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Christina Riggs (AR) – W/W   executed  
May 2, 2000…9:00pm (EST) 
“She swallowed 28 Elavil Tablets, normally a lethal dose, and injected herself with a dose of potassium chloride large enough to kill five people-had it been diluted. The Elavil rendered her unconscious. The potassium chloride, because it was not diluted, did not stop her heart. Riggs was discovered, still unconscious, the following day and rushed to hospital emergency room. 
Once stabilized she was kept under suicide watch.” (Mara Leveritt) 
Christina Riggs tried to commit suicide right after she had killed her own children in 1997.  Now the state of Arkansas wants to finish the deadly plan and has set an execution date for May 2nd, just two weeks prior to Mother’s day.  Christina Riggs would be the first woman to be executed in Arkansas and the fifth since the resumption of capital punishment in 1976. 
After her conviction was upheld by the Arkansas Supreme Court Christina waived all appeals and asked to be executed. Unless a family member or “next friend” intervenes, this decision does not require a hearing in order to verify Christina’s mental capacity. 
Seeing death as a release, Christina thinks spending “all eternity with Christ and my babies would be a blessing.”  During the penalty phase of her trial she said: “I want to die. I want to be with my babies.  I want you to give me the death penalty.” 
Christina suffers from chronic, acute depression.  Asked why she committed the crime she answered: “Because I wanted to die.  But, I didn’t want to die and leave my kids behind or for them to be a burden for somebody else.  I didn’t want them to think I didn’t love them…”  There is a history of depression, suicide and alcoholism in Christina’s family.   Please write to 
Governor  Huckabee and ask him to spare Christina’s life. 

Bennie Demps (FL) b/?   stay of execution 
May 31, 2000…7:00am (EST) 
“I thought that was great. A lot of them thought they would get life. They didn’t.” Gordon Oldham remembers his time as district attorney in Florida when he had sent more than 50 people to death row. One of them was Bennie Demps. 
In 1971, Bennie was sentenced to death for murdering two persons during a robbery. When capital punishment was declared unconstitutional in 1972, his sentence was commuted to life in prison.  Two years later, however, Bennie again found himself on trial for his life. 
Together with two other prisoners Bennie was involved in the stabbing of Alfred Sturgis. Although it is clear that Bennie was holding Sturgis while another inmate stabbed him, he was the only one of the three who received a death sentence.  A number of other questionable circumstances exist in Bennie’s case as well: 

-There is evidence that Mr. Hathaway, another prisoner and the key witness for the prosecution, is mentally ill. 

-Another eye-witness testified under oath that Hathaway was lying but later he withdrew his testimony after the state reduced  his sentence. 

-Bennie was without legal repressentation for many years as a result of the de-funding of Florida’s Capital Resource Center in 1995. 

-During his life Bennie was also influenced by a drug addiction which, according to a psychologists, “may have resulted in the kind of brain damage suggested by the current test results.” 
 

