December 7 marks the 25th anniversary of Texas' execution of Charlie Brooks -- the first lethal injection execution in America. The Star-Telegram has extensive coverage beginning with John Moritz' lengthy, murst-read report, "Texas reaches milestone: 25 years, 405 executions." Here's the beginning:
No prison warden in America has ordered more executions than Jim Willett. And perhaps no warden anywhere has searched deeper into his soul in wondering if he was doing right by the state, right by the inmate, right by the crime victim and right by his God.
"An overwhelming feeling comes over you as you give the signal to take a perfectly healthy human being and cause his death," said Willett, who ran the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Walls Unit in Huntsville from 1998 until he retired in 2001. "You can't help but wonder whether what you're doing is right."
The former warden's reflections come as Texas prepares to mark this week's 25th anniversary of the resumption of the death penalty. And they come during a rare lull in the pace of executions in Huntsville as the U.S. Supreme Court once again weighs the question of whether the execution process passes constitutional muster.
Willett, a 30-year corrections professional who now runs the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, presided over 89 of the 405 Texas executions that have been carried out by lethal injection since Dec. 7, 1982, at one of the oldest and most foreboding lockups in the nation. He'll mark the anniversary Friday with a symposium and panel discussion at the museum involving former prison officials, advocates both for and against the death penalty, and a journalist who has witnessed nearly all the executions carried out in the United States' most active death chamber.
Willett's time at the Walls, which ended in May 2001, was the busiest three-year period in the state's modern application of the death penalty. He arrived shortly after the Feb. 3, 1998, execution of pickax killer turned born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker and remained on the job through the politically turbulent times when then-Gov. George W. Bush was in hot pursuit of the presidency.
That year, 2000, saw the high-water mark in executions when 40 inmates went to their deaths at the Walls.
The coverage continues with columnist Bob Ray Sanders', "The first to die by injection."
I've always been amazed by the fascination of the press and the public with a condemned man's last meal.
Even 25 years ago, as Texas resumed executions after an 18-year hiatus, two of the most-asked questions were: What was the menu for the last supper, and what were his last words?
For the record, Charles "Charlie" Brooks Jr. of Fort Worth, the first man executed by lethal injection in the country, ordered a T-bone steak, french fries, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, biscuits, peach cobbler and iced tea.
Now, 25 years later, the nation's highest court is focused on the "recipe" used to kill Brooks and more than 900 others in the United States since then: the "cocktail" of three drugs administered in what initially was hailed as a more humane way of killing people.
As the Supreme Court decides whether the drug combination used by 36 states for execution is cruel and unusual, there is a de facto moratorium on the death penalty in Texas and the rest of the country.
Sadly, it comes much too late for Brooks and the 404 others who followed him to Texas' death chamber, all succumbing to the state's insatiable appetite for revenge rather than justice.
And this:
Needless to say, as a lifelong opponent of capital punishment, I was always against Brooks or anyone else being put to death by the state. But there was also a personal attachment, as I felt a kinship to this man and his codefendant in the case, Woodie Loudres.
Both were older than I, but they had gone to the same elementary and high schools I attended. I knew their families, and Loudres' younger brother was in my class at Riverside Elementary School.
It was hard for the people in the Riverside community to believe that Brooks in particular could have gotten so off track that he would be involved in a most senseless crime, but there is no doubt that he was.
There is doubt, however, about whether he actually committed the murder -- and that's why his case still bothers so many legal experts, including the Tarrant County prosecutor who tried him and argued for his execution.
To summarize the facts of the crime: On Dec. 14, 1976, Brooks, Loudres and a prostitute who lived with Loudres decided to go shoplifting after drinking and using drugs. The car in which they were riding -- one that the prostitute had secured after giving "favors" to a used-car dealer -- vapor-locked.
According to testimony, when they couldn't get the car started, they left it at an East Lancaster Avenue service station, and Brooks walked to a nearby used-car lot, supposedly to "test-drive" a vehicle. The car company's policy was that in the case of walk-in business, an employee would have to accompany anyone test-driving a car.
David Gregory, a repairman at the dealership, was told to go with Brooks, who drove him to the site of the broken-down car where Loudres and the prostitute were waiting. The three then took Gregory to the motel where Loudres lived, and there Gregory was bound to a chair, gagged and shot once in the head.
To this day, I still mourn for the victim. I also still wonder who actually shot him -- a point that should give even defenders of the death penalty pause for thought.
Although both male defendants -- the prostitute was not charged in the killing -- were involved with Gregory's kidnapping and the auto theft, only one of them killed him. Some people think it was Loudres.
Tried separately, Brooks and Loudres were convicted in 1977 and 1978, respectively, and given death sentences. Loudres' case later would be overturned on jury-selection grounds, and prosecutors accepted a plea bargain on a charge of murder with a deadly weapon, resulting in a sentence of 40 years.
Brooks was executed just after midnight Dec. 7, 1982.
Jack Strickland was the lead prosecutor in that case, and from all accounts, he did an excellent job. It was so good, in fact, that Brooks' appeals were fairly quickly disposed of by appellate courts, and the Fort Worth's man's execution was placed ahead of those of 57 others who had been on Death Row longer than he.
"It may well be, as horrible as it is to contemplate, that the state of Texas executed the wrong man at 12:09 a.m. last night," Strickland told a national television audience on ABC's Good Morning America just hours after Brooks' death.
Last week, Strickland said, "We never did know who did it."
There is also and Editorial, "The long green mile of the death penalty."
Writing in the 1958 case of Trop v. Dulles, Chief Justice Earl Warren examined the notion that a punishment disproportionate to the crime would be "cruel and unusual." The case involved an Army private who had been stripped of his U.S. citizenship after being court-martialed for wartime desertion, but Warren swept the most severe penalty into the discussion.
"The basic concept underlying the Eighth Amendment is nothing less than the dignity of man. While the State has the power to punish, the Amendment stands to assure that this power be exercised within the limits of civilized standards," Warren wrote.
"The Amendment," he said, "must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."
The "evolving standards of decency" test, as applied to the death penalty, infuriates those such as Justice Antonin Scalia who believe the Constitution means what it meant when it was written, when some punishments were acceptable that no longer are.
But the concept of "cruel and unusual punishments" is so broad that the court has spent decades trying to define what it encompasses.
The justices have ruled that states can't impose the death penalty for rape of an adult woman who isn't killed (1977); for insane defendants (1986); for defendants who were juveniles at the time of the crime (1988, 2005); and for mentally retarded defendants (2002).
The court has sent cases back to Texas because of mistakes in jury selection or to refine procedures that didn't allow jurors to fully consider evidence that might warrant a life prison sentence instead of death.
Although the Supreme Court has narrowed the application of capital punishment, a majority of justices never has declared it flatly unconstitutional.
Concluding with:
Despite undeniable popular support for capital punishment, enough doubts surround its basic fairness that Texas should conduct a full re-evaluation of who is subjected to it, what circumstances warrant it and how it's delivered. And the current hiatus offers the opportunity.
Texas had no problem taking the lead on execution by lethal injection 25 years ago. If Texas wants to continue using a punishment from which there's no return, this state should lead the way in repairing the glaring flaws in its administration.
There is a sidebar, "Questions, answers about the death penalty," and the video, "An Executioner's View," with retired Warden Jim Willett.
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