible crimes?
And why on earth would she agree to fly to Texas to watch him die?
Becoming pen pals
2 years ago, when Swan was pregnant with her 2nd child and battling insomnia,
she got lost in a late-night Internet search on capital punishment, a practice
she had long been appalled by.
Scrolling through profiles on a website where death-row prisoners advertise for
pen pals, Swan clicked on the name Ramiro Gonzales and saw a picture of a
boyish Hispanic man with a tattoo on his left cheek.
Swan was moved by his life story. According to local news reports, Gonzales had
been abandoned by his biological mother and raised by his grandparents. As a
child, he had been sexually abused by a male relative. He lost a beloved aunt
in a car crash. As a teen, he became addicted to drugs and alcohol, which led
to "stupidity," he wrote in his profile.
In 2002, Gonzales was found guilty of kidnapping and raping a real estate agent
in Bandera County, near San Antonio, Texas. While awaiting transport to prison,
he confessed to a 2nd crime: the murder of 18-year-old Bridget Townsend, who
had gone missing in a neighbouring county in 2001. Investigators had no leads
on her disappearance until Gonzales told them he had kidnapped Townsend from
the home of his drug dealer and drove her to a secluded area, where he raped
and shot her.
In the decade since he was sentenced to death in 2006, Gonzales has found God
and expressed deep remorse for his crimes.
"I'm a very spiritual person and I totally live by integrity, self dignity, and
self respect," he wrote in his pen-pal profile. "I hope I qualify for someone's
friendship."
While Swan and Gonzales clearly came from different worlds, she noted the
similarities in their personal histories. They were the same age. They had both
grown up on farms. They were both Christians.
"I think I'm going to write to him," she told her husband a few days after
discovering the pen-pal page.
Swan grew up with 3 younger brothers just outside the village of Moonstone,
Ont., near Orillia. Her father was a butcher who also ran a small business
selling and installing satellite dishes. Her mother worked for various social
service organizations.
In high school, Swan befriended a set of twins who started a social justice
club and quickly became one of the group's most passionate members. She joined
Amnesty International letter-writing campaigns, participated in 30-hour famine
fundraisers and spearheaded a move to bring a guest speaker into her high
school to discuss homophobia.
Those who know her well say she has always been a champion of the underdog. She
is not content to accept simple answers to big questions. It is in her nature
to assume things are more complicated than they seem, and to search for
underlying causes.
"She always was different than everyone else, in a good way," says Georgina
Lopez, one of the twins from the social justice club. "She can be really
passionate about things, and she likes to be kind of controversial." Swan was
always protesting an injustice or standing behind a cause, Lopez says, so her
latest endeavour came as no surprise.
"It sounds just like Bri-anne - getting to know someone and seeing the true
personality behind them, the true person."
Swan's 1st letter to Gonzales was a simple introduction: "My name is Bri-anne.
I live in Toronto, Canada. I saw your profile online looking for a pen pal and
am wondering if you might be interested in writing with me."
His reply was earnest: "I wish to speak to your heart as a person in the hopes
that you would give me a chance to bring before you the person that I really
am."
Jason Meyers says his wife's friendship with Gonzales and her growing
involvement in the anti-death penalty movement has given her a renewed sense of
purpose. As Christians and members of the United Church, he says, it is their
duty to find ways to bring light into the world, especially in places that
don???t get a lot of light - and that's exactly what Swan is doing.
"I'm really proud of the work that she has done and the relationship that she
has developed with this person who is about as far out on the margins of
society as you can get," he says.
Swan had another reason for reaching out to Gonzales that she was not
immediately conscious of. She noted that he was both a victim and perpetrator
of sexual assault. Swan, too, had experienced sexual violence in her past. She
felt empathy for the boy who had been through what she had, and curiosity about
the man who committed sexual assault.
"I don't even think it was totally thought out but there was maybe this piece
of wanting to understand how the gears worked in somebody who could do
something like that," she says.
Swan says that if she set out unconsciously looking for answers, she never
really got them because Gonzales is a different person today.
"While the crime he committed was heinous, the man who is set to be executed is
not the same boy who killed Bridget 15 years ago," she said recently in a
letter to the Texas governor, which she shared on her website, where she has
been writing about her friendship with Gonzales. "18-year-old Ramiro was
broken, hopeless and severely addicted to drugs - substances he turned to as a
teenager to cope with the loss of a beloved aunt and years of sexual abuse by a
male relative."
Swan is aware that she only knows the best of Gonzales, and that there may be
another side of him that he doesn't reveal in his letters, but she believes him
to be genuine and truly remorseful. "The Ramiro I know is a very gentle, kind
person," she says.
In May, after nearly 2 years of letter writing, Gonzales asked her to attend
his execution. After discussing it with her husband, she accepted.
"There is a certain honour and privilege in being asked to be one of the few
people that can be there," she says. "If it makes even the teensiest little bit
of difference to him that I would be in the room, then I want to be there."
Swan can understand why some people don't get it. Her mother has expressed
concern for her safety - travelling alone to a prison in Texas, especially near
the end of a fraught U.S. presidential election campaign. Her father, she says,
has been mostly silent on the issue.
"They didn't know I was writing to him until I explained that I was going to
his execution, so it's a big thing to drop on your parents," she says.
In early summer, when she learned that Gonzales's August execution date had
been postponed until November, Swan decided to visit him anyway.
The visit
In the weeks leading up to her Texas trip, Swan felt nervous. She wondered what
would happen if she and Gonzales had nothing to talk about in person. What if
they didn't connect in life as they had through letters?
In early August, she flew from Toronto to Houston and checked into an Airbnb.
The next afternoon, she drove her rental car 100 kilometres north to the town
of Livingston, home of the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, which houses the state's 300
death-row inmates.
