NCADP   
1436 U Street,   
NW Suite 104   
Washington DC    
20009   

888-286-2237   
[email protected] 

Alabama 

David Duren (AL) – W/? 
January 7, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 

David Duren, now 37, was sentenced to die in Alabama’s notorious “Yellow Mama” for abducting, robbing and shooting two high school students on a date in 1983.  One of the victims died; the other survived three gunshots wounds to testify against Duren and his partner, Richard Kinder, who received a life sentence. 
 
Abandoned by his mother at an early age, Duren grew up in an environment of poverty and frequent physical abuse.  He was so withdrawn from his family that he would sequester himself in his room for days on end.  He became a chronic drug abuser. 
 
Indigent, Duren was defended at trial by a court-appointed attorney who pursued the “defense” that Duren intended to kill the boy who survived, and not the girl who died – an argument that would have been legally moot even if true.  He was also limited to the miserly sum of $500, not adjusted for inflation, that the Alabama legislature approved for indigent defense teams in 1975. 
 
Duren, who for a time sought to waive his appeals, has expressed remorse for his crime.  He told the Birmingham Post-Herald shortly after his conviction that he had been taking drugs the night of the crime, and that Kinder had pressed him to shoot the teenagers. 
 
“When I pulled the trigger and I saw that it hit her, I just … wanted to reach out and grab it and pull it back,” he said. 
 
Duren’s electrocution was scheduled in spite of the U.S. Supreme Court’s pending review of the electric chair in an appeal out of Florida.  There is therefore a good chance – though not a certainty – that the sentence will be stayed until that decision is handed down.  The state plans to argue, in the words of its lead capital litigator, “that Florida’s problems are unique to Florida’s electric chair” – even though “Yellow Mama” has botched at least two of Alabama’s 19 “modern” executions. 
 

Malcolm Johnson (OK) – B/? 
January 6, 2000…1:00am (EST) 

The new millennium will start as the old one finished: with an execution. Malcolm Johnson could be the first. He is scheduled to be executed on January 6, 2000 for the 1981 murder of Ura Thompson. 

After Cornell Cooks and Bobby Ross, he would be the third African-American to be executed in Oklahoma in a five-week period. Only 7.4% of the people in Oklahoma are black. 

Prayer vigils and protests are planned across the state for the evening of January 5th. 
 

Gary Walker (OK) — W/? 
January 13, 2000…1:00am (EST) 

Gary Walker is sentenced to 6 life terms and 700 years in prison. He killed 5 people in 1984. For the fifth one, Eddie O. Cash, he got the death penalty. 

Between 1977 and 1984 Gary spent most of his time either in prisons or psychiatric facilities. Over the years, he was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, paranoia and hallucinations. 

If his execution will be carried out it could be the second in Oklahoma in the year 2000.  Oklahoma General Attorney Drew Edmondson has predicted that Oklahoma may execute as many as 20 persons in 2000. 
 

Billy Hughes (TX)-W/? 
January 24, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 

After a “disfellowship” from the Jehovah’s witnesses and a divorce Billy 
Hughes came into financial trouble. He traveled around the country for 
months paying his way with stolen credit-cards.  When police caught up 
with him on April 4, 1976, he shot and killed one officer. 

24 years later the once young man is scheduled to be executed. At trial, 
psychologists argued about whether or not Billy Hughes was competant to 
stand trial. The court concluded that the insanity-claim had no merit 
despite the fact that one psychologist, Dr. Pentony, diagnosed Billy as a 
“paranoid schizophrenic”. 
  

Spencer Goodman (TX) – W/? 
January 18, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 

Spencer Goodman currently sits on Texas’ Death Row for the 1991 abduction, robbery and murder of Cecile Ham, wife of 22 Top manager Bill Ham. 

Spencer was given up for adoption in 1971 when he was just 1 year old.  His birth mother, a native of Germany, had severe mental and physical problems.  His birth father, a Vietnam veteran, signed away all claims to his son saying “he did not wish his son…to have the same life he had and wanted him to have a better life.” 

