“The execution might have weighed in terms of their thinking”, says expert.

U.S., Mexico at crossroads 
Editorial Board 

AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN 

Saturday, August 31, 2002 

This was the week Mexican President Vicente Fox was supposed to visit Austin and other Texas cities, and meet with President Bush at his Crawford ranch and Gov. Rick Perry at the Governor’s Mansion. But Fox abruptly called off his trip after Texas executed convicted killer Javier Suarez Medina, one of Fox’s countrymen. Fox had asked that Medina’s sentence be commuted to life in prison because Medina had not been afforded his right to contact the Mexican consulate for help following his arrest, as ordered in a 1963 treaty. Mexico has no death penalty. 


When Perry traveled to Mexico this week to woo delegates of the Pan American Games on behalf of San Antonio, he was besieged with questions from reporters about the morality of Texas’ death penalty and whether it discriminates against minorities who are disproportionately represented on death row. There are 17 Mexicans on death row. 

American-Statesman editorial writer Alberta Phillips spoke to University of Texas professor Peter Ward regarding the cooling relations between Texas and Mexico. Ward holds the C.B. Smith Sr. Centennial Chair in U.S.-Mexico Relations and is director of UT’s Mexican Center at the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies. The following are excerpts: 

American-Statesman: Texas has executed citizens of Mexico in the past. Why did this execution stir so much furor in Mexico? 

Peter Ward: This time there were real problems tied to the arrest and the lack of access to consular representation in 1989, when the murder took place. 

Also, President Fox was due to visit some 10 days (after the execution) and he personally sought to intervene. Mexico felt that there was sufficient wiggle room for Perry to grant a 30-day stay — had he wished. Once his overtures and the diplomatic scrambling had been ignored, Fox could hardly just say, “OK, no matter, I’ll see you in a fortnight.” 

I don’t think people in Texas really realized how close to the surface feelings were (in Mexico regarding Suarez’s execution), how this really would have been a problem. 

This is the second trip Fox has canceled this summer. He was supposed to come in June, but bowed out over the dispute regarding water rights between Mexico and South Texas farmers. How will relations between Mexico and Texas be affected by those events? 

They will continue to cool. President Fox was able to steal the moral high ground (in protesting Suarez’s execution). It was also a way of rapping Texas and the United States across the knuckles for going slow on these bilateral issues so important to Mexico and to Texas. 

There is a growing sense of frustration within Mexico that these issues aren’t being addressed. The slap in the face from Fox toward Texas not only concerned the issue of executing (Suarez) but the frustration on the other issues. 

What are the bilateral issues Fox is pushing that affect Mexico and Texas? 

Immigration is the No. 1 issue, particularly the opportunity and access of Mexican workers to work in the United States. It’s become more problematic since Sept. 11. 

Other issues include border security, controlling the flow of illegal drugs, controlling the border for entry of terrorists, and NAFTA, implementing it in an equitable way. The United States is in breach of NAFTA’s free access of trucks between countries. Prior to Sept. 11, it was about to be dealt with. 

A key thorn in the side of Texas-Mexico relations is also that of water treaties. 

The Suarez execution focused international attention on Texas’ death penalty system at a time when San Antonio was vying for the Pan Am Games. Do you think that had anything to do with San Antonio losing the games to Rio de Janeiro? 

I don’t know. Whether the Mexican officials used their position to throw support behind the Brazilians, I’d rather doubt it. But in terms of the people who voted . . . the execution might have weighed in terms of their thinking. The execution and the cooling of relations didn’t do Texas and San Antonio any good.

Friday, August 2, 2002 
The Dallas Morning News 
======================== 
Execution For Youth Protested 

Lawmaker Asks Officials to Re-examine Death for Juvenile Offenders 

AUSTIN- A Fort Worth lawmaker said on Thursday that 
executing people for crimes they committed as minors 
is “barbaric” and that he will try again to get the 
Legislature to outlaw the practice. 


Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, was joined by Texas 
medical, legal and human rights experts in urging the 
governor, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and 
the judiciary to re-examine the state’s use of the 
death penalty in such cases. 

