Obit Magazine on the Texas Death Penalty

"An old adage promises that the only definite things in life are death and taxes. Wrongdoers in the Lone Star state may read that differently: The only thing guaranteed in this life is 'death in Texas.'”

That's the opening of a July 13 article that appeared in Obit, an online magazine that examines life through the lends of death. The article goes on to address recent trends in Texas, particularly with regard to new death sentences. It also features the observations of Jim Willett, the director of the Texas Prison Museum and retired prison official, who noted that the museum receives visitors from all over the world:

“'They’re not so much against the death penalty, although some certainly are, but they’re curious about it all. They just don’t have it where they come from,'” he said.

Willett says it’s not wrong to say that Texans like the death penalty, but that’s not a complete picture of his state.

'We do carry out with the threat,' he says, 'but we’re probably some of the most friendly people in the world.'"
***
Obit soon will publish an article featuring former death house chaplain Reverend Carroll Pickett, so stay tuned!

death penalty news----TEXAS

June 29

TEXAS:

Death row inmate's bid for release delayed

A Harris County judge wants to hear testimony from a forensic expert
before deciding whether new DNA evidence is favorable to death row inmate
Charles D. Raby, condemned in the 1994 murder of an elderly woman.

Rabys conviction is receiving new scrutiny because DNA tests contradict
evidence from the Houston Police Department crime lab in his case. His
lawyer is seeking his release or a new trial.

This morning, state District Judge Joan Campbell delayed closing arguments
in an evidentiary hearing on the DNA evidence to allow testimony from the
city's expert, Patricia Hamby. She has called the original testimony and
lab work by HPD analyst Joseph Chu "incorrect and not supported."

Hamby, who is based in Indiana, is expected to testify sometime next
month. After her appearance, Campbell will decide whether the new evidence
is favorable to Raby's case, a decision that could provide an opening for
his attorney to seek his release or a new trial.

A Harris County jury sentenced Raby to death in the 1994 murder of Edna M.
Franklin, 72, a grandmother who lived alone in her north Houston home.

At Raby's trial, jurors heard testimony from HPD crime lab analyst Chu,
who told them that tests conducted on scrapings from under Franklin's
fingernails were inconclusive.

Years later, as revelations about chronic problems at the HPD crime lab
came to light, Raby's case received a 2nd look.

Campbell ordered DNA tests on the finger nail scrapings, in which analysts
at a California lab found no evidence from Raby. The tests also excluded
the victim's 2 grandsons, the only people she regularly had contact with,
as the sources of the scrapings.

The Harris County District Attorney's office has maintained that the new
evidence is inconclusive and does not clear Raby.

(source: Houston Chronicle)

****************************************

Stop The Texas Execution Of Texas David L. Wood----Target:Governor Rick
Perry, Taxpayers of Texas, People Worldwide----Sponsored by: Dee Hawk, The
Abolishment Movement

This petition is to ask for a stay of execution or clemency for Texas
death row inmate David L. Wood who is scheduled to be executed by the
state of Texas on August 20, 2009.

Although the crimes Wood was arrested, convicted and sentenced to die for
are serious, and we sympahize with the family and friends of the victims,
we feel that Wood has major claims of innocence in these crimes.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/3/stop-the-texas-execution-of-texas-david-l-wood

(source: Thepetitionsite.com)

death penalty news-----TEXAS

June 28

TEXAS:

HPD crime lab back in the spotlight----Death row inmate insists DNA clears
him, but DA disagrees

A death row inmate from Houston, whose conviction is receiving new
scrutiny after DNA tests contradicted evidence in his case, will return to
court next week where his lawyer will seek his release or a new trial.

A Harris County jury sentenced Charles D. Raby to death in the 1994 murder
of a 72-year-old woman assaulted and stabbed in her own home. It is a case
that once again highlights errors in work from the Houston Police
Department crime lab, with the city's own expert calling the original
testimony "incorrect and not supported."

