Aug. 14
TEXAS—-impending execution—-volunteer
'Texas 7' fugitive volunteering to die Thursday
Condemned prisoner Michael Rodriguez sees his execution as a chance to
make amends for some very bad decisions.
His 1st bad decision led to the murder of his wife. The second made him a
key partner in one of Texas' most notorious prison breaks and ultimately
cost the life of a Dallas-area police officer gunned down by the gang of
fugitives who became known as the "Texas 7."
"Sadly, a lot of people got hurt," Rodriguez, who for two years has been
pushing for his own lethal injection that's set for today, told The
Associated Press from outside death row. "I think it's a fair sentence. I
need to pay back. I can't pay back monetarily. This is the way."
Rodriguez, 45, would be the first of the six surviving members of the
infamous "Texas 7" 7 convicts who broke out of a South Texas prison in
December 2000 to be executed.
The gang was captured in Colorado after 6 weeks on the run. One of them,
Larry Harper, killed himself rather than surrender to authorities, but not
before they all were involved in the fatal shooting of Aubrey Hawkins, an
Irving police officer, during a Christmas Eve robbery of a sporting goods
store in the Dallas suburb.
"I'm glad we got caught so no one else would get hurt," Rodriguez said in
an interview at the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice, home to death row.
His 5 remaining accomplices George Rivas, Randy Halprin, Donald Newbury,
Joseph Garcia and Patrick Murphy also are there and awaiting the outcome
of appeals. None of them has an execution date.
Rodriguez would be the 8th prisoner executed in the nation's most active
capital punishment state this year and the 2nd this week. On Tuesday, Leon
Dorsey was put to death for a 1994 robbery at a Dallas video store where
two employees were gunned down. Another execution is scheduled in Texas
for next week.
Rodriguez's punishment was expected to draw dozens of police officers to
Huntsville to stand vigil outside the prison while Hawkins' widow, Lori,
was inside watching the convicted killer die.
"I'll be there," she said. "Absolutely. I wouldn't miss this."
Lori Hawkins credited Rodriguez with being "the first one to really admit
his guilt" but said his words of apology were "a little too late."
"It didn't have to happen," she said of the fatal shooting of her husband
of four years. "Aubrey didn't need to die."
At the time of the escape, Rodriguez was serving a life term for hiring a
hit man to kill his wife, Theresa, 29, to collect her $250,000 life
insurance. She was gunned down in 1992 getting out of her car outside
their San Antonio home. The triggerman, Rolando Ruiz, also is on death
row.
Rodriguez has been pushing for his own death for more than 2 years,
starting in early 2006 with a hand-printed letter mailed to the federal
courthouse in Dallas.
"I am a college graduate and have no delusions what will occur as an end
result of these proceedings," Rodriguez wrote in the 1st of an almost
monthly series of letters that wound up before a federal judge.
********************************
"Texas 7" fugitive volunteering to die Thursday
Michael Rodriguez's downfall began with an infatuation.
If he follows through with his plans to be held accountable, it ends
Thursday evening in the Texas death chamber.
Rodriguez, 45, a key member of the "Texas 7" a group of seven fugitives
who broke out of a South Texas prison in one of the state's most notorious
escapes has dropped all his appeals and is volunteering for execution for
his part in the killing of a Dallas-area police officer almost eight years
ago.
"Whatever we do, there's restitution to be made," Rodriguez, 45, told The
Associated Press in a recent interview outside death row. "But in this
situation, the only thing I can do is be held accountable. and express
sincere condolences."
Rodriguez's execution, the eighth this year in the nation's busiest death
penalty state, would cap more than two years of efforts he initiated to
short-circuit the appeals process and accelerate his punishment.
"Sadly, a lot of people got hurt," Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez would be the 1st of the 6 surviving members of the infamous
"Texas 7" to be executed.
At the time of the December 2000 escape, Rodriguez was serving a life term
for hiring a hit man to kill his wife, Theresa, 29, to collect her life
insurance proceeds. She was gunned down in 1992 getting out of her car
outside their San Antonio home. The triggerman, Rolando Ruiz, also is on
death row.
Rodiguez was taking college classes and wanted to get rid of his wife
because he'd been smitten with a younger female student.
"The lust of a coed," he said. "I can't explain it. My wife was a
wonderful person and didn't deserve this. I fell for a coed. It was
stupid. … But I was a willing participant. … I really thought I would
get off, like a lot of people who are deluded."