Charles Foster (OK) – B/?  executed 
May 25, 2000…1:01am (EST) 
Charles Foster was sentenced to death in one of those unusual cases that pits the word of two co-conspirators against each other with nothing in the way of solid corroborating evidence. 
At least, none that the jury was permitted to hear. 
The basic facts are these: Claude Wiley, a 74-year-old grocer, disappeared on April 1, 1983 while delivering groceries to the home of Charles and Eula Mae Foster.  His body was found 10 days later, showing evidence of multiple stab wounds to the chest and a severe bludgeoning to the head and face.  The Fosters burgled Wiley’s residence, stole his car, and pawned several of his belongings.  Physical evidence in the Foster residence implicated them in the murder, and both had clearly participated in the cover-up, but there was nothing to indicate who had been the actual killer – nothing, but the testimony of the killers themselves. 
Both Fosters were initially charged with capital murder.  But each told police a different story.  Eula Mae claimed Charles ambushed Wiley as he entered the door (for no apparent reason) and carried out the murder in her presence.  Charles insisted that Eula Mae had sent him to the store and slain the unfortunate grocer in his absence, perhaps with the aid of an unknown 
accomplice. 
Although it is not unknown for states to try such cases in separate proceedings during which prosecutors employ the version of events least favorable to the defendant du jour, Oklahoma was well-disposed towards Eula Mae’s tale.  She pled out to an accessory after the fact charge, was sentenced to concurrent five-year terms, and paroled with the state’s consent after just nine months.  Her story was predictably enhanced by the testimony of a jailhouse snitch who could be generously characterized as a 
professional perjurer – evidently the jail’s father confessor, he was simultaneously explaining to a jury in an unrelated case how another defendant had also been moved upon their meeting to incriminate himself. 
     That inmate admitted he cut a sweet deal with the state for implicating Charles.  By contrast, another man who also shared the same holding cell and does not stand to profit by lying has said that not only did no such conversation occur, but that Charles typically sat by himself in the corner and sobbed, so passive and fearful that other prisoners regularly stole his meals. 
     And there is good reason to fear that this suspect testimony has railroaded an innocent man.  At least one critical witness, a clerk at the store Charles claimed he went to, was prepared to substantiate his alibi.  So deficient was Charles’ legal representation that this witness was never even contacted.  Yet the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded, incredibly, that “defense counsel’s omission of alibi evidence does not undermine our confidence in the guilty verdict.”  Follow the chain of reasoning: defense counsel was negligent, therefore the affidavit from the clerk was not taken until 10 years after the trial; the affidavit was taken 10 years late, therefore it’s not reliable (it differs on a few details, but corroborates Charles’ account in all significant respects); it’s not reliable, therefore we can’t be sure that it would have strengthened the defense; it might not have strengthened the case, therefore defense counsel was not negligent. 
Preposterous. 
Charles’ alibi was the whole of his defense; the eyewitness testimony against him which it would have undermined the whole of the state’s case.  The rest is entirely circumstantial, and points as readily to Eula Mae’s guilt as to that of Charles. 
Nor did Charles’ attorney neglect to botch his sentencing-phase defense.  Born into a poor family in which alcoholism and incest were rampant (family members suspect that Charles was sired by his maternal uncle), Charles grew up in a turbulent environment marked by frequent beatings and sexual violence.  At age nine, he was primarily on his own, expected to take care 
of the younger children and help provide for the family with earnings from his job at a grocery store.  By that time, he was already well along the path to alcoholism.  Charles has consistently tested as mentally retarded and brain-damaged, and a forensic social worker who investigated him believes that he suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome – a condition more 
commonly associated with people who have lived in war zones.  While Eula Mae claimed Charles was a violent and controlling partner, others say that she in fact dominated him. 
Needless to say, none of this evidence was developed at Charles’ sentencing, insuring Muskogee County District Attorney Drew Edmondson – now the state’s attorney general – “success” in his first capital case. 
Charles was certainly involved in the crime in some way, if only after the fact.  But the fact that the skeletal case against him could result in a death sentence, while his equally suspicious accomplice walked free inside of a year, is profoundly disturbing – not only because this particular man might not be the killer, but because the staggering level of arbitrariness evident in the 
Fosters’ unequal treatment raises questions about the system as a whole.  It certainly invites a look at the underreported issue of how men and women are handled differently by capital sentencing authorities. 
This, in the final analysis, is a perfect case for executive clemency.  We’re never likely to know who actually did what to Mr.Wiley.  But a commutation to a life term in Oklahoma’s dreadful subterranean prison would see Charles amply punished for his role in the crime, while insuring that lives are not snuffed on the basis of such insubstantial evidence. 
 

Joseph Miller (PA)-W/?   stay of execution 
May 4, 2000…10:00pm (EST) 