They timed their news conference at the state Capitol 
to focus on the scheduled execution later this month 
of two such offenders – Toronto Patterson of Dallas 
and T.J. Jones of Longview. 

Toronto Patterson, scheduled to die Aug. 28 for the 
1995 murder of his cousin Kimberly Brewer and her two 
young daughters, Jennifer Brewer and Ollie Jean Brown, 
in Dallas, was 17 at the time of the crime. He had no 
prison record. 

T.J. Jones also was 17 when he robbed and killed 
Willard Lewis Davis, 75, of Longview in 1994, 
according to court records. Mr. Jones is to die 
Thursday. 

Texas has executed 11 of 19 juvenile offenders put to 
death in the United States since 1984 and accounts for 
nearly a third of the 81 juvenile offenders on death 
rows across the nation, Rep. Lon Burnam said. 

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran and 
Pakistan are the only counties outside the United 
States known to have executed juvenile offenders in 
the last three years, he said. 

“Texas stands virtually alone in the world and the 
nation in its continued practice of executing people 
who committed their offenses before age 18,” Rep. Lon 
Burnam said. 

A bill he authored to ban such executions passed the 
House but died in the Senate in 2001. He blamed Gov. 
Rick Perry for killing it. 

Kathy Walt, spokeswoman for the governor, said she 
doesn’t recall whether the governor had opposed the 
measure. She said the governor supports the current 
law, but would give Rep. Lon Burnam’s proposal a 
“serious look” if it passes. 

Governor Perry’s Democratic challenger, Tony Sanchez, 
is opposed to changing the law, according to his 
spokesman, Mark Sanders. 

Rep. Lon Burnam said he and other supporters hope to 
“soften” the hearts of Gov. Rick Perry and other 
opponents on the issue. 

University of Texas law professor Jordan Steiker, who 
joined Rep. Lon Burnam at the news conference, said 
the U.S. Supreme Court is moving in the direction of 
outlawing the execution of persons for crimes 
committed as minors. 

“The writing is plainly on the wall, and Texas should 
act now with leadership, rather than follow,” Jordan 
Steiker said. 

Dr. Mitch Young, president of The Texas Society of 
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, said children are not 
as mature as adults and shouldn’t be treated the same 
by the legal system. 

“The majority of juvenile offenders do not go on to 
offend as adults,” Dr. Mitch Young said. 

Lydia M.V. Brandt 
The Brandt Law Firm, P.C. 
Richardson, Texas 
(972) 699-7020 Voice; (972) 699-7030 Fax 

PRESS RELEASE 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
July 31, 2002 

International Pressure Builds to Halt Controversial Texas Execution 

High-level diplomatic and legal efforts are intensifying to prevent the execution of Javier Suárez Medina, a Mexican national scheduled to die by lethal injection in Texas on August 14th. The case has reignited an international controversy over the widespread failure of US police to inform arrested foreign citizens of their guaranteed right to seek consular assistance, in violation of a binding treaty ratified by the United States over thirty years ago. New evidence recently uncovered with the assistance of the Mexican government has raised widespread concern that Mr. Suárez Medina’s trial and sentence failed to meet minimum standards of fairness and reliability. 

In a letter to Mr. Suárez Medina’s attorneys released today, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights announced that it had formally requested that the United States government “take precautionary measures to preserve Mr. Suárez Medina’s life pending the Commission’s investigation of the allegations in his petition.” 

Established under the authority of the 35-nation Organization of American States (OAS) and based in Washington, D.C., the Commission is responsible for monitoring and enforcing human rights standards throughout the Western Hemisphere. As a full member of the OAS, the United States is expected to comply with the Inter-American Commission’s procedures and rulings, including the issuance of “precautionary measures” required to preserve the basic human rights of petitioners like Mr. Suárez Medina. 

Meanwhile, the Mexican government has sent a diplomatic protest to the State Department, citing the failure of Texas authorities to honor their consular treaty obligations. Mexico’s protest points out that Javier Suárez Medina was sentenced to death after a trial in which his court-appointed attorney failed to develop and present compelling evidence establishing that he merited a lesser sentence. Recent neuropsychological testing sponsored by the Mexican authorities reveal that Mr. Suárez Medina suffers from significant brain impairments, evidence that was never presented to the jury. 