His father, who would be convicted of helping the escaped convicts,
arranged to have a vehicle waiting near the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice Connally Unit south of San Antonio after the inmates got out.
The gang was captured in Colorado in January 2001 after 6 weeks on the
run. One of them, Larry Harper, killed himself rather than surrender to
authorities.
By then, however, they were involved in the fatal shooting of Aubrey
Hawkins, an Irving policeman, during a Christmas Eve 2000 robbery of a
sporting goods store in the Dallas suburb.
"I'm glad we got caught, so no one else would get hurt," Rodriguez said.
His five remaining accomplices George Rivas, Randy Halprin, Donald
Newbury, Joseph Garcia and Patrick Murphy also are there and awaiting the
outcome of appeals. None of them has an execution date.
Rodriguez's punishment was expected to draw dozens of police officers to
Huntsville to stand vigil outside the prison while Hawkins' widow, Lori,
was inside watching the convicted killer die.
"I'll be there," she said. "Absolutely. I wouldn't miss this."
Lori Hawkins credited Rodriguez with being "the first one to really admit
his guilt" but said his words of apology were "a little too late."
"It didn't have to happen," she said of the fatal shooting of her husband
of four years. "Aubrey didn't need to die."
Rodriguez first wrote to a federal judge in Dallas in early 2006, mailing
a hand-printed letter mailed asking that his appeals be stopped. Court
hearings eventually were held to ensure Rodriguez was competent to make
that kind of decision, but his execution was on hold while the U.S.
Supreme Court considered a Kentucky case that stopped all executions in
the country with a challenge arguing lethal injection was
unconstitutionally cruel. When the justices in April upheld the method as
proper, Rodriguez's death date was set for Thursday.
"I'm ready to go," he said.
Toby Shook, a former Dallas County assistant district attorney who
prosecuted Rodriguez, said he thought the former restaurant operator in
San Antonio was being "very pragmatic."
"It's going to happen," Shook said, describing the case against him and
the other former fugitives as "iron tight."
"He's able to at least make one decision on his own," Shook said. "He's
choosing the time."
The 7 prisoners overpowered workers at the Connally Unit near Kenedy on
Dec. 13, 2000, took the workers' clothes, then grabbed 16 guns from the
prison armory and fled in a stolen truck. They ditched that truck for
another that had been left for them by Rodriguez's father.
Then 12 days later, while robbing an Irving sporting goods store of cash,
clothing and more weapons, they killed Hawkins, who was shot 11 times and
then run over with his own patrol car.
Acting on a tip from a resident of a trailer park outside Colorado
Springs, Colo., Rodriguez and 3 of his cohorts were captured there Jan.
22, 2001. Harper killed himself. The remaining 2 surrendered 2 days later.
********************
Defense Lawyers Try to Halt ExecutionM
Since Texas reinstated the death penalty in 1976, only six people have
been executed for a murder in which they did not directly participate,
according to the Death Penalty Information Center. If Texas proceeds with
the scheduled Aug. 21 execution of Jeff Wood, that number will climb to 7.
Lawyers for the death row inmate, trying to spare their client that fate,
are asking the Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend commuting Wood's
sentence to life in prison.
Wood was sentenced to die for the 1996 murder of his friend Kris Keeran,
during a botched robbery of a Kerrville Texaco station. Wood did not fire
the gun that killed Keeran and wasn't inside the gas station when another
friend, Danny Reneau, fired the fatal shot into Keeran's head. (Reneau was
executed in 2002.) Nonetheless, according to the state, Wood is
responsible for Keeran's death and should be executed. Wood was convicted
under the state's law of parties, a conspirator liability statute that
posits that if 2 or more people plan to commit one crime but another crime
occurs, each person is equally responsible for that crime, if it was
foreseeable. The state argues that Wood hatched with Reneau the plan to
rob the Texaco, where their friend Keeran worked, on Jan. 2, when a large
amount of cash would still be on hand because of holiday bank closures.
That Wood was neither in the store when the killing began nor fired the
fatal shot did not mean he was not equally liable for Keeran's murder, the
prosecution argued.
But Wood's lawyers, Scott Sullivan and Jared Tyler (with the Texas
Defender Service), argue that Wood did not plan to rob the store and, in
fact, had no idea Reneau planned to do so nor, they say, did Wood know
Reneau was carrying a gun. Indeed, it isn't clear that Wood had any idea
what Reneau would do, although it does appear Wood was privy to a plan
hatched by Reneau and Texaco store manager Bill Bunker to lift the
post-holiday cash. Wood's sister, Terri Been, says that Keeran initially
was in on the plan, but ultimately, she says, Wood and Keeran pulled out,
followed by Bunker. As far as Wood knew, she says, the previous talk of a
robbery was moot. "Mr. Wood undeniably shares responsibility for what
happened to Mr. Keeran, and should be held accountable for his reckless
acts, but no man ever deserves to die for another man's acts," Wood's
attorneys wrote in his petition to the board, filed last week.