N E W S   R E L E A S E 

Contact:  Jeffrey Garis  (215) 724-6120 

PENNSYLVANIA TO EXECUTE MENTALLY RETARDED INMATE 

PHILADELPHIA, PA  (April 27, 2000) – Pennsylvania Abolitionists United Against the Death Penalty today strongly condemned the scheduled May 4th execution of Joey Miller, a mentally retarded death row inmate with the mental age of a child.  Miller has threatened suicide in the past, but did not indicate any desire to give up his appeals until June 1998, after being beaten by prison guards in September 1997, and after Department of Corrections officials took away his colored pencils and crayons, which he used to send drawings to his son.  Joey also has been denied any contact visits with his son and daughter. 
In addition to being mentally retarded, the State’s own neuropsychologist admits that Joey “is clearly brain damaged.”  He also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of rampant physical and sexual abuse in his household.  Joey’s father and three of his uncles sexually abused the children in his family.  Two of the uncles went to jail for sexual molestation.  Joey witnessed this abuse from a young age and was himself beaten by his father because he was “slow”, and sexually abused by two of his uncles.  Later, as a teenager, he was sexually assaulted in a juvenile detention facility.  As a result, Joey has been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that affects his responses to prison conditions. 
According to Jeffrey Garis, Executive Director of Pa. Abolitionists, “Virtually no democratic nations or societies with minimal standards for human rights would ever consider executing a person with diminished mental capacity.  Unfortunately the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is not among these enlightened governments.  The willingness of politicians and prosecutors 
and ignore basic principles of civilized society in an effort to put notches on their ‘body-count belts’ underscores the need for an immediate moratorium on death warrants and executions in this state, and a review of the entire system of capital punishment in Pennsylvania.” 

Texas 

Tommy Ray Jackson (TX) – B/?  executed 
May 4, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 
Amid Texas Governor Bush’s “tough on crime” campaign for the White House, the Lone Star state is steadfastly approaching its 11th execution of the new millennium.  Tommy Ray Jackson was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1983 murder of Rosalind Robinson, a University of Texas graduate student from Indiana.  The 24-year-old had been kidnaped from the 
campus and shot once in the head.  Despite the fact that they offered only circumstantial evidence and the testimony of a single witness, who stood to benefit substantially from his testimony, Tommy Lee Jackson was sentenced to die at the hands of the state. 
Jackson was only one of two men charged in the incident.  Although circumstantial evidence connected both men to the crime, the second man, James Clary, arranged with the State to receive a life sentence instead of death by pleading guilty to the kidnaping of Robinson.  In return, he agreed to testify for the State against Tommy Jackson, and name him at trial as the 
‘triggerman.’  Adding to his obvious and desperate motivation to lie in order to save his own life was the fact that Clary was a convicted child-rapist with a long criminal history, and was already a proven liar.  However, without Clary’s testimony, it would have been extremely difficult for prosecutors to secure a conviction based solely on circumstantial evidence.  The prosecutor 
alluded to his need for Clary’s testimony in order to secure a conviction: “We wanted to get one death penalty for sure in this case, and that’s the triggerman.” 
To this end, prosecutors engaged in behavior that, along with being unethical, amounted to a violation of Jackson’s constitutional right to a fair trial.  Constitutional law requires that the State disclose all material evidence favorable to the defendant to ensure a fair trial.  However, the State concealed important information regarding Clary’s testimony from Jackson’s lawyers, from the Court, and from the jury.  Prior to Jackson’s trial, Clary had given numerous statements and interviews to the State, all of which were conflicting.  However, the State chose to disclose only three of these statements. At the time of trial, the State had in its possession tape-recorded interviews, which included many details that were different from Clary’s trial testimony.  Jackson’s lawyers never saw these interviews, and the jury never heard about them. 
Perhaps the most egregious instance of misconduct was the prosecutor’s failure to disclose the results of Clary’s state-issued lie detector test concerning the crime.  The polygraph, which was administered shortly before trial, included questions concerning Jackson’s involvement as the “triggerman” in the murder.  Clary failed the exam. Nevertheless, prosecutors allowed him to tell his story to the jury under oath.  The State went on to further mislead jurors by stating that Clary’s consent to a polygraph was an “important factor” in believing him.  Yet, they never disclosed the results of the exam.  Jackson’s lawyers remained unaware of the exam results until the State finally revealed them years later, after Jackson’s direct appeal was over.  Unfortunately, there are severe limits and restrictions on a convicted person’s ability to present a case for an unfair trial after his direct appeal is over. 
     During the trial, there were several other violations of Jackson’s due process rights, including statements made by the Prosecutor concerning his decision to pursue the death penalty for Jackson.  After hearing that the Prosecutor commented to the jury, “I don’t think I would have been around as long as I have as District Attorney up here if I went around unreasonably 
deciding who should live or die,” one federal judge called the statements “improper, inexcusable, and indefensible” and “shameless overreaching and invidious vouching of Clary’s testimony.” 
Perhaps most troubling about Tommy Ray Jackson’s death sentence is the fact that the witness who helped to unjustly convict him has now recanted his testimony.  James Clary, in a December 1999 sworn statement, said that his testimony at Jackson’s trial was false and was the result of physical violence and threats by the State.  He now contends that he was told what to say 
by the State, even though they knew it was not the truth.  Although Clary’s credibility is highly questionable, he hardly stands to gain from his recantation.  Meanwhile, May 4, 2000 steadily approaches. 
 