Repeated attempts by Mexican consular officials to assist Javier Suárez Medina following his arrest were frustrated by Texas police, who provided false information regarding his nationality. According to Mexican authorities, 54 Mexican nationals are under sentence of death in the United States, most of whom were never informed of their consular rights at the time of their arrest. 

The Presidency of the European Union has written to the Governor and to the Texas pardons board, expressing concern over the violation of consular rights and calling for clemency. The letter notes that consular assistance in death penalty cases is “essential and may be decisive,” and that the consular treaty also gives US nationals arrested in other countries “ the right to contact the American consulate.” 

Controversy also surrounds the prosecution’s reliance on an alleged prior offense, to convince the jury that Mr. Suárez Medina represented a future danger to society. The prosecution argued that he was responsible for a violent robbery two years earlier. However, investigations since the trial have determined that Mr. Suárez Medina is innocent of that alleged crime and that the jury based its sentencing decision on a mistaken eye witness identification. 

In a recent letter to the Governor of Texas, the American Bar Association objected to this reliance on an unadjudicated crime which Mr. Suárez Medina “was never even charged with committing” and called for the commutation of his death sentence. “We believe carrying out an execution obtained with such unreliable evidence is inconsistent with principles of fundamental fairness and due process,” wrote ABA President Robert E. Hirshon. 

“With each passing day, more new evidence is coming to light that further undermines the fairness of this death sentence,” said Lydia Brandt, the attorney representing Javier Suárez Medina. “If an American citizen abroad faced execution under these conditions, I’m sure the public would demand that our government do everything possible to obtain a just remedy.” 

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: 
Lydia M.V. Brandt, counsel to Javier Suarez Medina 
Richardson, TX 
Tel: (972) 699-7020; Fax: (972) 699-7030 
lydiamb@airmail.net

July e-letter

Texas Moratorium Network
www.texasmoratorium.org

July 22, 2002

Dear Moratorium Supporters,

There is good news since we wrote to you last month. For starters, the Supreme Court banned execution of persons with mental retardation. Our members made progress towards passing a moratorium resolution at the Texas Democratic convention, and have begun an effort to pass a moratorium resolution in the Austin City Council. But there is also bad news. June and July have been busy months for Texas’ death chamber, and execution dates for two juvenile offenders are looming close in August. Please read on for details and actions.

Convention Report:

At the State Democratic Convention in El Paso, the moratorium made significant progress. It was clear that the rank and file of the delegates supported the issue, while the Party leadership actively opposed it, for what they believed were pragmatic reasons. The moratorium resolution once again passed almost without opposition in the Resolutions committee, and its inclusion in the platform itself was narrowly defeated by a 17-11 vote. Voting for resolutions on the floor was cut short by a sudden early adjournment, which led to the rather bizarre scene of angry bikers (who had some resolutions waiting to be heard) assertively confronting the party leadership at the foot of the stage while the media eagerly swarmed around. Our moratorium resolution was one of those that was not heard, so we were upset as well. The resolution may pass when the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDEC) meets in Austin in September. If you would like to contact your SDEC representative (there is one man and one woman for each of the 31 Senate Districts in Texas) you can find their contact information on our website:

http://www.texasmoratorium.org/sdec.php

Court bans execution of persons with mental retardation:

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Atkins v. Virginia made national headlines. It will have a big impact in Texas, where last year Governor Rick Perry vetoed a bill that aimed to ban such executions. Now the legislature will be forced to revisit the issue.

The debate will be this: Perry and other strong supporters of the death penalty claim that Texas does not and never has executed an inmate with mental retardation, and therefore, they say, no change in the law is needed. Existing law requires juries to consider mental retardation as mitigating factor in the punishment phase of a capital trial (that is, after they have decided guilt).

