Nineteen bills have been filed so far in the Texas Legislature in 2009 that relate directly with capital punishment.

If you want to see a list of bills filed dealing with capital punishment, click here.

The newest ones on the list include HB 913 to create a commission to study capital punishment in Texas and to enact a moratorium on executions, filed by Rep Harold Dutton; another bill (HB 938) by Dutton would require electronic recordings of confessions in capital cases obtained as a result of custodial interrogations.

A New Mexico newspaper is reporting that the mother of a person executed in Texas testified in favor of abolishing the death penalty to a New Mexico legislative committee that then voted in favor of an abolition bill for the ninth straight session.

With shaking hands and a quivering voice, a Las Vegas, N.M., woman whose son was executed by the state of Texas asked the New Mexico House of Representatives on Thursday to end capital punishment in this state.

Though committee members’ minds probably were made up before Muina Arthur made her emotional plea, the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee voted 5-2 to give a do-pass recommendation to House Bill 285, which would abolish the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without possibility of parole.

“I am the survivor of a murder victim,” Arthur told the panel. “When Texas murdered him, it altered my life. … My family, my friends, my community all have been damaged. It was because of his execution.”

Karl Eugene Chamberlain, one of Arthur’s nine children, was put to death by lethal injection in Texas on June 11, 2008. His mother said Thursday her son was guilty. According to online Texas Department of Criminal Justice records, Chamberlain was convicted of raping and killing Felecia Prechtl, a 30-year-old neighbor in Dallas, in 1991. He was just a few days shy of his 38th birthday when he was put to death.

Chamberlain spent much of his childhood in Northern New Mexico, Arthur said.

She said it was extremely difficult coming to grips with the fact her son had committed such a horrible crime.

Her son’s crimes and his execution took a terrible toll on her own life, Arthur said. Her marriage fell apart and, she said, “I was a patient in the state hospital (in Las Vegas) several times during the continuing ordeal.”

Several others spoke against the death penalty. These included Andrea Vigil, whose husband Carlos Vigil, a Santa Fe criminal lawyer, was murdered on his way to the county courthouse in 1999, and Allen Sanchez, director of the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, who quoted Mother Teresa.

The committee’s vote — a straight-party vote with Democrats voting yes and Republicans voting no — was no surprise. The committee has given the bill the go-ahead whenever it has been introduced in at least the last nine sessions.

In recent years, the entire House has passed the bill only to have it die in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

However, bill sponsor Rep. Gail Chasey, Albuquerque, said after the vote that she’s confident the bill will make it through Senate Judiciary this year.

Even if it passes the Legislature, a big question remains whether Gov. Bill Richardson would sign it. He has said in the past he supports capital punishment. Advocates hope that since he no longer is running for president, Richardson will have a change of heart.

Arthur said she recently ran into the governor at a local Indian restaurant and asked him to sign Chasey’s bill. She said Richardson was very courteous but only promised to “look at the bill” if the Legislature passes it.

One area in which abolition advocates have lost allies is among House Republicans. Four of six Republicans who voted for Chasey’s death-penalty repeal bill in 2007 are no longer in the Legislature. Of those six, only Larry Larranaga and Janice Arnold-Jones, both of Albuquerque, still remain.

New Mexico has executed just one person since 1960, child killer and rapist Terry Clark, who was given lethal injection in 2001.

There currently are only two convicted murders on death row in New Mexico: Robert Fry of Farmington and Timothy Allen of Bloomfield. Their sentences wouldn’t be affected even if HB 285 is signed into law.

The following is a short addendum sent to Hooman by Dr. Glenn Larkin, one of the pathologists quoted in the Larry Swearingen article posted a few days ago on Hooman’s Texas Death Penalty blog, where it is crossposted.

A short addendum to this article:— Larry Swearingen

Even the circumstantial evidence is raunchy, as well as some of the physical evidence.

1) The pubic hair found in the vaginal area:]

This strongly suggests that intra-vaginal intercourse took place with the man who dropped the hair. It also means that this event — consensual or not — occurred AFT$R Trotter had her last shower or bath, presumably that morning.

Or if Trotter was alive for days after 8 December, it merely states that she was killed AFTER her last intercourse.

Trotter had a vaginal or cervical biopsy performed shortly before her death, and an area of red discoloration was misdiagnosed by Dr Carter as traumatic injury, implying rape. The alleged trauma was iatrogenic — or surgically caused.

2) The “blood” found under one of Trotter’s fingernails: This blood was tested for DNA and was not — repeat not— matched to Swearingen’s DNA. The state p[roposed two equally preposterous theories;

2.1) One of the detectives at the scene cut himself shaving that morning, and the drop fell of his face, and flew UNDER Trotter’s finger nail. For one thing, blood from
} a shaving “nick” would have dried, unless the detective had hemophilia or some
other coagulopathy. For another, how did that blood get UNDER the finger nail? There is an old medical aphorism that states, “When you hear hoof beats, think of
horses and not zebras (Common things are common; rare things are rare.).

2.2) The second theory, equally ludicrous, is that the blood cames from air dispersion through the morgue’s air conditioner system. Curious, I am not aware of this unique source ever happening before, and I wounder if any other cadavers had been contaminated this way, especially the same day (January 3, 1999). How many autopsies ere performed at the same time as Trotters. Note that Trotter’s autopsy was performed as the second of 1999, starting at 2:15 pm, with a gaggle of witnesses; that presupposes that either one or no autopsies were performed that day, and if one was performed, it could have been either before this autopsy, at the the same time, or after this one, which makes the air route of contamination most unlikely. The defense never questioned this probability because it did not come up at trial.

