Willingham Aside, Executions Under Perry Raise Questions

As Gov. Rick Perry touts his tough-on-crime policies on the national political stage, the case of Cameron Todd Willingham will continue to be scrutinized. Scientists have raised questions about whether Willingham set the blaze that killed his three daughters and led to his 2004 execution.

Shortly before his execution on May 18, 2004, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended that Perry grant clemency, which Perry rejected. He worried that if he commuted the sentence, Patterson might be released on parole. Patterson’s last statement was a final testimony to his mental condition: “Statement to what? State what? I am not guilty of the charge of capital murder. Steal me and my family’s money. My truth will always be my truth. There is no kin and no friend; no fear what you do to me. No kin to you undertaker.”

Juveniles
Napoleon Beazley was convicted of shooting John Luttig, 63, in Tyler during a 1994 carjacking. Beazley, 17 at the time, was driving around with two friends, a pistol and a sawed-off shotgun when they spotted Luttig driving a Mercedes and followed him to his home. Beazley, the trial record showed, shot Luttig in the head and stole the car, which he backed into a retaining wall and then abandoned.

A jury sentenced Beazley — a former high school class president and the son of a city councilman — to death in 1995.

The Supreme Court did not bar the execution of juveniles until 2005, but by the early 2000s, many states had prohibited the practice. As Beazley’s May 28, 2002, execution date approached, 18 Texas legislators wrote to Perry, asking him to grant clemency. Judge Cynthia Stevens Kent, the trial judge who would have to later sign Beazley’s execution warrant, also asked the governor to commute the sentence to life in prison. The requests were denied.

 “To delay his punishment is to delay justice,” Perry told reporters at the time.

In a final statement the 25-year-old wrote that he was not the same person who had committed the murder. “I’m sorry that it was something in me that caused all of this to happen to begin with,” he wrote. “Tonight we tell the world that there are no second chances in the eyes of justice.”

Not the Shooter
Robert Lee Thompson did not fire the bullet that resulted in his 2009 execution. Thompson and his accomplice, Sammy Butler, robbed a Houston convenience store in 1996. Thompson shot one of the clerks four times. The man survived.

Butler shot the other clerk, Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed, who died. During Butler’s 1998 trial prosecutors could not prove that Butler intended to kill Mohammed. He received a life sentence and is eligible for parole in 2036.

Jurors, however, assessed the death penalty against Thompson in 1998. Thompson had also been charged — but not convicted — in several other aggravated robberies, including three that involved murders.

The courts rejected the argument that Thompson should not receive a harsher sentence than his accomplice, but the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles issued a rare clemency recommendation and advised that the sentence be commuted to life in prison.

 “After reviewing all of the facts in the case of Robert Lee Thompson, who had a murderous history and participated in the killing of Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed,” Perry said in a statement, “I have decided to uphold the jury’s capital murder conviction and capital punishment.”

Thompson was executed on Nov. 19, 2009.

Questionable Counsel
Leonard Uresti Rojas was convicted in 1996 of shooting to death his common-law wife and his brother. The appellate lawyer appointed to handle Rojas’ case was inexperienced, on probation with the state bar and suffered from mental illness, according to court documents. He had been disciplined for not adequately serving his clients and was serving three probated sentences from the bar while he was working on Rojas’ case. He missed crucial deadlines for filing appeals on Rojas’ behalf, effectively eliminating any chance he might have had for relief.

Shortly before his scheduled execution, new attorneys took on Rojas’ case. They appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and asked Perry for a reprieve.

The pleas failed, and Rojas was executed on Dec. 4, 2002.

In a dissenting opinion published after the execution, Tom Price, an appeals court justice, scathingly rebuked the court’s decision. Death penalty appeals, he wrote, should not be left to lawyers with disciplinary problems and no experience.

“He neglected his duties,” Price wrote. “It is hard to imagine that there was no one more able or better qualified.”