 

William Kitchens (TX) – W/?   executed 
May 9, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 
The month of May will bring death to William Kitchens if the state of Texas gets its way.  Mr. Kitchens was convicted of capital murder in 1986.  Since that time, he has repeatedly appealed his sentence of death only to find his claims of error fall on deaf ears.  Most recently, in 1999, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied his petition for Habeas 
Corpus. 
Mr. Kitchens’ trial counsel blatantly failed to investigate and present mitigating evidence of mental illness for the penalty phase of Kitchens’ trial.  This failure deprived Kitchens’ of his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel.  His death sentence must be reversed if Texas wants to afford Mr. Kitchens his basic Constitutional rights. 
 
 

Michael McBride (TX) – W/W   executed 
May 11, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 
“You are sleeping with my girlfriend!”was he screaming when he attacked James Holzer the first time. Two days later James Holzer was dead as well as Christian Fisher, back then the girlfriend of Michael McBride, who wanted to end their relationship. 
The incident happened in 1985 and Michael shot himself in the head right after the killing. He survived but suffers under brain damage now. Outbursts of anger were typical for Michael McBride who was intoxicated during the time of the offense. Although Michael had no criminal background and is remorseful about what he did the jury decided that he would be a continuing threat to society, an aggravating factor which led to the imposition of the death penalty. 
Living in the state which spends the second less money for social security but has the highest execution rate Michael grew up in a destroyed family, was physically abused by his alcoholic father and could now become the 16th person to be executed in Texas this year. 
 
 

James Richardson (TX) – B/?  executed 
May 23, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 
James Richardson was convicted of capital murder for the shooting death of a 35-year-old man during a liquor store robbery in Angus, TX.  He had just finished a four and a half month prison stint for burglary and had been on parole three months when he committed capital murder. 
 
 

Richard Foster (TX)-W/?   executed 
May 24, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 
Richard Foster survived the Vietnam War, but he’s abandoning his appeals and seeking his own execution…because conditions on Texas’ death row are so bad.  It’s an idea with a long pedigree, as when the lucky few among the unfortunates condemned to burn in medieval Europe might obtain the “favor” of being strangled before the kindling was lit at their feet.  Maybe it’s even a 
money-saving option the governor who would be president can float on the campaign trail. 
It would certainly cost Texas a few shekels to get Foster’s head if he chose to fight for it.  No chain of physical evidence conclusively links him to the murder-robbery for which he was sentenced, and the key witness against him has recanted. 
      Other eyewitness testimony was presented not by the witness herself – who had married Foster after his arrest – but in hearsay form, by a uniformed policeman. 
Additional technical points – that evidence of unrelated crimes was ntroduced for the purpose of creating a prejudicial atmosphere, and that the defendant was denied a change of venue which federal courts have agreed he was legally entitled to – might also be cause to overturn his sentence. 
With governors not too keen to extend clemency to anyone, the most injection-happy executive in the country doesn’t have a difficult choice to make when a prisoner consents to die.  However, Foster has the power to pick up his appeals at any moment before the lethal cocktail starts flowing; letters expressing care and solidarity might convince him to do just that. 
 
 

James Clayton (TX)-B/W    executed
May 25, 2000…7:00pm (EST)
 

Robert E. Carter (TX) – B/?   executed 
May 31, 2000…7:00pm (EST) 
While prison guards, such as those in Florida that recently beat a condemned prisoner to death, are usually accorded considerable lenience for acts of shocking brutality, Robert Earl Carter had the misjudgment to carry out his on the outside. 
Carter, a former prison guard at the Pack II Unit in Navasota, Texas, joined another man to kill six members of a Somerville family, including a four-year-old boy who was the subject of a paternity suit filed against Carter.  The boy’s mother was away from the house at the time.  The house was set ablaze in a vain effort to cover up the murders. 
Carter then incriminated himself by attending the family’s funeral services, bandaged for obvious burns on his face, neck and arms. 
No additional information on Carter’s background or clemency campaign were available to the NCADP at press time.