Spencer’s adoptive parents provided the best environment they could over the years, but threw in the towel after he committed several crimes.  They disagreed with the state’s decision to parole their son in 1991, refusing to allow him access to their homes.   “We felt he should not be paroled at all,” said Spencer’s father Barnard Goodman, Sr. 

With no real family left to support him, Spencer waits and hopes for the best as his January18th execution date draws near. 
 
 
Earl Heiselbetz (TX) — W/? 
January 12, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 

His wife forbade him to use the phone so often. Some days later Earl Heiselbetz broke into the neighbor’s house to use their phone. He had done it before with the knowledge that they were usually out at certain times of the day.  But on May 30, 1991 Rena and her daughter Jacy Rogers surprisingly met the unwanted, would-be caller at their home.  What happened then is not clear, but weeks later the dead bodies of Rena and Jacy were found. Earl Heiselbetz was charged with the murders and finally sentenced to death. 

He had only one lawyer representing him. States like Illinois, which have set new and higher standards in representation for capital cases recently, are demanding at least two attorneys for a defendant who is facing the death penalty. The reason for this ruling is that a death penalty trial is so complex, difficult and time-demanding that it is necessary for the defendant to have at least two experienced attorneys.  Earl Heiselbetz’s lawyer had just 43 days to prepare for trial. 

Earl was sexually abused during his childhood. At trial, a neuro-psychologist testified that he suffers from an “organic affective disorder” which effects his mood and abstract thinking. 

Earl’s daughter spoke to jurors during the trial’s sentencing phase and asked them to spare her father’s life. 

Unfortunately, they did not. 
 

David Hicks (TX) — B/B 
January 20, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 

David Hicks was convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering his grandmother when he got drunk and robbed her house.  There is no further information on this case available at this time. 
 

Glen McGinnis (TX) — B/W 
January 25, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 

Glen McGinnis is an African-American juvenile offender, now 26 years old and slated to die for a crime he committed at the age of 17. 

The son of a prostitute who did periodic stints in jail on drug charges, Glen was often left to fend for himself.  But malign neglect became active abuse when his stepfather moved into the one-bedroom apartment Glen shared with his mother. 

Glen’s stepfather so terrorized his son that the state Child Protective Services were moved to intervene on the boy’s behalf three times in two years: once after Glen was raped; a second time when he was beaten about the head with a baseball bat; and a third time after he was burned with hot sausage grease. 

Alas, on each occasion, the CPS returned Glen to this barbarous environment after treatment.  Not unreasonably, Glen responded each time by running away, but was repeatedly caught shoplifting and remanded to his parents’ “care.” 

At 11, Glen fled for good, ending his formal education and initiating an adolescence spent alternating between homelessness and petty crime on the streets of Houston, and terms in the state juvenile justice system as punishment for same.  Characteristically for a youth raised in such extremity, Glen thrived in the structured atmosphere of juvenile detention.  Employees there remember him as respectful and non-aggressive.  He had a good disciplinary record even though he was harassed by other children for his open homosexuality.  One staff member even considered adopting him. 

At 17, shortly after being released on probation for stealing a car, Glen went to rob a local laundromat, carrying a gun to “scare” the attendant and a load of clothes to divert suspicion.  A 
white attendant was shot dead, and a terrified Glen fled the scene, leaving behind a laundry bag 
marked “McGinnis.” 

At sentencing – there was never any doubt about his guilt – Glen’s record of theft was used heavily against him, imputing a fatuous “criminal” nature to his person that would make homicide “the inevitable result.”  The judge even allowed the state to connect Glen to a car theft for which he had never even been charged.  On the other hand, a defense expert who testified that Glen would not pose a continuing threat if sentenced to prison was not permitted to discuss details of an interview in which Glen said that he became “panicked and hysterical” and did not mean to shoot the victim. 

