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TX - Woman awaits execution date
Wed Jul 7, 2004 5:15am
80.135.18.96
HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Local & State
July 7, 2004, 1:31AM
Woman awaits execution date
Exhausts appeals in family's deaths
By ANDREW TILGHMAN
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
More than 17 years after she began complaining about her court-appointed attorney, death row inmate Frances Newton is scheduled to be in a Houston court today to hear a judge set her execution date.
Newton, 39, was convicted in 1988 of shooting her husband and two children to collect on a $100,000 life insurance policy.
Since then, she repeatedly has appealed to state and federal courts concerning her trial attorney, Ron Mock. A longtime Harris County defense lawyer and former bar owner, Mock has seen 16 of his clients sent to death row and frequently has been accused of doing shoddy work on capital cases.
Defense attorney David Eisen, who worked on Newton's case briefly before her trial, said he was stunned to learn that all of her avenues for appeal had been exhausted.
"I was shocked that she never got a new trial," Eisen said recently. "I thought it was a clear case of ineffective assistance of counsel."
Mock, who no longer handles court-appointed capital cases, defends his work.
"I had nothing, really, to work with other than Frances saying that she didn't do it," he said Tuesday.
By any criteria, it was a tough case for a defense attorney.
Sheriff's deputies found the bodies of Adrian Newton, 23, and the couple's children, Alton, 7, and Farrah Elaine, 21 months, in April 1987 in the family's northwest Harris County apartment.
TIMELINE
April 7, 1987: Harris County sheriff's deputies find Frances Newton's husband, 7-year-old son and 21-month-old daughter dead from bullet wounds.
April 22, 1987: Newton charged with capital murder.
December 1987: Judge denies Newton's request to remove her court-appointed attorney.
Oct. 17, 1988: Judge denies Newton's request to hire new attorneys and delay the trial for them to prepare.
Oct. 21, 1988: Newton tells jurors she is innocent.
Oct. 25, 1988: Jury sentences Newton to death.
June 17, 1992: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upholds death sentence.
May 20, 2004: Federal appeals court rejects final appeal.
July 7, 2004: Judge scheduled to set Newton's execution date.
Authorities said Frances Newton took a gun from her boyfriend's home and hid it in an abandoned house after the killings. Newton contended that a drug dealer had killed the victims because her husband had failed to pay a debt.
Police recovered a pistol that experts said was the murder weapon, and prosecutors offered tests revealing gun residue on the clothes Newton wore the day of the murders. Also, witnesses said Newton had forged her husband's signature on $100,000 worth of insurance policies.
Court records show Mock's preparation for the trial was minimal. He filed no motions, failed to submit a subpoena list when the trial started and interviewed none of the witnesses.
Newton complained that Mock hardly spoke to her in the 18 months leading up to her trial.
"Mr. Mock has never sat down with me and went over the case in depth at all," she said at a September 1988 hearing.
Newton first asked state District Judge Charles Hearn to replace Mock as her attorney in August that year. Hearn refused, instead appointing a second attorney, Catherine Coulter, to assist him.
Several days before trial in October 1988, Newton told the judge that her family had obtained money to hire private attorneys. She asked him to delay the trial while her new lawyers prepared.
Before rejecting that request, Hearn held an unusual hearing in which Newton's hired attorney, Eisen, put Mock on the witness stand and asked about his preparation for the trial.
"Can you give me the name of any witnesses, either state or defense witnesses in this case, that you have talked to?" Eisen asked.
"Not off the top of my head, no, I can't," Mock said, according to court transcripts.
In the 18 months in which he was Newton's attorney, Mock said, he met with her in jail "three, maybe four times" for "probably one hour each."
He said much of his knowledge of the case was based on information from prosecutors and that Newton's family was uncooperative and failed to give him names or phone numbers of possible witnesses.
In her numerous appeals, Newton claimed ineffective assistance of counsel and argued that the judge denied her right to choose her lawyer.
Most recently, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Newton failed to show how she was harmed by the judge's decision not to let her change attorneys and allow time for them to prepare.
Federal courts did not address several of Newton's claims because state appeals courts already had rejected them. The attorney appointed to handle her state appeal has since died.
"She's had bad representation at every stage of the process. That's partly how she got where she is today," said Kenneth Williams, a former Houston lawyer and law professor who handled the case in its final stage of appeal.
Prosecutors dispute the contention that Newton was poorly represented at her trial.
"Ron Mock did a lot of these death penalty cases a long time ago. At the time, he did a good job with them," said Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson, who handles capital appeals.
"If you go back and look at the facts of this case, he did a more-than-adequate job," Wilson said. Some lawyers disagree.
"For so many of the people whom Ron was appointed to represent, their death warrant was signed when the ink was dry on the appointment form," said Brian Wice, a defense lawyer who was appointed in 1991 to review one of Mock's cases.
Mock said Newton's trial went about as well as could be expected, given his busy schedule and the facts of the murder.
Mock said he was not surprised that Newton's appellate attorneys criticized his work.
"It's always like that: `The lawyer should have done this, the lawyer should have done that,' " he said. "Of course they attacked me. That was their only grounds for appeal.
"We were stuck with what we had. We had nothing else to work with. It was just overpowering. I tell you, it still hurts me today."
HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Local & State
This article is: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2666030
Woman's execution scheduled for Dec. 1
Thu Jul 8, 2004 4:08pm
80.135.14.18
Woman's execution scheduled for Dec. 1
Longtime inmate nearing end of years of appeals
By ANDREW TILGHMAN, Houston Chronicle
After 16 years on death row for shooting her husband and two young
children in a scheme to collect a large insurance payment, 39-year-old
Frances Elaine Newton sat stoically in a Houston courtroom Wednesday as a
judge set her execution date for Dec. 1.
Newton smiled at friends and family members in the courtroom and remained
composed as state District Judge Jim Wallace read and signed her death
warrant. If the lethal injection is carried out, Newton will be only the
third woman executed in Texas in recent history. The other two, including
a Houston ax murderer, were put to death after capital punishment resumed
in Texas in 1982.
More than a dozen observers turned out for Newton's brief court
appearance, including Newton's mother, two sisters and several other men
and women from a prison ministry who have visited Newton on death row for
several years.
"I know she's innocent. We're a praying family, and we're going to keep on
praying," said Newton's mother, Iva Nelms, 63, outside the courtroom
Wednesday.
Newton has exhausted nearly all of her avenues for appeal. State and
federal appeals courts have repeatedly rejected claims that her
constitutional rights were violated because her court-appointed lawyer at
her 1988 trial, Ron Mock, was incompetent.
