Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Texas To Execute Teen Murderer
>
> HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- At 17, Joseph Cannon was no
> stranger to trouble when he shot and tried to rape an
> attorney who had taken him in.
>
> Now 38, he has spent more than half his life on death
> row for the crime. He is scheduled to be executed on
> Wednesday evening.
>
> Only an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court that cites
> international treaties setting 18 as the minimum age
> for executions stands between Cannon and a lethal
> injection.
>
> ``It's going to go through,'' Cannon said in an
> interview last week. ``I've thought about it for about
> a year. I sort of expect the worst and hope for the
> best.''
>
> Cannon would be the fifth inmate convicted of murdering
> at age 17 to be executed in Texas and the 10th
> nationwide since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court
> allowed capital punishment to resume.
>
> After deadly school shootings in Arkansas and Kentucky,
> a Texas legislator wants to allow the execution of
> convicts who were 11 when they committed their crimes,
> though they wouldn't be put to death until age 17.
>
> At least 27 inmates among 447 on Texas' death row were
> 17 when they committed their crimes. At the start of
> the year, 67 inmates in 12 states were awaiting
> execution for murders at age 16 or 17, said Victor
> Streib, dean of the law school at Ohio Northern
> University.
>
> Two other condemned killers were scheduled to die by
> injection early Wednesday. Missouri executed Glennon
> Paul Sweet, 41, for gunning down a state trooper in
> 1987. Arizona executed Jose Roberto Villafuerte, a
> 45-year-old Honduran citizen, for the 1983 murder of a
> woman he left bound and gagged in his Phoenix trailer.
>
> A frequent juvenile violator and runaway from Houston,
> Cannon was facing jail time for a burglary unless he
> could find a stable living environment. Anne Walsh, an
> attorney whose brother had represented Cannon, was
> convinced by her brother to take the boy in.
>
> According to his confession, Cannon had been drinking
> and taking drugs on Sept. 30, 1977, when Mrs. Walsh
> came home for lunch. He shot her at least six times as
> she begged for her life, tried to rape her, then stole
> her daughter's car.
>
> ``His lawyers argued that he was a young boy,'' said
> Paul Canales, the assistant district attorney who
> prosecuted the case nearly 20 years ago. ``But the
> facts are so heinous. The jury didn't buy it.''
--
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