Glen’s prosecutor pooh-poohed these claims, asking “Can you seriously expect to rehabilitate someone who was never ‘habilitated’ to start with?”  And without any apparent sense of irony, his all-white jury agreed that, notwithstanding his ‘habilitation’ at the hands of a state that washed its hands of his fate after repeatedly delivering him into the clutches of a rapist and a drug-addled prostitute, Glen’s young life would be held forfeit. 

Glen’s case is a textbook illustration of why the execution of children is shunned worldwide.  Polite letters should emphasize this fact, pointing out that Glen was clearly failed by society and has shown the capacity for growth and redemption in the right environment.  An act of grace by the  compassionate conservative” Governor would be well-placed indeed on a young 
man who has enjoyed little enough compassion in his life. 
 

James Moreland (TX)-W/? 
January 27, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 

When capital convictions are overturned or remanded, politicians and pundits like to complain about the “technicalities” that slow down the killing machine.  When juries bring back acquittals, prosecutors often blame the defense for sleight-of-hand. 

In James Moreland’s case, all the legal technicalities and gamesmanship have conspired to bring him to execution. 

Moreland, who was convicted of two stabbing deaths in 1983, has had most of his federal habeas issues dismissed under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.  He was represented at trial by a lawyer who planned to run for District Attorney, creating an evident conflict of interest.  Moreland’s date with the executioner might well be traceable to questionable tactical decisions arising from that very conflict. 

The state offered a 50-year sentence as a plea bargain, but Moreland turned it down.  Why?  Moreland says that his counsel advised him that a conviction would likely be overturned on appeal, by which time the lawyer would be D.A. and in a position to cut a better deal with him. 

On the basis of this dubious legal gambit, Moreland took his chances with the courts.  His appeal – on the admissibility of his confession – was rejected even though the court agreed that several factors “mitigate[d] heavily against admission of [the] confession.” 

That close-but-no-cigar ruling leaves Moreland in a bind worthy of the late Joseph Heller: the state courts consider his confession and conviction valid enough to uphold; the federal courts consider them shaky enough not to rule his attorney’s strategy deficient.  And somewhere between Scylla and Charybdis, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has James Moreland’s death warrant in its hands. 
 

Larry Robison (TX)-W/5W 
January 21, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 
 
Editor’s Note: In August of this year, Larry came within days of execution before receiving a stay to allow for psychological testing and a competency hearing.  He was recently cleared for execution.   
  
Please contact the officials listed below about Larry’s case.  Please stress the fact that public opinion in Texas does not support execution of the mentally retarded. 
  
To receive updates on the effort to save Larry’s life, send an e-mail to [email protected].  
This will subscribe you to a listserv which has been set up to keep activists informed about Larry’s case. 
 
My husband Ken and I are the Co-Directors of HOPE, a chapter of Texas CURE which deals 
with the issue of capital punishment.  I am a retired third grade school teacher, and Ken is a college 
instructor.  We have eight children, 15 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.  We are an average family except that we have a son on Death Row. 

Larry was the kind of boy that every mother dreams of having.  He was a good student, played in little league, was on the swim team, played drums in the high school band, and would have made Eagle Scout if he hadn’t become ill.  By the time he was in junior high, we knew that something was wrong. 

At first we suspected drugs, because like most young people of his generation, Larry had  experimented with them.  We tried to get help for him in Kansas City, Kansas, where we lived at the time.  Unfortunately, we did not know of the family history of mental illness, and he was not given 
a correct diagnosis until several years later after he was discharged from the Air Force. 

Larry was first diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic at Huguley Hospital in Fort Worth when he was 21 years old.  Because our insurance no longer covered him, he was discharged.  We were told to take him to John Peter Smith County Hospital where he was kept for thirty days and discharged because he was “not violent” and they “needed the bed.”  When I said, “He has no job, no money, no car, and no place to stay, you can’t just put him out on the street,” I was told, “We do it every day.  You would be surprised how many schizophrenics are on the streets.  Most of them cope very well.” 