Mock said just days before the trial that he had not filed any motions,
spoken with any witnesses or submitted a list of possible witnesses to
subpoena.
Testifying in her trial, Newton blamed the murders on a drug dealer known
only as Charlie, to whom she said her husband owed money.
In April 1987, Harris County sheriff's deputies found the bodies of Adrian
Newton, 23, and the couple's children, Alton, 7, and Farrah Elaine, 21
months, in the family's northwest Harris County apartment.
Authorities said Frances Newton committed the murders with a gun from her
boyfriend's home, then hid it in an abandoned house.
Police recovered a pistol that experts said was the murder weapon, and
prosecutors offered tests revealing gun residue on the clothes Newton wore
the day of the murders. Also, witnesses said Newton had forged her
husband's signature on $100,000 worth of insurance policies. Newton was
convicted of capital murder in October 1988.
Outside the courtroom Wednesday morning, Newton's supporters remained
hopeful that the real killer will come forward before the execution.
"It would be wonderful if somebody would just walk up and say, `I know
what happened,' " Nelms said. "I really hope God touches somebody's heart
and makes them step forward. It's happened before."
Newton's current attorney, Yolanda Jarmon, asked Wallace to postpone
setting an execution date until later this year, after the U.S. Supreme
Court has a chance to review her final petition.
Jarmon declined to comment after the court hearing.
Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson said the courts have thoroughly
reviewed Newton's case. A recent federal appeals court ruling made a
last-minute hearing by the nation's highest court unlikely, Wilson said.
Aileen Jones, a Houston resident and volunteer who has visited Newton
regularly on death row, said she was disappointed to see Newton reach the
final stages of her case.
"Now that we're in the 11th hour, it has become a perfunctory, procedural
thing," Jones said after seeing Newton in court.
In the days before the trial, Newton and her family were unhappy with
Mock's representation and decided to hire a private attorney, David Eisen.
As the trial was set to begin, Newton asked state District Judge Charles
Hearn to postpone the trial so her new attorneys could prepare. When the
judge refused, Eisen withdrew and the trial began with Mock as the lead
defense attorney.
A federal appeals court ruled in May that Newton failed to show how she
was harmed by the decision not to delay the trial.
"This is a real travesty, as far as I'm concerned." said Eisen, who was at
the courthouse Wednesday morning. "She should have received some sort of
appellate relief."
While 321 men have been put to death in Texas since capital punishment
resumed in 1982, only two women have been executed. Karla Faye Tucker was
put to death in 1998 for killing a Houston couple with a pickax, and Betty
Lou Beets was executed in 2000 for murdering her husband outside Dallas.
Before them, the last woman put to death in Texas was Chipita Rodriguez.
She was hanged in 1863 for the ax murder of a horse trader.
---
Source : Houston Chronicle
This article is:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2668026
Texas set for first execution of African-American woman
Mon Aug 30, 2004 3:07am
80.135.10.62
Texas set for first execution of African-American woman
By John Moritz
Star-Telegram Austin Bureau
AUSTIN -- A Dec. 1 execution date has been set for a Houston woman who would be the first African-American woman put to death since Texas resumed capital punishment in 1982.
Frances Elaine Newton, now 39, was sentenced to die for killing her husband and two children on April 7, 1987. She was arrested two weeks later when she attempted to collect on recently purchased life-insurance policies.
Newton shot Adrian Newton, 23; Alton Newton, 7; and 21-month-old Farah Elaine Newton with a .25-caliber pistol she had borrowed from her boyfriend.
"There was never any question about Ms. Newton's guilt," said Roe Wilson, a Harris County prosecutor. "She was convicted and given the appropriate sentence."
According to prison records, Newton had separated from her husband about a month before the killings. About that time, she took out $50,000 life insurance policies on her husband, the youngest child and on herself. The older child's life had been insured previously.
On the night of April 7, Newton took her boyfriend's pistol with her as she visited the apartment where her husband and children were living. She said that she took the gun for protection and that everyone was alive when she left.
Kenneth Williams, her court-appointed lawyer, said Newton had a troubled childhood and a sometimes-abusive marriage, which he will include in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We are saying that these are mitigating factors that the jury should have been made aware of," Williams said.
He does not plan to suggest that Newton's race or gender should be a factor in determining whether she should be executed, Williams said.
Newton is one of nine condemned female inmates in Texas and would be the third woman executed in the modern era.
Houston's Karla Faye Tucker, who appealed her execution on the grounds that she became a Christian in prison and was rehabilitated, was put to death in February 1998 for a pickax slaying.
Betty Lou Beets, a Gun Barrel City woman condemned for killing her husband and burying him in a front-yard wishing-well planter, was executed in February 2000.
Two months after Tucker's execution, convicted murderer Erica Sheppard of Houston was in line to become the first African-American woman to be executed in Texas when she asked that a halt be put on all appeals on her behalf. Sheppard, convicted of bludgeoning a woman to death in 1993, allowed the appeals to continue after she was visited by the Rev. Jesse Jackson on Women's Death Row in Gatesville.
Texas women and the death penalty
# Karla Faye Tucker, executed Feb.3, 1998, for a pickax murder.
# Betty Lou Beets, executed Feb. 24, 2000, for killing her husband.
# Frances Elaine Newton, scheduled to die Dec. 1 for killing three family members.
John Moritz, (512) 476-4294
jmoritz@star-telegram.com
© 2004 Star-Telegram.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.dfw.com
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/9531551.htm
Growing introspection in death-penalty capital
Tue Nov 16, 2004 12:16pm
80.135.5.112
from the November 16, 2004 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1116/p02s01-usju.html
Growing introspection in death-penalty capital
By Kris Axtman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
HOUSTON - Before each execution in Texas, lawyers plead with the courts
to keep their clients alive. Some claim innocence, others a flawed
case. But ever since 280 boxes of uncatalogued evidence were found
disintegrating in a Houston Police Department warehouse in August,
those arguments have taken on greater meaning in Harris County, long
known as the death-penalty capital of the world.
The dusty boxes - mislabeled and improperly stored - contain
biological, ballistic, and other evidence from 8,000 county cases,
mostly murders, of the past quarter century. So far, officials have not
heeded calls to halt executions until the evidence is sorted through.
Meanwhile, a second Houston man has been released from prison for a
rape he did not commit.
These are the latest developments in the saga of the disgraced Houston
Police Department (HPD) crime lab, which was shut down two years ago
following reports of shoddy scientific practices.
And while executions occur here routinely, the crime-lab scandal, and
the cries of bungled evidence that precede each scheduled execution,
have sown new hesitation and doubt among Texans who had come to see DNA
evidence as foolproof.