What’s wrong with that argument? First, the facts: Texas has executed at least eight men whose IQs tested below 70. If Texas wants to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling, it needs to mandate that a claim of mental retardation be decided before the guilt phase of a capital trial. A jury upset by accounts a grotesque murder can’t be asked to make a calm, rational decision about the mental capacity of a defendant.

Nothing illustrates this better than the sad outcome of Johnny Penry’s re-sentencing. Penry, who has an IQ in the mid-fifties, and whose case has been to the Supreme Court twice, received another death sentence just weeks after the Supreme Court’s decision. Penry’s sentence is under appeal. We will be following it as well as the legislative developments on this issue.

Execution of juvenile offenders:

Two juvenile offenders are scheduled to be executed next month: T.J. Jones, on Aug 8, and Toronto Patterson, on Aug 28. Jones has waived further appeals. Patterson, however, maintains his innocence. The American Bar Association has established a website documenting the facts of his case and addressing issues related to execution of juvenile offenders. Please have a look

http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/juvjus/patterson.html

The recent attention to mental retardation and the death penalty might offer an opening for making people rethink execution of juvenile offenders. Most death penalty supporters think executions are necessary for punishing the worst of the worst. But are murders who have lesser capacities for moral judgement–either because of mental retardation or being 17 at the time of their offenses–really the worst of the worst?

We think this is a good point to raise in communications to the governor, legislators, the Board of Pardons and Paroles, and in letters to local editors.

Austin City Council Resolution

TMN is asking Austin City Council Member Danny Thomas to sponsor a resolution supporting a moratorium. Thomas is a Baptist preacher who is Administrative Pastor at Eph’phatha Full Gospel Baptist Church Ministries and 21-year former Austin police officer. Austin residents, please tell Thomas you would like to see him sponsor a moratorium resolution. He can be reached at the following addresses:

Austin City Council

Danny Thomas, Council Member Place 6
Danny.Thomas@ci.austin.tx.us
Phone: (512) 974-2266
Fax: (512) 974-1890

Physical Address:
Municipal Building
124 West 8th Street, #115
Austin, TX 78701

Mailing Address:
PO Box 1088
Austin TX, 78767

Death Row Database

TMN is developing a searchable database of Texas Death Row, to be avalibale on our website (http://www.texasmoratorium.org). We would like your input on the database before we announce its availability to the media. Try it out and let us know if it is useful or if you have any suggestions for other information to include. After we receive your feedback, we will tell the media that they can use it as a resource. The information on the official TDCJ site is not searchable, but you can search our database by such parameters as race, county, gender, etc. To find juvenile offenders, set “age at offense” to 17. And don’t forget to sign our petition:

http://www.texasmoratorium.org/petition.php

Final points:

Just this last week we have been disappointed to see Gubernatorial Candidate Tony Sanchez emphasize “enforcement of the death penalty” in his latest campaign commercial. In the past, Sanchez has expressed concerns about the fairness of Texas’ death penalty system, but his spokesman says that the recent ad signals his opposition to a moratorium.

Wouldn’t it be more appropriate for Sanchez to emphasize fairness in the criminal justice system instead of just promising more executions? We urge you to tell him so. His offices can be reached at 512-615-1300 or http://www.info@tonysanchez.com.

In the coming months, Jeanette Popp, mother of murder victim Nancy De Priest, and Chair of Texas Moratorium Network, will be making a speaking tour of Texas. Jeanette is a powerful speaker and her story has made many people rethink their support for the death penalty. Please contact TMN if you would like to help arrange for Jeanette to come to your community.

Finally, save the date: The Third Annual March for a Moratorium will take place on Saturday, October 12, in Austin, Texas. Details will be posted to our website http://www.texasmoratorium.org.

If you would like to make a financial contribution to defray the cost of Jeanette’s travel, or expenses associated with the march, please send a check to

Texas Moratorium Network
14804 Moonseed Cove
Austin, Texas, 78728.

Thank you for your continuing support.

With best wishes,

Texas Moratorium Network

The Australian Magazine, July 20, 2002

A former Texas prison chaplain turns his macabre experience toward the common good. 