We took him to Veteran’s Hospital in Waco where they kept him for 30 days and discharged 
him.  We were told he was not well and would get worse without treatment but that they couldn’t 
keep him any longer because he was “not violent” and they “needed the bed.”  If he became violent, 
we were told, he could get the long term treatment that everyone agreed he needed.  The VA doctors forgot to have Larry sign a release before he left, so we were unable to get medication for him at the Fort Worth Mental Health/Mental Retardation offices.  Because of the Privacy Act, none of the doctors or hospitals informed us that he needed his medication every day in order to cope.  No one would tell us what to do to help Larry. 

The first and only violence he was accused of was killing five people.  We were horrified, and we thought he would finally be committed to a mental institution, probably for life.  We were wrong.  He was arrested, held a year without bail, not given a sanity hearing, and in spite of his medical history, found sane and sentenced to death.  In the sixteen years since Larry went to Death Row he has seen a psychiatrist only twice – both times initiated by our family.  He has never received any medication or mental health treatment in jail or prison.  They do not use any of the newer drugs which really help the mentally ill… 

We believe that if people knew the facts, they would insist that all mentally ill persons get the medical help they need.  Although most never become violent, the ones who have that potential can only be stopped by preventive treatment.  The threat of punishment, even death, means nothing to a psychotic person.  You can execute as many of them as you wish, and it will not stop the next 
one.  If we really want to stop these most horrendous crimes, and be safe in our homes and on our 
streets, prevention is the only answer… 

Since Larry went to Death Row we have met many families who have mentally ill, mentally retarded, or brain-damaged relatives in prison.  Approximately one-third of the people on Death Row are mentally impaired.  There are more of them in jails and prisons in Texas than there are in mental hospitals.  Yet programs to treat mental illness would be less expensive than incarceration in prison and much less expensive than execution, which costs over $2 million each.  It is a much more cost-effective and humane way to treat our handicapped citizens…The state of Texas is almost at the bottom of the 50 states in resources for the mentally ill and yet it is at the very top in prisons and 
executions.  There is something wrong with this picture. 

Whatever happens in Larry’s case, we are committed to changing our laws and agencies so that this kind of tragedy does not continue to happen to other people.  If telling his story can prevent others from suffering and dying in the future, then all the pain will not be in vain. 
 

Virginia 

Steve Roach (VA)-W/W 
January 13, 2000…9:00pm (EST) 

At a perfunctory sentencing hearing in 1995 that lasted less than a day, a Virginia jury condemned Steve Roach to die for a murder he committed at the age of 17.  So mystifying was that ruling that higher courts, even while denying Roach’s appeals, have fretted that in light of “persuasive” mitigating evidence, the harsh sentence is “disturbing.” 

On Dec. 6, 1993, a guilt-stricken Steve turned himself in to the Greene County Sheriff for killing and robbing an elderly neighbor he had befriended. 

Without his parents or an attorney on hand, and apparently at the urging of police who told him a confession would result in a lighter sentence, Steve came clean about the crime.  His reward: a capital murder indictment. 

Steve grew up in a dysfunctional family in rural Virginia.  His parents separated and reconciled several times during his youth, particularly after his father developed mood swings from hepatitis C medication and took to drinking and womanizing. 

At the age of 14, Steve dropped out of school because his parents needed him to do chores and take care of his brothers.  He volunteered his time in the community, working at a local church and a camp for children as well as doing chores for neighbors. 

In 1993, Steve’s family was falling apart, and the teenager had a few run-ins with the law for nonviolent crimes and was put on probation.  On Dec. 3, for no evident reason, Steve killed 
one of the neighbors he used to visit and help, stole some cash and a credit card, and took off in 
her car.  After a few days on the run, he gave himself up. 