Whether it will have any lasting impact on attitudes about the death
penalty here is yet to be seen, but opponents of capital punishment are
hopeful. While a new poll shows that 75 percent of Texans still support
the death penalty, a growing majority, 70 percent, also believe
innocent people have been put to death.
"This is a deeply entrenched issue and it takes a long time to generate
movement," says David Dow, a University of Houston law professor and
director of the Texas Innocence Project. "But we are getting people to
hesitate who would not ordinarily hesitate."
Among those with misgivings are Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt and
John Whitmire, chairman of the state Senate Committee on Criminal
Justice and a strong death-penalty supporter, who have called for a
moratorium on executions in Harris County until the 280 boxes are
sifted through.
In a letter calling for a moratorium, Senator Whitmire told Gov. Rick
Perry that he believes Harris County's criminal-justice system is
"broken." He sees halting executions not only as the moral thing to do,
but also as a matter of credibility for the state.
"I think the state is being harmed when you have the police chief of
your largest metropolitan city recommending a suspension of
executions," says Whitmire. "I can only imagine what people in the rest
of the country think about that."
Governor Perry rejected those calls, saying he is looking at the facts
of each case individually. Since the boxes were discovered, six Harris
County inmates have been put to death and three more are scheduled for
execution by the end of the year.
Frances Newton is one of them. She was convicted and sentenced to death
for killing her estranged husband and two children with her boyfriend's
pistol in 1987. The motive, said prosecutors, was their insurance money.
Her lawyers are claiming that the ballistics testing may have been
botched by HPD's crime lab and that the bullets at the crime scene did
not come from the gun in question. Last week, they filed a petition
seeking a 120-day reprieve to further investigate the case.
If none of that is resolved and she is executed on Dec. 1, Newton's
will be just one more in a string of death-row cases that may rattle
the residents of Harris County.
"Frankly, there is no way of knowing at the present time how much
damage there will be because of the [Houston crime lab]," says Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Barbara Hervey.
The question, she says, is whether Texas will be better off. Because of
the growing number of inmates who have been found innocent, her goal is
to make sure that each of the state's nine law schools have innocence
projects, like those at the University of Houston and the University of
Texas.
To that end, she persuaded the Court of Criminal Appeals to help
sponsor a "how to" conference for law schools last week, and shared a
popular theory: "If there are 150,000 people in Texas prisons and the
system is right 99.9 percent of the time, then 150 people are falsely
imprisoned."
Two Harris County inmates have been released from prison since the
crime lab was shut down. Last year, Josiah Sutton was released from a
25-year sentence for rape that DNA retesting proved he did not commit.
And last month, George Rodriguez, having served 17 years of a 60-year
sentence for kidnapping and rape, was released because of flawed
testimony from the lab.
Problems within the HPD crime lab "have changed the entire
death-penalty debate in Texas," says Dow, "but those particular
problems are going to solved. The question is whether Texans will
conclude that the criminal-justice system has been irretrievably
damaged or whether they think it is just an isolated incident and, when
it's fixed, it will be back to business as usual."
Death date nears for Texas woman convicted in slaying
Thu Nov 25, 2004 9:56am
80.135.22.208
Death date nears for Texas woman convicted in slaying
MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press
GATESVILLE, Texas -Alton was 7. Farrah was almost 2.
The first letters of their names were meant to reflect the initials of
their dad and mom - A and F, Adrian and Frances.
The last time Frances Newton saw her husband and children was more than
17 years ago, the evening of April 7, 1987, five days before her 22nd
birthday. She'd run a few errands and was accompanied by a cousin as
she returned to her Harris County apartment.
Adrian, Alton and Farrah were dead in the home. Two weeks later, Newton
was arrested and charged with murdering her family.
Convicted and condemned, she's scheduled to become the first black
woman executed in Texas on Dec. 1. In a state that annually leads the
nation in executions, Newton will become the fourth woman executed in
Texas since executions resumed in 1976, the 11th nationally.
But Newton says she didn't murder her family. She believes the real
killer is a drug dealer named "Charlie" who was upset with her husband
for not repaying a $500 debt.
She says she remembers walking into the apartment, looking for her
family, then finding Adrian's bloody body on the couch. Adrian, 23, had
been shot in the head. Alton and Farrah were shot in the chest.
"That's the worst feeling I've ever had," said Newton, 39. "When I
walked in and I found them, it was a scary feeling. It was
overwhelming, very frightening."
With no eyewitnesses and no confession, prosecutors built a
circumstantial case.
The murder weapon, a .25-caliber automatic pistol, was found in a blue
bag in an abandoned house that belonged to Newton's parents. The blue
dress Newton wore that night was found to have possible gunpowder
residue on it. Three weeks before the deaths, Newton took out $50,000
life insurance policies on herself, her husband and her daughter, with
herself as beneficiary. A day before her arrest, she applied for the
death benefits.
The insurance money was the motive, prosecutors said. The jury
convicted her in 1988.
"This is wrong, so wrong," Newton said she thought at the time.
She said the gun belonged to her husband, who had dealt drugs in the
past, and she hid at the abandoned house to keep him from getting into
trouble. The gunpowder residue, she said, really was fertilizer rubbed
on her dress by her daughter, who stayed with relatives during the day
while she worked at a tax accounting office. Her uncle had a large
garden, where he used fertilizer, and toddler Farrah would have
collected it on her shoes.
The insurance policies, she said, were a long-standing goal she was
able to achieve by saving money unknown to her husband.
Newton's case is the kind that shakes the confidence in the criminal
justice system, according to lawyers trying to help her, and provides
fodder for death penalty opponents questioning the competence of legal
help, particularly for the poor.
Newton's court-appointed lead trial attorney was Ronald G. Mock,
notorious for having his clients, perhaps as many as a dozen, wind up
on death row.
Mock has been suspended or placed on probation by the State Bar of
Texas at least three times since he first was licensed in 1978. Earlier
this year he was reprimanded for taking a case he wasn't competent to
handle, accepting payment, then refusing to refund the money.
Mock, whose office telephone number is disconnected, couldn't be
reached, for comment.
"I had nothing, really, to work with other than Frances saying that she
didn't do it," he told the Houston Chronicle in July when Newton
received her execution date.
Newton, in a recent interview at the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice Mountain View Unit just north of Gatesville, where the state's
nine condemned women are imprisoned, said when she was arrested, she
got the sense that Mock was confident she wouldn't be there long.
But as she remained in jail for months awaiting trial, her confidence
waned. Newton's mother contacted another Houston lawyer, David Eisen.