State District Judge Joan Campbell on Monday is scheduled to resume a
hearing that began in January when Raby's lawyer presented new DNA tests
on scrapings from the victims fingernails, which include no evidence from
Raby. Since then, his case has stalled as prosecutors and the Houston
Police Department sought expert opinions.

Raby's lawyer, Sarah Frazier, goes so far as to call the crime lab
evidence presented at trial false and claimed prosecutors failed to
disclose information about the forensic tests that could have helped Raby
before his 1994 trial.

"Trying to pretend that Mr. Raby's trial was at all legitimate is becoming
more and more strained," Frazier said. "He clearly is entitled to a new
trial after all this time."

The Harris County District Attorneys office has maintained that the new
fingernail evidence is inconclusive and does not clear Raby. Prosecutors
on the case were unavailable Friday and a spokeswoman for the district
attorneys office declined comment.

In January, Assistant District Attorney Lynn Hardaway said the new
evidence should not affect Raby's conviction because "the absence of DNA
doesn't mean he didn't do it."

Case got 2nd look

Police arrested Raby in the 1994 stabbing death of Edna M. Franklin, a
grandmother who lived alone in her north Houston home.

At Rabys trial, jurors heard testimony from HPD crime lab analyst Joseph
Chu, who told them that tests conducted on scrapings from under Franklins
fingernails were inconclusive.

Years later, as revelations about chronic problems at the HPD crime lab
came to light, Raby's case received a 2nd look.

Experts questioned Chus conclusions. Patricia Hamby, an expert hired by
HPD, found that Chu had strayed from accepted procedures for body-fluid
testing and had drawn faulty conclusions.

"The reporting of the blood typing of the 'fingernails' as 'inconclusive'
is contrary to and not supported by the recorded laboratory results,"
Hamby wrote in a report last month to Irma Rios, HPD's crime lab director.

In 2005, the Court of Criminal Appealsapproved DNA testing on the
fingernail scrapings. A private lab in California last year completed
analyses that revealed the profiles of 2 men. They matched neither Raby
nor Franklin's 2 grandsons.

"The grandsons' exclusion is significant because these were the only
individuals who had regular contact with the victim a frail, malnourished
woman in her 70s who rarely left her home or entertained strangers,"
Frazier wrote.

In fact, a forensic expert hired by Raby's lawyers testified in January
that it is rare to find foreign DNA under a crime victim's fingernails,
and that if often can be traced to the person's partner or attacker.

"In their wildest dreams (prosecutors) could not imagine a scenario where
there wasn't somebody else involved," Frazier suggested. "I would love to
see, not just a new trial, but let's have a new investigation. Let's find
out who it is."

At his trial, prosecutors also presented evidence on Rabys background.
They argued that he was a 22-year-old parolee with a violent history who
had been taken in by Franklin at her grandsons request, but who had turned
on her when she told him he no longer was welcome.

They also introduced a confession, which Raby and his lawyer now say was
coerced. They note inconsistencies between the facts of the crime and his
statement. Those discrepancies also caught the attention of the Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals, which in a 2005 opinion wrote "in his statement
(Raby) did not say he stabbed the victim. In some aspects (his) statement
contradicts the testimony of police officers about the physical evidence
from the crime scene."

Raby, now 39, is imprisoned in Livingston.

Still baby-faced after 15 years on death row, he said he knew Franklin's
house because he befriended her grandsons, once spending Thanksgiving with
the family. He said he confessed because officers threatened his
girlfriend and their son.

"I started making things up and they were coaching me,' he said. "I said
what they wanted me to."

(source: Houston Chronicle)

death penalty news----TEXAS

June 26

TEXAS:

Prosecutors consider death penalty for man accused of killing a Tulia
woman ---- Warrant issued to man who drove into Lubbock home

According to the Amarillo Globe News, prosecutors consider seeking the
death penalty against a man accused of killing a Tulia woman in November.

Roger Duran, 41, was indicted January 22, by a Swisher County grand jury
on a capital murder charge. He is accused of killing Valerie Cross at her
Tulia home.

Swisher County's DA said Duran will be represented by the public
defender's office out of Lubbock. No trial date has been set.