Carroll Pickett stood alongside each of 95 inmates as a lethal injection slowed his heart rate and the state of Texas executed another prisoner. He was the prison chaplain in Huntsville, Texas, for 15 years, and he grieved for each and every doomed man.

He had a habit of resting one hand lightly on the ankle of the condemned prisoner as he lay waiting to die, with family members and the media watching behind glass only metres away.

Pickett became chaplain at The Walls, Huntsville’s maximum-security prison, in 1980, 2 years before the state lifted an 18-year moratorium on the death penalty and put the 1st man to death by lethal injection, rather than the older, less humane method of the electric chair. The affable Presbyterian minister had built up 3 small-town parishes in rural Texas and was unaware of the state prison’s death chamber before moving to Huntsville.

“Somehow I don’t think it was God’s intention that I remain a country minister all my life,” he says. “Maybe somebody knew I’d be needed at the prison in 1982, and that’s how I came to be there when the state started executing people again.”

From the beginning, he was told by the prison warden that he was to play a vital role in the executions: “Spend the day with the prisoner before the execution, talk to him, listen to him and – above all – seduce his emotions so he won’t fight.” Pickett decided to do more; he wanted to be present as a friend for the convicted man’s last day on Earth. Although opposed to capital punishment, the Presbyterian Church gave tacit support to the minister’s role in the death house over the years.

In the days leading to the 1st execution, Pickett was plagued with questions of how he could be party to such a barbaric and un-Christian act. “I strongly believed a person’s need for comfort was no greater than when he is forced to deal with the realities of death,” he writes. Finally, he resolved that no-one, not even a hardened criminal about to be executed, should be made to face death alone. “I made up my mind I would do more than seduce the condemned man’s mind, I would minister as best I could.”

Five years after retiring, the 69-year-old has crystallised his thoughts and nightmares about the death chamber in a recently published book, Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain, written with another Texan author, Carlton Stowers.

The execution routine became a macabre pattern in Pickett’s life. The chaplain would meet the inmate on death row at 6am on the day before the execution, which was scheduled for one minute past midnight. He never read the prisoner’s charge sheet before meeting him: “I was convinced that if I was to counsel and befriend him over the next 18 hours, I could best do so with as clean a slate as possible.” Throughout that final day, the chaplain would be on hand to talk about anything with the convict. He would offerprayers or hymns, write letters, and meet members of his family who would come to say goodbye and sometimes watch the execution.

“This was the hardest part of all, because here was another set of victims and nobody wanted to hear from them,” Pickett says. “Maybe the guy did commit the crime, but his mother didn’t do it and his 4 brothers didn’t do it.”

No single death prompted him to finally leave the job; it was a series of executions that led him to believe the state was killing people who were mentally retarded. Despite assurances from the governor’s office and the White House that no-one who was mentally unfit would be put to death, Pickett maintains some inmates never knew what was happening to them. When Johnny Paul Penry arrived in the death house with colouring books and crayons, Pickett knew the man couldn’t understand the state was going to kill him in a matter of hours. Soon after came the execution of Carlos de Luna, another man with a similarly low level of intelligence. Pickett spent the days afterwards wracked with a guilt he had never known, believing he had failed the inmate in his final hours. His anxiety increased after the execution of Leonel Herrera, the 1st 
man on death row Pickett seriously considered might have been innocent. “There are times, generally in the wee hours of my own restless nights, when the voices of the Leonel Herreras whom I’ve met still visit me, crying out their innocence. And I am doomed to forever wonder,” he writes.After five years trying to ignore the awful memories of the death chamber, Pickett has found a new calling as a vocal member of the anti-capital punishment lobby. “I want to talk about it now,” he says. “As so many inmates would say to me, `How can Texas kill people who kill people, to show people that killing people is wrong?'”

Years at the coalface have led Pickett to believe that the death penalty does nothing to deter would-be criminals. He is concerned that the burgeoning Texan prison system is actually serving to increase the number of people who are put behind bars. “We started out with 22,000 inmates in the 1980s and now there are 160,000. There’s a lot of people in there who don’t need to be. I think we’re executing innocent people.”