With jury selection finally under way, Eisen asked the Harris County
court if he could join the case, but asked for time to investigate.
Mock, he said, had conducted no investigation and never even talked to
one witness. The court refused.
"She didn't get a fair trial, not even close," Eisen said.
Adrian's drug history, Newton said, was tied to the slayings. He was
desperate to come up with $500 to repay a drug debt to a man she knew
only as "Charlie," so anguished he uncharacteristically approached
Newton's mother for the cash.
"That was very surprising," Newton said. "It showed me he really needed
it when he went to her."
John LaGrappe, a Houston lawyer trying to get Newton's case
investigated, said Charlie is a Colombian drug dealer he's trying to
locate.
The courts in previous appeals rejected arguments that Newton's early
legal help was poor, said Roe Wilson, an assistant district attorney in
Harris County.
"All of the claims, all the allegations and all the evidence that's
referred to is not newly discovered," Wilson said. "These were facts
that were available and known at the time of trial and the jury
obviously rejected."
David Dow, a University of Houston law professor also working on
Newton's case, appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for
permission to conduct additional ballistics tests and a nitrate
analysis on the gun and dress. Improved technology, not available at
the time of her trial, should aid her, LaGrappe said.
On Nov. 1, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review her case.
"It's a great, great tragedy," LaGrappe said. "Our criminal justice
system has conspired to sabotage this woman's right to due process."
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/10264133.htm
TX; Evidence at issue as womans execution nears
Sat Nov 27, 2004 6:45am
80.135.12.244
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-deathrow27nov27.story
Evidence at Issue as Woman's Execution Nears
Lawyers for Frances Newton, convicted of killing her family in Houston, seek new tests.
By Lianne Hart
Times Staff Writer
November 27, 2004
HOUSTON &Mac226;Äî On an April evening in 1987, Adrian Newton and his two young children were found dead in their northwest Houston apartment, all shot at close range.
The following year, Frances Newton &Mac226;Äî 23-year-old Adrian's wife and the mother of Alton, 7, and Farrah, 1 &Mac226;Äî was convicted of their murders and sentenced to death. Her motivation, prosecutors said, was to collect $100,000 from life insurance policies taken out shortly before they were killed.
Newton, 39, is scheduled for execution Wednesday. She would be the third woman and the first African American woman to be put to death in Texas since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1982.
The distinction has attracted more than the usual scant attention given to executions in Texas, where 23 inmates have been put to death so far this year. But the circumstances of Newton's conviction have also set her case apart.
During the 17 years in which Newton's case has wound through state and federal courts, her lawyers say, the circumstantial evidence against her has never been independently examined.
Her original defense attorney, Ron Mock &Mac226;Äî who has been suspended three times by the Texas Bar Assn. and is no longer allowed to take court-appointed capital murder cases &Mac226;Äî interviewed no witnesses before the trial. Ballistics tests key to convicting Newton were conducted by the now-discredited Houston Police Department crime lab. Nitrite traces found on her clothing &Mac226;Äî which could have come from a gun blast or something as common as garden fertilizer &Mac226;Äî can now be more precisely tested to determine its source.
With her federal and state appeals all but exhausted, Newton's lawyers petitioned the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles this month to issue a 120-day reprieve to allow for a thorough look at the evidence.
The Harris County district attorney's office opposes a reprieve, saying her conviction has been upheld by a series of state and federal judges. "Her case has been reviewed by every possible court," prosecutor Roe Wilson said. "She killed her two children and her husband. There is very, very strong evidence of that."
But David Dow, Newton's current lawyer, said that because her side of the story was never fully investigated, the courts were presented with an incomplete picture. "The issues we're raising have never been reviewed by anybody," he said. "It's therefore impossible for any court to have considered the evidence of her innocence, because no one sought to gain it."
At her trial, Newton accused a drug dealer she knew only as Charlie of killing her family in a dispute over money owed by her husband, also a dealer.
Newton was estranged from her husband at the time, living with him but dating someone else. When she found an unfamiliar gun in her home, she testified at trial, she took it out of the apartment as a safety measure. As her cousin watched, she hid it in an abandoned building next to the cousin's home.
The gun later was traced to Newton's boyfriend, who said he kept it in a bedroom dresser that Newton easily could have opened. Ballistics tests showed that the gun was the weapon used to shoot Adrian Newton in the head and the two children in their hearts.
Newton's lawyers now question the validity of ballistics tests conducted by the crime lab, whose flawed analysis in recent years has been an embarrassment to the force. For instance, during another capital murder trial, a Houston police firearms expert identified the murder weapon as .25-caliber, when in fact it was an easily distinguishable .22-caliber pistol.
Newton's lawyers want an independent lab to conduct a new ballistics test. They also question the source of the nitrite particles on the skirt Newton wore on the night of the murders.
But Wilson, the prosecutor, said additional testing wouldn't matter in this case. "The jury was aware that fertilizer can also show a positive for nitrites" but chose to disregard it, she said.
There are other doubts. Tests conducted on Newton's hands shortly after the killings showed she had not recently fired a gun, according to her petition to the parole board. And blood stains leading from Adrian Newton's body in the living room to the children's bedrooms indicated the shooter dripped blood, although no trace was found on Frances Newton, her clothes or the gun. Neither was there evidence of blood &Mac226;Äî or a quick cleanup &Mac226;Äî in the sinks and shower of the Newtons' apartment, her lawyers said.
In upholding her conviction in 1992, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wrote that her explanation of events leading up to the murders was not reasonable.
"A more cold-blooded, calculated act of violence is difficult to imagine," the judges wrote. Trial witnesses said Newton had forged her husband's signature on insurance policies taken out a month before the murders.
As her execution date neared, Newton's request for a reprieve was a last-ditch "ploy to get more time," said Frank Pratt, a sheriff's deputy who helped investigate the case in 1987.
But John LaGrappe, one of Newton's attorneys, called it a long-delayed search for justice. "In all these years, the police, her lawyers, no one ever investigated whether she was telling the truth. This woman was abandoned by the legal system," he said. "But if she's lying, these tests will hang her. She should get the chance to do them so that there will be no questions."
Woman faces execution, but not without a fight
Mon Nov 29, 2004 2:51am
80.135.20.141
Woman faces execution, but not without a fight
Questions raised about the quality of her defense and crime lab methods
By ANDREW TILGHMAN
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
Associated Press
Frances Newton, convicted of killing her husband and two young children in April 1987, has maintained her innocence.
It was Frances Newton who first called 911 to report that her husband and two children had been killed, summoning sheriff's investigators to a bloody crime scene at her north Harris County apartment.