At trial, Steve’s short rap sheet was deployed against him to devastating effect.  The Commonwealth even called his probation officer, who testified that Steve had violated his probation by owning the shotgun that was used in the shooting – even though Steve himself had taken the weapon to the police days before the murder and been allowed to keep it.  Guns were such an everyday part of life in the area that not only was it not problematic to own or use one, but Steve’s probation papers did not even enjoin him from doing so. 

Steve’s defense introduced evidence of his difficult home life and contributions to the community, as well as a forensic psychologist who testified that because of the absence of guidance in his life, Steve was “particularly immature,” had poor “impulse control,” and “did not show very good ability in many situations to control his emotions or behavior like 17-year-old or 18-year-old individuals should do.”  Steve himself testified, admitting, “I don’t know what went through my mind … I wish I could bring her back.” 

Astonishingly, the jury weighing this evidence returned a sentence of death.  Perhaps it was because the defense had failed to strike one juror who stated his belief that Steve was guilty before the trial, or another who had once been represented by the prosecutor.  Perhaps it was because, when the jury asked whether Steve could be eligible for parole with a life sentence (answer: not for at least 25 years), the court refused to say. 

Or perhaps it was because, on a December day in 1993, a naive and confused youth was seized with the vain desire to put right a terrible wrong.  Who but a child would put his trust and his fate in the hands of the police instead of an attorney? 

The courts themselves are not comfortable with Steve’s sentence, but also not ready to overturn it.  In situations such as this, judicial rulings have explicitly pointed to the clemency process as the proper avenue for remedy.  Gov. Gilmore has that power in his hands, the last chance for justice or mercy to trump the excessively severe judgment of the courts. 
 

Douglas Thomas (VA)-W/2W 
January 10, 2000…9:00pm (EST) 

The state of Virginia plans to execute its second juvenile offender since 1976 on January 10th. 
Douglas Christopher Thomas (“Chris”) was sentenced to death in 1991 for murdering his girlfriend’s 
parents, B.J. and Kathy Wiseman, when he was just seventeen. 

Until the age of twelve, Chris lived with his maternal grandparents.  His mother left him when he was two, and his father has only seen him twice — once after he was born in the hospital and again in 1996 when he visited him on the row.  While he lived with his grandparents, Chris was thought to be a happy and well-adjusted child. 

An unfortunate string of deaths in the family destroyed the stability Chris enjoyed for twelve years of his life.  Both of his grandparents and a close uncle passed away in 1985.  Chris had to go live with his mother who flatly ignored him.  He began acting out — missing school, experimenting with drugs, committing petty offenses, etc.  His grades fell drastically. 

In the summer of 1990, Chris met and entered into a sexual relationship with Jessica Wiseman.  Jessica was extremely important to Chris because she gave him what he craved most – attention.  This emotional dependence allowed Jessica to manipulate Chris into doing what she wanted.  After her parents tried to restrict her relationship with Chris, what Jessica wanted was to see them dead.  The children devised a plan which had Chris shooting Jessica’s parents. 

On the night of November 10, 1990, after smoking some pot, drinking some alcohol, and popping some Valium pills, Chris and Jessica carried out their terrible plan.  Chris shot Jessica’s parents once each as they slept.  Mr. Wiseman died immediately, his wife did not. 

This is where the facts of the case are unclear, yet terribly important.  After police questioning which took place without a parent or attorney present and while he was still high, Chris confessed to both murders.  Since that time, however, Chris has retracted part of that confession, saying that it was Jessica who fired the second and fatal into her mother.  Had evidence to this effect been presented at trial, the one aggravating factor in Chris’ case (the “vileness” of the second shot) would have evaporated, and the jury might have spared his life.  In the days before Chris’ last execution date, several woman who were incarcerated with Jessica gave signed affidavits stating that she had bragged to them about shooting her mother. 

Setting aside the facts of Chris’ case, international law prohibits the death-sentencing and execution of juvenile offenders.  Virginia will be committing an egregious human rights violation if it follows through with this execution. 

Please write to Governor Gilmore.  Tell him that we as a society need to stop sending our kids the message that hatred and violence and killing are justified in some situations.