(source: KCBD News)

****************

ON FILM: Death House Door puts penalty on trial----By Philip Martin

Watching At the Death House Door (Facets, $29.95), a 2008 documentary by
Peter Gilbert and Steve James (best known for Hoop Dreams) released this
week on DVD, I was reminded of the story of Albert Pierrepoint.

Pierrepoint - portrayed by Timothy Spall in the 2005 film The Last Hangman
(also known as Pierrepoint) - served as the United Kingdom's official
hangman from 1932 to 1956 and presided at the executions of more than 400
people (including some 200 Nazi war criminals hanged after World War II).

By all accounts, he was extremely precise and methodical, a true
professional who dispatched his "clients" with as little ado as possible.
He was a mercifully swift worker - rarely did more than 30 seconds elapse
between the condemned's arrival on his gallows and execution. (Having done
some work for the U.S. Army during World War II, he hated the way the
Americans dithered around for 6 or 7 minutes reading lengthy charges while
the condemned waited on the trap door.)

Dealing in officially sanctioned homicide gave Pierrepoint a unique
perspective on capital punishment. In the end, he became if not an
abolitionist at least convinced that the policy had no deterrent effect.

"I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing," he wrote in
his autobiography, "and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire
for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for
revenge to other people."

Pierrepoint's opinion is unlikely to change the minds of
capital-punishment advocates - the issue is an emotional one, highly
resistant to any evidence and all testimony. It may take something more
dramatic than cold numbers to change anyone's mind about whether the state
should have the power of life and death over its citizens.

At the Death House Door starts out as a cinematic portrait of the Rev.
Carroll Pickett, a Presbyterian minister whose views on capital punishment
were shaped by a "hang 'em high" father, the absence of his murdered
grandfather and, years before he worked at the prison, the killing of 2 of
his parishioners - civilian library workers - during a 1974 prison siege.
Pickett, once described by a Texas newspaper as "27 degrees right of Rush
Limbaugh," thought the death penalty was appropriate and effective.

During his 16 years as prison chaplain of the Texas State Penitentiary at
Huntsville, Pickett witnessed 95 executions by lethal injection. Like
Pierrepoint, he was changed by his experience from capital punishment
advocate to opponent.

From the beginning, Pickett was deeply affected by his duties, which
required him to provide solace and counsel while at the same time
pacifying the condemned so they wouldn't struggle at the end. When Gilbert
and James interviewed Pickett, they discovered he had recorded his private
thoughts, impressions, doubts and misgivings (there were at least 15
instances where Pickett believed the condemned prisoner was innocent of
the crime for which he died) immediately after each execution and archived
them on audio cassette tapes. They naturally concluded they had uncovered
a rich vein of material.

But we don't really hear much of the tapes, as the focus shifts to the
possible wrongful execution of 27-year-old Carlos De Luna in 1989. Pickett
was convinced that De Luna was innocent - and, in 2006, Chicago Tribune
reporters Steve Mills and Maurice Possley wrote a 3-part series that
strongly suggested De Luna was the victim of mistaken identity and a
prosecutorial rush to justice.

Gilbert and James had originally set out to document Mills' and Possley's
work on De Luna and only became aware of Pickett pursuant to that thread.
So the shift between the 2 threads - from Pickett to De Luna's family,
from a psychological portrait of amoral evolution to an expose of
governmental misconduct - feels a little disconcerting.

Yet if from a filmmaking standpoint the transposition is less than ideal,
it makes great sense from a journalist's perspective. When he retired from
the prison system in 1995, Pickett announced that capital punishment was
"biblically wrong," which was the official position of the Presbyterian
Church. He said he had kept his opinion to himself for fear of
jeopardizing his job - and forfeiting his chance to minister to the
condemned.

Since his retirement, Pickett has become a vocal capital-punishment
abolitionist, and as such he is suspect in the eyes of some advocates. But
he has seen up close what executions look like. He's convinced the death
penalty is no deterrent and in fact, contributes to a cycle of violence:
There were 58 prisoners on death row when Texas resumed executions in
1982; now there are more than 400.

(source: Arkansas Online)