Authorities found her husband on a couch, shot in the head. Her son and daughter were in their beds, each shot in the chest.
Initially, police had no suspects. But 13 days later, Newton was arrested and charged with capital murder in the April 9, 1987, deaths of Adrian Newton, 23; their son, Alton, 7; and daughter, Farah, 2.
"I was so scared and confused. Not only was my family dead, but then they're charging me with murder," Newton, now 39, recalled recently, seated in a visitor's stall at the women's death row at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville.
After nearly 17 years of claiming innocence, Newton is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Wednesday. She would be the third woman executed in Texas since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.
Prosecutors said Newton killed her family because she wanted to collect a $100,000 life insurance payment.
Questions have been raised, however, about the quality of her legal defense and the reliability of forensic testing by the Houston Police Department crime lab, both of which have come under scrutiny in recent years, her attorneys said.
Newton does not claim to know who killed her family. But she says it may have been a drug dealer she knew only as Charlie, who was trying to collect a debt from her husband, a longtime drug addict.
State and federal judges have repeatedly rejected her claims that her case was never fully investigated because her lawyers failed to provide effective legal representation.
Court-appointed lawyer
Newton could not afford to hire an attorney. The attorney appointed to handle her 1988 trial was longtime Harris County defense lawyer Ron Mock.
Mock has seen 16 clients sent to death row and frequently has been accused of doing shoddy work on capital cases, court records show. Newton said that, in the months leading up to the trial, Mock rarely spoke with her about her case.
In a court hearing shortly before the trial, Mock said he had not filed any motions, spoken with any witnesses or submitted a list of possible witnesses to subpoena.
Catherine Coulter, the attorney appointed to work with Mock, signed an affidavit last week agreeing with Newton's attorneys that she and Mock provided ineffective legal assistance.
For example, she said, Mock told her he had thoroughly investigated the physical and scientific evidence in the case, but later admitted he had not.
"It is extraordinarily difficult to effectively represent someone when your co-counsel is not being truthful," Coulter stated in her affidavit.
The document will be attached to Newton's final appeal, which is pending before the state Court of Criminal Appeals. Newton also has a clemency petition pending before the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.
'Tired' attorney
Mock said in a recent interview that he felt professionally burned out at the time of Newton's trial and was not enthusiastic about her case.
"I did 19 capital cases and I was tired," he said earlier this year. "I didn't want that case. (Judge) Charlie Hearn asked me to take it."
The case was an uphill battle, Mock recalled.
"I had nothing, really, to work with other than Frances' saying that she did not do it."
Mock has been barred from accepting court-appointed capital cases since 2001, when state legislators enacted landmark reforms in the way indigent legal defense is handled in Texas.
Fears about poor legal representation for capital defendants helped lead to adoption of the Fair Defense Act, which raised the standards for lawyers on death-penalty cases and increased the resources available for their investigations.
Ballistics tests questioned
In Newton's case, prosecutors said the murder weapon was a .25-caliber automatic pistol that was found in a blue bag in an abandoned house near her apartment.
Newton's cousin told authorities that she saw Newton hide the gun in the house.
Newton explained that she had found the unfamiliar gun at home and removed it as a safety precaution. Her husband sometimes carried a weapon and she did not want him to get into trouble, she said.
Newton's attorneys recently questioned the ballistics tests on the gun. The tests were conducted by the Houston Police Department crime lab, which suspended DNA testing in December 2002 because of problems including an undertrained staff, shoddy scientific technique and conditions ripe for evidence contamination.
Court records show that tests also found traces of possible gunpowder on the dress Newton wore. But her attorneys say that may have been garden manure, which, like gunpowder, has nitrates and can trigger a false positive test result.
Initial tests on Newton's hands on the night of the crime found no evidence that she had fired a gun, court records show.
Prosecutors have opposed requests for new testing on the dress, despite new technology that could differentiate between gunpowder and manure.
Unresolved issues
Several days after the slayings, an anonymous caller reported seeing an unfamiliar black man in a red truck outside the Newtons' apartment on the night of the killings. The tip included a license plate number registered to a local man, but the tip was not investigated, Newton's attorneys said.
Newton's cousin said Newton appeared surprised and distraught when they returned from shopping and found the bodies. They immediately called police, the cousin said.
Other aspects of the crime, including chronology placing Newton with relatives about the time of the murders, suggests she was wrongly convicted, said attorney John LaGrappe, who began representing her several months ago.
"At no point in the past 18 years has anyone investigated whether Frances Newton is telling the truth. Not the police, not the Harris County prosecutors, not Frances' lawyers," LaGrappe said. "This was flawed from the beginning and she has never received a fair day in court."
Roe Wilson, the Harris County prosecutor who has opposed Newton's appeals, said all of her claims were reviewed by numerous state and federal courts. There is no reason to believe Newton did not kill her family, she said.
"They are just rehashing and re-arguing old evidence," Wilson said. "The only thing unusual about this case is that Frances Newton is a female.
"The fact of the matter is that women don't get a free pass on capital murder. They are just as subject to the law as men are."
andrew.tilghman@chron.com
HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Local & State
This article is: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2922488
Parole board recommending delaying execution of woman
Tue Nov 30, 2004 12:51pm
80.135.28.129
Parole board recommending delaying execution of woman in family's
deaths
Associated Press
HUNTSVILLE - The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted today to
recommend Gov. Rick Perry delay the scheduled execution this week of
condemned inmate Frances Newton for 120 days.
Newton, 39, is set for lethal injection Wednesday for the 1987 shooting
deaths of her husband and two children at their Harris County
apartment. In Texas, she could become the first black woman executed
and only the fourth woman executed since the Civil War.
In a 5-1 vote, the board agreed with Newton and her attorneys that she
should be given the extra time so her attorneys can investigate claims
that she may be innocent, that evidence against her should be retested
and that she had poor representation at her trial.
Perry can agree with the board or ignore their recommendation and allow
the execution.
This article is:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/topstory/2924936
Delay woman's execution, board says
Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:10pm
80.135.28.129
Delay woman's execution, board says
11:35 AM CST on Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Associated Press
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted Tuesday to recommend Gov. Rick Perry delay the scheduled execution this week of condemned inmate Frances Newton for 120 days.
Newton, 39, is set for lethal injection Wednesday for the 1987 shooting deaths of her husband and two children at their Harris County apartment. In Texas, she could become the first black woman executed and only the fourth woman executed since the Civil War.