At Reneau's trial, the state argued that he was responsible for Keeran's
murder and portrayed Wood as little more than a sap, steamrolled by the
villainous Reneau. But at Wood's trial, prosecutors reversed their
strategy, arguing that Wood deserved to die because he'd gotten Reneau to
"do his dirty work." But the idea of Wood as "mastermind" baffles attorney
Sullivan, who has represented Wood since 1998. "I've watched Jeff for …
9 years," he says. "This guy, his mental capacities are not sufficient to
make him a mastermind." Wood was diagnosed with learning disabilities as a
child, and school officials consistently categorized him as emotionally
stunted. He always sought approval for his actions and, adds his family,
was easily influenced by others. He was initially found incompetent to
stand trial because he was incapable of helping his defenders. At the
punishment phase of his trial, Wood tried to fire his attorneys, a request
denied by the judge. Nonetheless, his trial attorneys followed Wood's
orders: Not only did they withhold from the jury evidence of his troubled
youth, but they also failed to cross-examine any state witnesses,
including the wildly speculative testimony of Dr. James Grigson
derisively known by many, including colleagues in the psychiatric
community, as "Dr. Death" for predictably offering testimony in capital
cases that a defendant would pose a danger to society, one of the
questions a jury must decide in order to impose a death sentence.
In Wood's case, Grigson testified the defendant would pose a continuing
threat to society if sentenced to anything other than death. That was
clear to him, he said, because Wood was a manipulative person who failed
to wear a disguise during the Texaco robbery. "You have an individual that
is a user or manipulator of other people, and I'm thinking particularly in
terms of where you're planning the robbery for two weeks," he testified,
responding to a "hypothetical" robbery-murder presented by prosecutors
that mirrored closely most of the facts of the Keeran killing. "Surely,
you would have thought in terms of using a mask or a disguise where you
wouldn't have to kill somebody, so this was a deliberate and intentional
act in terms of the clerk that was going to be killed." (Wood's attorneys
assert in the clemency petition that Grigson should not have been allowed
to testify, in part because of his 1995 ouster from the American
Psychiatric Association and Texas Society of Psychiatric Physicians for
"flagrant ethical violations" a fact the jury did not know because
neither of Wood's attorneys conducted any cross-examination.)
Sullivan and Tyler argue now that executing Wood for a murder he did not
commit would undermine Texas' entire death penalty scheme. The U.S.
Supreme Court, they note, has said, "When the law punishes by death, it
risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the
constitutional commitment to decency and restraint." If Wood is executed,
they write, "that risk will have come to fruition, and we all will have
taken a descent into brutality unworthy of the State of Texas."
The Board of Pardons and Paroles can vote either to recommend or deny
clemency for Wood. If they vote to commute Wood's sentence to life in
prison, Gov. Rick Perry has the power to accept or deny the
recommendation.
(source: Austin Chronicle)
**************
Death and TexasGovernor Rick Perry and his state's flawed judicial system
are now executing convicts for crimes they did not commit
Texans – or at least governor Rick Perry and his supporters – seem to love
the death penalty almost as much as flying the state flag. And last week,
the good ol' Texan bloodlust came under international scrutiny once again
when the state put to death a man born in Mexico, where capital punishment
is prohibited.
During the trial of death row inmate Jos Ernesto Medelln, he was not given
the opportunity to seek legal help from Mexican consulates, a right
granted under the 1963 Vienna Convention. Appeals from all over the world
– including one from the UN's International Court of Justice and another
from President Bush himself – pointed out the discrepancy and asked the
state to delay the execution till Medelln's case could be further
reviewed. But Perry refused to put on the brakes, and Medelln died of a
lethal injection on August 6.
"Texans are doing just fine governing Texas," Perry said last year in
response to the European Union's request that he reconsider another death
row case involving a young man who had never been accused of directly
participating in the murder to which he was linked. Given Perry's
audacity, perhaps it's no surprise he has single-handedly overseen more
executions than any other governor in the country since the death penalty
was reinstated in 1976. He also vetoed a ban on the execution of mentally
handicapped inmates in 2002. And since 1976, Texas has carried out more
executions than any other state: 409 – more than 4 times as many as
Virginia, its nearest competitor, with 99.