After a bit of confusion getting through security, Swan was ushered into a
small room and seated in a booth on one side of a glass wall. She got snacks
from the vending machine while she waited. Gonzales had requested 2 salads with
ranch dressing, a banana, yogurt, chips and a Dr Pepper, which he told her
would be the best food he'd have all week. Swan got herself a root beer.
Around 8 that Saturday night, Gonzales was brought into the room and seated on
the other side of the glass. They both beamed, Swan says, and any anxieties she
had about them not connecting faded within the first few minutes.
"It didn't actually feel like this was the 1st time we had met," she later
reflected. "It was as comfortable as sitting in a maximum security prison,
talking to somebody behind glass could possibly be."
Over several days and 3 visits, they spoke through the glass over the crackling
prison telephones about their families, their faith in God, his life in prison,
her music.
Outside the prison, Swan met Gonzales's sister, who sent her home with a bag of
tamales. She met his lawyer, who is working on ways to further delay or halt
the execution. She appeared as a guest singer on a Houston radio station that
hosts a prison show.
The goodbye was difficult. It wasn't like they could cheerfully look forward to
November.
"Essentially, the next time we see each other, he is going to be preparing to
be killed by the state of Texas," Swan says.
Swan often thinks about the families of Gonzales's victims, and wonders how
they cope with everything that they have been through. They, too, have her
empathy. She has received angry letters from people who have read her blog
posts about Gonzales and tell her that he does not deserve a friend.
"I am aware that I only know the best of Ramiro," she says. "No one is
advocating that he be released from jail, just that he not be executed."
In a reflection posted on her website after the August visit, Swan made a
heartfelt pitch to those who wish Gonzales and others like him dead.
"I would challenge anybody who is a proponent of the death penalty to spend
some time getting to know somebody like Ramiro," she wrote. "Write with them.
Meet them. Learn about their life story. Do it with an open heart and then at
the end decide whether or not this person should be killed."
Excerpts from Gonzales's letters
"Concerning your statement about, going through the most difficult times
creates the greatest spiritual or personal growth, well, for me, I still do not
understand it all. The truth is, I am here to die. In reality, I am merely
waiting for my number to be called, and then it is off to the slaughter house.
Sounds crazy and visious, but that is the truth."
"It is a vitality to stay strong mentally in this place because if you do not,
you will loose you mind. I have seen a few of the strongest guys one day in
their right minds and the next day lost, just totally lost mentally."
"I am also glad that you guys really liked the drawing that I did for Isaiah. I
am sure he too was thrilled. I will say this again, I wish I could have seen
his face. It gives me joy to be able to have that part in their lives as well.
Which is something that I wanted for you to know. I do thank you for allowing
me that much Bri-anne. Being a part of your life and the lives of your kiddos."
(source: The Toronto Star)
***************************
2 indicted in shooting death of 7-year-old girl as she walked through park
The Bexar County District Attorney's Office announced on Friday the grand jury
indictments against two men charged with the murder of a 7-year-old girl.
Frank Gomez, 28, and Manuel Watson, 22, are charged with capital murder in the
death of Iris Rodriguez.
Iris was walking with her mother and her mother's boyfriend through Cuellar
Park on June 1 when they were confronted by Gomez and Watson, say
investigators.
Police say Gomez and Watson opened fire, hitting Iris in the head. Her mother
was shot in the arm.
Gomez and Watson could get the death penalty if they are convicted in her
death.
A 3rd suspect in the case, Jonathan Campos, committed suicide at the Bexar
County Jail in July. A 4th suspect, Peter Gonzalez, has not been indicted in
the case.
(source: foxsanantonio.com)
VIRGINIA:
Death penalty sought against man accused of murdering Leesburg woman
David Mariotti was jailed in July after he was accused of strangling an
84-year-old woman to death with a rope in her Leesburg home.
Now the 34-year-old Mariotti could face the death penalty if convicted of the
1st-degree murder charge.
Citing the crime as "especially heinous, atrocious and cruel," prosecutors have
decided to seek the death penalty against Mariotti.
Mariotti, of Fruitland Park, and Tracie Jo Naffziger, 40, of Wildwood, were
both charged in the murder after Mariotti reportedly confessed that he attacked
Bernadine Montgomery on June 16 after the widow caught Naffziger pillaging her
Palmora Park home and threatened to call police.
High on heroin and afraid to go back to jail, Mariotti admitted he tore a piece
of rope from Montgomery's couch, wrapped it around her neck and strangled her
to death, according to a probable cause affidavit.
ariotti had gone to Montgomery's home with Naffziger to help the widow with
chores.
The couple reportedly laid her body on the couch and covered it with pillows
and blankets for several days as they took her car on joyrides, used her credit
cards and sold her belongings to pawn shops.
Assistant State Attorney Rich Buxman could not be reached for comment Friday.
But in paperwork he filed in the Lake County courthouse, he made several points
he believes the state can prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
"The victim ... was particularly vulnerable due to advanced age or disability,"
Buxman stated as 1 factor.
He added the felony also was committed to avoid arrest and for financial gain.
Mariotti remains in the Lake County Jail without bail on the charges that also
include dealing in stolen property and falsification of ownership to a
pawnbroker from the Montgomery case. New charges were added last week after he
was accused of smuggling drugs to his inmate girlfriend before his arrest in
the murder case.
Naffziger was charged with accessory to murder and other charges similar to
Mariotti in the case. She also remains in jail without bail.
The couple reportedly used Montgomery's vehicle to dump her body in a wooded
area along State Road 19 in Putnam County. A number of federal, state and local
agencies have joined in the search to recover Montgomery's remains.
Leesburg police Lt. Joe Iozzi said Friday that investigators are still looking
for the body.
(source: The Daily Commercial)
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