In a 5-1 vote, the board agreed with Newton and her attorneys that she should be given the extra time so her attorneys can investigate claims that she may be innocent, that evidence against her should be retested and that she had poor legal representation at her trial.
Perry can agree with the board or ignore their recommendation and allow the execution.
There was no immediate comment from the governor's office.
"I'm cautious until the governor endorses the recommendation," said David Dow, one of Newton's lawyers. "There's been a previous clemency request he's not endorsed, so I'm a little bit nervous."
Earlier this year Perry rejected a clemency recommendation for mentally ill death row inmate Kelsey Patterson, who was later executed.
Prosecutors said Newton killed her husband, Adrian, 23, and two children, Alton, 7, and Farrah, 20 months, to collect $100,000 in insurance benefits on policies she recently had purchased.
An appeal seeking a delay in the punishment was dismissed Monday by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. A similar appeal remained before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
"I didn't murder my husband and my children and I wasn't going to plea bargain for anything, and I still won't," Newton told The Associated Press in a recent interview at the Mountain View Unit near Gatesville, where the state's nine condemned women are imprisoned.
Newton was offered a life prison term before her capital murder trial in exchange for a guilty plea, a deal she said she rejected. Under guidelines at the time, she could have been nearly eligible for parole by now.
Her appeals attorneys, arguing she could be innocent, want time to conduct new ballistics tests on the .25-caliber pistol prosecutors said was the murder weapon and chemical analysis on the clothing she was wearing April 7, 1987, the evening of the slayings. They also argued her trial lawyers were incompetent and failed to properly investigate the case.
Prosecutors have opposed the requests, saying the claims raised no new issues and were resolved at her trial.
In Huntsville, preparations began for Newton's lethal injection.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said prison officials were informed Newton wanted no last meal served to her Wednesday afternoon in a small holding cell just outside the death chamber. She also designated her parents, two sisters and a brother, along with a spiritual adviser, to witness her death.
Newton was to be moved at an undisclosed time about 140 miles from Gatesville to the Goree Unit south of Huntsville, where she will be allowed visitors early Wednesday. Later that day, she'll be taken to the Huntsville Unit in downtown Huntsville.
The only change in the death house routine would be the addition of women corrections staffers, Lyons said.
"Usually there are no females back there," she said.
Newton would be the 24th Texas inmate executed this year, equaling the total of executions in the state last year. A record 40 were injected in 2000.
She would be the third woman in modern times executed in Texas, where 336 prisoners have been put to death since 1982. Nationally, she'd be the 11th woman executed and the first since Florida injected a woman in October 2002.
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/120104dntxswexecution.4cc4.html
Texas punishes another inmate in a cruel, unusual manner
Sun Dec 5, 2004 5:52am
80.135.27.157
Texas punishes another inmate in a cruel, unusual manner
Jan Jarboe Russell, San Antonio Express-News
Imagine that you are Frances Newton.
You're black, you're 39 years old, and you're one of nine women on death
row in Texas. You've been in prison since April 1987, when your husband,
Adrian, your 7-year-old son, Alton, and your baby daughter, Farrah, were
murdered in Houston.
Prosecutors say you killed your family to collect $100,000 in insurance.
You say you're innocent.
It's Wednesday, the day you're scheduled to die. You're placed in a cell
adjacent to the death chamber in Huntsville, a cell smaller than the
infamous cells in Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq.
You're stripped naked and searched, presumably to make sure you don't kill
yourself before Texas does.
There's nothing to do but wait for a life-or-death telephone call. If the
call doesn't come, you're going to be strapped down on a gurney, $87 worth
of lethal drugs will be pumped into your veins, and you'll be dead in less
than 10 minutes.
This will happen even though the U.S. Supreme Court has continually
rebuked the state of Texas for the unjust way it manages capital
punishment.
Make no mistake: There's nothing fair about the way the death penalty is
administered in Texas. Two years ago, in an appeal of a Texas case, the
U.S. Supreme Court banned executions of the mentally retarded. Recently,
the Supreme Court took a Texas court to task in a death penalty case for
ignoring proper jury instructions.
In Texas, at least four inmates have been executed after lawyers failed to
file federal appeals in time. We lead the country in executions and have
no public defenders for capital appeals.
The Houston Police Department's crime lab is so unreliable that Houston
Police Chief Harold Hutt has called for a moratorium on all executions
from Houston.
You're Frances Newton. You're from Houston, and there is no moratorium on
the death penalty.
Hours pass. You tap your foot, waiting on a telephone call from Gov. Rick
Perry. You have little hope. Last May, the six-member Texas Board of
Pardons and Paroles recommended that the life of a mentally ill man
convicted of murder be spared. Perry said no, and the inmate was executed.
Heaven knows, there are no wussies on the Texas Board of Pardons and
Paroles. Usually, the board just rubber-stamps the rejections of requests
by condemned inmates.
But, lo and behold, the board voted Tuesday 5-1 to stop your execution and
allow new tests on key evidence in your case.
Will Perry say no to you as well?
You pass the time thinking about what you'll write in your final
statement. Two hours before you are scheduled to die, the telephone rings.
Miracle of miracles, Perry agrees with the parole board, even though the
governor says in a statement: "I see no evidence of innocence."
You have four more months to live. Do you feel relieved or just exhausted?
You go back to your cell.
An hour later, at 7 p.m., you tell yourself: "Sixty minutes have passed
since I was supposed to die, but I'm still alive."
So here's the bottom line: If you're Newton, how could you believe that
the Texas death penalty is anything other than cruel and unusual? If
you're not Newton, how can you let the state of Texas apply the death
penalty in such an unfair way in your name with your tax dollars?
An hour after Newton was scheduled to die, Sister Helen Prejean, the
Catholic nun whose book "Dead Man Walking" helped spark a national
campaign for a moratorium on the death penalty, spoke to a crowd at Travis
Park United Methodist Church in San Antonio.
She commended Perry for staying Newton's execution but said the entire
process of waiting for the reprieve is inhumane in itself.
"More and more, Texas is standing out as a killing field, even as the rest
of the country quietly puts away the machinery of death," she said.
Sister Helen is correct. Last year, the outgoing governor of Illinois
cleared out the nation's eighth-biggest death row. In June, New York's
highest court threw out the state's death-penalty laws. In the past few
years, dozens of inmates have been released from death rows after being
exonerated.
Will Newton be one of them? She has four months to make her case. If she
doesn't, the process of waiting for the telephone call will begin all
over.