At the same time, it's not that difficult to understand why Perry might
not have been terribly sympathetic to Medelln: There seems to be no
question that the Mexican took part in the raping and killing of two
teenage girls in 1993 as part of a gang initiation rite. But the story of
a young man named Jeff Wood, set to be put to death on August 21, more
poignantly highlights the injustices of the Texan judicial system.
Despite the fact that the death penalty is supposedly reserved for only
the most heinous crimes, Wood is sentenced to death for a murder that
prosecutors have never accused him of committing – one that took place
when he wasn't even in the same building. Rather, he was outside in a gas
station parking lot, waiting in a pick-up truck for his buddy, Daniel
Reneau, to come out of a road-side store with drinks and snacks. Wood
contends that he didn't know Reneau was planning to rob the store – a
frequent hang-out spot for the 2 of them – and that he also had no idea
Reneau was going to murder the store clerk, Kris Keeran, a friend of both
men.
But after hearing a shot ring out on the morning of January 2, 1996, Wood
ran inside and saw Keeran laying dead from a single .22-calibre bullet
that entered between his eye and his nose. Reneau was holding the gun,
which he then turned on Wood, ordering him to grab the store's
surveillance video. Wood – who suffers from learning disabilities and
mental problems as a result of severe physical abuse during his childhood
– complied. Reneau took the store's safe, and the two of them fled to
Wood's brother house.
Wood and Reneau had talked with the manager of the store about robbing the
place on New Year's Day, when the register would be full of money from the
night before. But after Wood backed out, he assumed, since he heard no
more about it, that the robbery plan was kaput. Instead, Reneau decided to
go through with it on his own. Wood contends he had no idea Reneau was
even packing a gun at the time of the robbery.
Reneau was executed for the murder in 2002. But thanks to the Texas "Law
of Parties", anyone who conspires with another person or a group to commit
one crime (like robbery) and happens to commit another crime in the
process (like murder) can be found guilty of the secondary crime – even if
the individual in question wasn't directly involved in planning it or
carrying it out. And when the secondary crime is murder, that person can
also be put to death for it. That's the state's justification for why Wood
is on death row – except, of course, that Wood claims he wasn't involved
in planning the robbery and that he would never have helped Reneau try to
get away with it if Reneau hadn't trained a gun on him. As such, there's
been a huge public outcry in support of Wood; the 2nd of 2 rallies this
month to draw attention to his plight will take place on Saturday, August
16.
Wood's situation is similar to another recent case in Texas, that of
Kenneth Foster – the one that drew the attention of the European Union.
Like Wood, Foster did not participate in the actual murder he was
sentenced to die for. Like Wood, Foster did not hold a gun at any point
while the crime he was linked to was committed. Like Wood, Foster has
maintained convincingly – that he had no foreknowledge the murder was
going to happen. Like Wood, Foster was forced to drive the "get-away" car.
Following demands from around the world that Texas review the Foster case,
the Texas board of pardons and paroles recommended that his sentence be
commuted – a rare occurrence. Even more unusually, Governor Perry actually
took the board's advice and, three hours before Foster's execution was set
to happen, stopped it: the first time in nearly seven years in office that
he had done so (excluding cases in which Supreme Court rulings had barred
the execution of juveniles and the mentally disabled).
Will Perry commute the sentence this time, for Wood, like he did for
Foster? The cases are so similar that there seems to be hope that he will.
Then again, when announcing his decision in the Foster case, Perry didn't
mention how problematic the Law of Parties is; instead, he cited a
procedural flaw. (Foster was tried simultaneously with the guy convicted
of the actual murder; that's what Perry referred to after commuting his
sentence.) So who knows.
But maybe Perry and the state of Texas should finally start to think about
how unconstitutional it is to execute someone based on the Law of Parties.
After all, in their 1982 ruling in the case of Enmund v Florida, the
Supreme Court found it was unconstitutional to execute the driver of a
get-away car in an armed robbery. The court's rationale was that the
eighth amendment forbids imposing capital punishment on someone "who aids
and abets a felony in the course of which a murder is committed by others
but who does not himself kill, attempt to kill, or intend that a killing
take place or that lethal force will be employed". Why can't Texas see
that by using the "Law of Parties" as a justification for execution, they
are not just aiding and abetting but planning and carrying out
pre-meditated murders which should not be occurring – and contributing to
a cycle of violence and injustice?
(source: The Guardian)