3) The pantyhose fragments:

3.1 As previously stated, a segment of pantyhose was found around Trotter’s neck, damp, discolored, and knotted. It also was no doubt moved by the rodents that feasted on Trotter’s larynx. This noose was removed in the proper manner, and photographed, but not measured properly (diameter has no meaning here).

3.2 A second fragment, containing the pelvic portion, and the attached leg portion was found in a dumpster at the traier park where Swearingen lived, and shared by the other tenants. Note that Swearingen’s trailer was searched several times and the
pantyhose fragment was not found . If the dumpster was emptied between 8 December and 11 December, it would not contain the pantyhose fragment . If
the pantyhose was found in the dumpster after the last pickup, Swearingen could
not have placed it in the dumpster. This evidence therefo0re has a murky
provenance

3.2 It is not stated how the two fragments were “matched”. If done my eye-ball, this is certainly subject to challenge — being manipulated by rodents distorted the cut edge, and the moisture affected the elasticity, to cite a few problems, even if the class characteristic “matched”. The class characteristics are not sufficient evidence for court.

4. “The last person to see her alive”:

4. 1 Again, this is specious; while Swearingen did meet Trotter on campus, they were
and were dating off and on for weeks or months. Trotter relied on Swearingen to protect her from a probable former playmate, or playmate to be who was harassing and threatening her, as stated by several of her co-workers.

4.2 Since they were dating, it is no surprise that some of her head hairs were found in
Swearingen’s truck. It cannot be determined WHEN those hairs got there. Likewise, there is evidence to support that Trotter did not visit Swearingen’s trailer the day of her disappearance. He was entering and leaving alone, and Trotter was not with him, unless he sprinkled her with whiffle dust.

5. The last preposterous theory the state proposed is that Swearingen killed Trotter on December 8th, and stuck her body in a cooler. Then a friend dropped her in the forest while he was in the county jail.

5.1 There is no evidence to support this wild assumption on several accounts..

Freezing will stop decomposition completely, but when the body is thawed, deposition proceeds at an accelerated rate. This is because the ice crystals rupture the cell membranes, allowing all the cell juice to mix when thawed.

A cooled but not frozen body behaves like chopped meat; put a pound of raw hamburger in your refrigerator, and forget it for two weeks; your nose will then remind you. This scenario was used in a detective novel “Silent Witness” Robert Parker, but does not work in the real world.

There is still other evidence of a non-medico-legal nature better left to others; I believe that General Gregg Abbott Esq is putting his foot deeper into his mouth every time he speaks; he conveniently forgets that Swearingen only has to proffer PLAUSIBLE evidence of actual innocence to get a hearing; if what Swearingen has demonstrated in not plausible, nothing ever is. Mr Rytting has stated, “Swearingen is guilty by imagination.”

I maintain that anything less than a pardon of innocence for Swearingen is a moral obscenity.

G M Larkin MD
Charlotte NC

With today’s execution of Ricardo Ortiz, 189 people have been executed in Texas since Rick Perry was sworn in as Governor in late December 2000. Perry has been governor for more executions than any other governor in modern times. (Perhaps any U.S. governor ever, but we will have to check the record before 1977).

In fact, the only state that comes close to Texas in total number of executions is Virginia with 102 since 1982, but no single Virginia governor comes remotely close to Perry’s record or George W. Bush’s record when he presided over 152 executions while he was governor.

According to the AP:

the state of Texas has executed a high-ranking prison gang member who was convicted of fatally injecting a fellow prisoner with an overdose of heroin.

Forty-six-year-old Ricardo Ortiz was pronounced dead Thursday at 6:18 p.m.

Ortiz was the second killer executed in Texas in as many nights, and the fifth this year in the nation’s most active death penalty state.

Yesterday, Texas executed Virgil Martinez, 41.

A third scheduled execution was stayed earlier this week by a federal court, after lawyers for Larry Swearingen presented new evidence that case doubt on his guilt.

428 people have now been executed in Texas since 1982 when executions resumed after an 18-year moratorium.

Executions During Tenure of Texas Governor Rick Perry

2001 – 17

2002 – 33

2003 – 24

2004 – 23

2005 – 19

2006 – 24

2007 – 26

2008 – 18

2009 – 5 (As of Jan 29, 2009)

The AP is reporting on the case of Virgil Martinez, scheduled for execution in Texas today:

David Dow, a University of Houston law professor, said Monday he hoped to get the lethal injection delayed so lawyers can be certain Martinez is competent to be executed.

“He seems to us to have some potentially significant mental illness issues,” said Dow, who works with the Texas Defender Service, a legal group that represents death row inmates.

Don Vernay, a New Mexico lawyer who had been representing Martinez in federal court appeals, argued unsuccessfully that temporal lobe epilepsy suffered by Martinez caused the shooting frenzy.

…

At trial, Martinez was defended by Jeri Yenne, who later was elected district attorney in Brazoria County.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to comment,” she said when asked about the status of the case. “It’s been real important for me to maintain my boundaries as district attorney.

“I did everything we could from an advocacy perspective,” she said of her defense. “We also want to make sure the system properly reviews it. I don’t think I should talk about the particulars.”