---
Source : San Antonio Express-News
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/columnists/jrussell/stories/MYSA120504.6H.JarboeRussell.b53273d0.html
Texas death-row reprieve one of few
Tue Dec 7, 2004 7:15am
80.135.24.222
Texas death-row reprieve one of few
By Nikki Buskey
Activists call Texas a state without mercy when it comes to the death penalty, but in a rare move two hours before she was to be executed, Gov. Rick Perry granted convicted murderer Frances Newton a 120-day reprieve so the courts could re-investigate her case.
Newton was convicted for the 1987 shooting deaths of her husband and two young children. Prosecutors claimed Newton committed the murder to collect $100,000 in life-insurance money. She has always claimed innocence and said the murderer might have been a drug dealer she knew only as "Charlie," who was trying to collect a debt from her drug-addicted husband.
"After a lengthy review of the appellate court ruling, and clemency proceedings, I see no evidence of innocence," Perry said in a written statement. "However, I am granting the additional time to allow the courts the opportunity to order a retesting of gunpowder residue on the skirt the defendant wore at the time of the murders and of the gun used in the murders."
Some questions have been raised about ballistics tests used as evidence in Newton's case because they were run through the Houston Police Department crime lab, which suspended DNA testing in December 2002 due to problems that led to evidence contamination.
"It was scandal-ridden," said Jared Tyler, a Houston lawyer who has worked on Newton's behalf. "The labs shut down. They failed basically every test you could fail."
According to court records, tests found traces of possible gunpowder on Newton's dress, but her attorneys now say it could have been garden manure which also contains nitrates. Tests performed on Newton's hand on the night of the crime found no evidence that she had fired a gun.
"Although this evidence was evaluated by the jury and the appellate courts, new technology is available for testing gunpowder residue," Perry stated.
A call for a moratorium in Harris County is underway because death penalty cases with evidence processed in the labs have come up for execution, Tyler said.
Another issue with Newton's case is she was provided inadequate defense by the state, said Kathleen Feyh, spokeswoman for the UT branch of Campaign to End the Death Penalty.
Newton was defended by court-appointed lawyer Ron Mock, who is known around the state for having 16 of his clients sent to death row, according to the Houston Chronicle.
"There's a joke we have," Feyh said. "That part of death row should be named the 'Mock Wing' because he's sent so many people there."
The attorney appointed to assist Mock, Catherine Coulter, gave sworn testimony that Mock told her he had thoroughly gone over the evidence in the case, but later admitted he had not. According to an article by the Houston Chronicle, Mock admitted at a hearing just a few days before the trial that he had not interviewed any witnesses or filed any motions in the case.
Mock has been disciplined by the state bar six times and suspended twice.
Mock said in an interview conducted by the Houston Chronicle that he hadn't wanted to take Newton's case because he was burned out, but that he had been asked to by a judge.
Only two other reprieves have been issued during Perry's term as governor. One was granted in 2001 to Jeffery Tuckey, who was set to be executed Sept. 11, when federal offices closed because of the terrorist attacks.
The second reprieve went to Rodolfo Hernandez in March 2002 so police could investigate claims he could provide evidence in several unsolved murder cases.
"Inadequate defense, not having lot a lot of money, the Houston crime lab. These are certainly issues that plague many of the cases on death row," Feyh said. "They should call the death penalty into question."
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2004/12/07/StateLocal/Texas.DeathRow.Reprieve.One.Of.Few-823621.shtml?page=1
Defending death-row inmates a calling for GU law professor
Mon Aug 30, 2004 1:13pm
80.135.10.62
Defending death-row inmates a calling for GU law professor
Desire for fairness, empathy with poor drives Ken Williams
Ken Williams is putting in time at the GU law library while seeking
high court review of the case of Frances Newton. (Christopher
Anderson/The Spokesman-Review )
Rob McDonald
Staff writer
July 19, 2004
A law professor at Gonzaga University is the last chance Frances
Elaine Newton has to escape becoming the third woman executed in
Texas since the state revived the death penalty.
Ken Williams, who came to GU two years ago, has been defending death-
row clients for several years while also teaching law. It's work
that speaks to his empathy with the impoverished and his desire to
operate as a check on the system, ensuring fairness.
Newton was convicted of forging her husband's signature on $100,000
worth of insurance policies and using her boyfriend's gun to shoot
her husband, her 7-year-old child, Alton, and 21-month-old daughter,
Farrah Elaine, in 1987.
Williams wants the court to order a retrial of Newton's case and
allow a jury to hear mitigating evidence that she was abused by her
husband. Newton contends she's innocent, that her husband and family
were killed by a drug dealer trying to collect a debt from her
husband.
A copyrighted Houston Chronicle story quoted Newton's mother as
saying, "I know she's innocent. We're a praying family, and we're
going to keep on praying."
Williams has met with Newton three times.
"She's a very pleasant, quiet person," Williams said. "You'd meet
her and think there's no way she could have done this."
Newton was jailed when she was 23. The petite woman is now 39.
"She does write me letters on a regular basis," Williams said.
Mainly, she'll offer legal advice, potentially helpful rulings,
anything that might help her case, he said.
There's a strong chance she'll be dead Dec. 1. The court set her
date of execution earlier this month.
Working pro bono, Williams is crafting his request for a U.S.
Supreme Court review of the case, which is due Aug. 18. All other
legal venues have been exhausted. More than 10,000 cases are offered
to the nation's highest court and fewer than 100 are routinely
reviewed, Williams said.
"I've seen a lot of good cases slip through the cracks," Williams
said.
Should Newton's review be denied and her execution become
inevitable, he plans to visit her one last time. He will not stay to
watch her die.
"I don't have any desire to see that," Williams said. Until now,
he's only seen people die from serious illness.
Soon after Newton's execution date was set, Williams received calls
from journalists from around the country. He's not received a call
about the three men on death row he also represents.
"Society still has difficulty in accepting a woman killing,"
Williams said.
Williams was recruited to Gonzaga University's School of Law two
years ago as part of an effort to bring in professors of varied
experiences, said Gonzaga's Academic Vice President Stephen Freedman.
"He's a pretty serious guy," Freedman said. "He's a person who takes
his research very seriously."
Soon after settling into Spokane, Gonzaga President Rev. Robert
Spitzer told Williams that he is the first tenured African American
professor in the history of the Jesuit school.
Williams admits he thought he'd heard wrong at first. As far as
anyone knows, it's true, Freedman said.
Williams is taking a year's leave in the fall to teach at
Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles, a school that
specializes in criminal law.
"I plan to come back," Williams said, "unless President Kerry calls
to appoint me to the Supreme Court."
Williams worked previously at Texas Southern University's Thurgood
Marshall School of Law in Houston. Gonzaga gave him a chance to try
something different, he said.
While in Texas, which has some 500 death-row inmates, Williams
discovered he liked the death row appeals. The cases complement his
sense of empathy imparted by his mother.
"My mother was real poor. She was a waitress (in a bar)," Williams
said. "Before she died, it always seemed she had a really hard life.
Ever since she died, I wanted to devote myself to people like her."
Williams was 12 when his mother died of lung cancer in New Orleans.
His father was a school principal.
His love of law came early in his college career at the Jesuit-run
University of San Francisco. After graduating in 1983, he entered a
top-10 law school, the University of Virginia School of Law.
"I didn't come into my own as a student until college," Williams
said.
But once he understood the power of the law, he knew that was his
lifetime path.
"I knew I wanted to help people. I wanted to help people who were
downtrodden," he said.
After graduating from law school, Williams returned to New Orleans.
He did some public defender work and took a job with the National
Labor Relations Board. He pursued an academic career after meeting a
woman who would become his mentor, Ruth Coker, a fellow board member
for the ACLU in Texas. After a few years, he was hired by Texas
Southern University.
In Houston, he met a group of attorneys who specialized in capital
punishment cases.
"It seemed like such an awesome responsibility to have someone's
life in my hands," Williams said. "I get to help someone and be
intellectually stimulated. It's the best of both worlds."
A federal judge did order a new trial for one of Williams' clients,
Howard Guidry.
Guidry was convicted of a contract killing of a woman involved in a
bitter divorce. Williams argued that Guidry was tricked into
confessing and was prosecuted with hearsay testimony. An appeal of
the order for a retrial is pending.
"Anything goes in Texas," Williams said. "A lot of these people get
terrible representation."
Probably the most frequent question Williams hears is, " `How can
you defend these people?' "
There must be some checks on the power of police and defenders, he
said. By giving the best possible representation, he's ensuring the
system works and remains healthy, he said. To date nationally, some
200 people on death row have been discovered to be innocent, he said.
The experience Williams receives from his pro bono work is then
shared with his students, who pay to learn how to think about the
law.
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story.asp?ID=16399
Copyright 2000 National Broadcasting Co. Inc.
NBC News Transcripts
SHOW: DATELINE NBC (8:00 PM ET)
August 30, 2000, Wednesday
MOCK JUSTICE?; THE COMPETENCY OF A TEXAS PUBLIC DEFENDER
QUESTIONED
JANE PAULEY: If your life depended on it, you'd certainly want the best
lawyer you could find. Tonight, you'll meet a lawyer with years of
experience handling tough cases. "The worst of the worst," is how he
describes them. Unfortunately, some say it might be an apt description
of his track record, too. He's been chosen by the courts to handle
these life-and-death cases. But, ask yourself: would you trust him with
your life? And what if you didn't have a choice? Here's Len Cannon.
Mr. RON MOCK: (Voiceover) I'm a damn good lawyer. I'm a hard-working
lawyer. I will fight. I will fight, fight, fight for a client.
(Segment graphic)
Mr. MOCK: I will fight all the way to the end.
CANNON: (Voiceover) He's proud, confident. He's even a little cocky.
Mr. MOCK: It's my courtroom.
CANNON: It's your courtroom?
Mr. MOCK: Yes, it's my courtroom. When I walk in a courtroom, it's my
courtroom.
What's going on? How you doing?
CANNON: (Voiceover) For more than 20 years, attorney Ron Mock has been a
fixture in these Houston, Texas, courtrooms. A lawyer for the poor and
disadvantaged.
(Mock greeting people in courthouse)
Mr. MOCK: You understand that? You've got to answer.
CANNON: (Voiceover) He defends what he calls "the worst of the worst,"
people accused of rape, robbery, murder.
(Mock in court)
Mr. MOCK: My name's Ron Mock, I've been appointed to represent you.
CANNON: (Voiceover) At least 13 times in his career, he's defended people
facing the death penalty. At least 13 times, it was up to him to try and
save their lives.
(Mock in court)
CANNON: Why have you taken on these kinds of cases? Capital-murder
cases, why?
Mr. MOCK: I'm an advocate, and an advocate doesn't make choices.
CANNON: (Voiceover) And judges seem to agree. They've chosen Mock to
handle so many cases, over 1,000 in all, that for several years in the
1980s, he was the highest paid court-appointed lawyer in Harris County,
which includes Houston. Some years, making over $ 100,000. Mock says
his clients get Perry Mason quality at court-appointed prices.
(Court documents; newspaper article; Mock in court)
Mr. MOCK: They can hire, pay for and get nothing better, nothing more than
what I give. Nothing.
CANNON: (Voiceover) One man who badly needed Mock's help was Gary
Graham, 17 years old and facing the death penalty.
(Photo of Gary Graham)
CANNON: What was your impression of Gary Graham?
Mr. MOCK: Gary Graham was a mean, vicious "shut your mouth," as they
would say in "Shaft."
CANNON: (Voiceover) In May of 1981, Graham was already in jail for a
string of armed robberies and shootings he later confessed to when he
became the principal suspect in a murder. The victim was killed at a
Houston supermarket. To police, the pieces against Mock's client seemed
to fit. They said Graham resembled a sketch of the suspect, the shooting
happened in the same week and same area as Graham's other crimes. And
Graham was arrested carrying a .22-caliber gun, the kind of weapon used
to kill the victim. Police also had an eyewitness. Bernadine Skillern
picked Graham out of a photo lineup, then a live lineup. She has never
wavered.
(Jail exterior; jail cell bars; police sirens; photo of supermarket;
police officer driving; sketch of suspect; photo of Graham; photo of
supermarket; gun; Bernadine Skillern; photo lineup; photo of lineup)
Ms. BERNADINE SKILLERN: (From file footage) There is no doubt in my mind
that I saw Mr. Graham kill Mr. Lambert on that parking lot 19 years ago.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. No
deals. To Mock, it was an uphill battle.
(Graham in custody)
Mr. MOCK: I thought the only chance I had was to beat Bernadine Skillern.
CANNON: The sole eyewitness?
Mr. MOCK: The sole eyewitness. That was the only chance I had to save
his life.
CANNON: (Voiceover) After a four-day trial based solely on the strength of
Skillern's testimony with no physical evidence linking Graham to the
crime, a jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to die.
(Empty courtroom)
CANNON: An open and shut case? Maybe not. Did Ron Mock do everything
that he could for Gary Graham? In 1993, after 12 years on death row,
Graham got a new attorney. His name was Dick Burr, and he started to dig.
(Voiceover) Burr reviewed the police report, details of the trial and
Mock's work on the case. At first he was curious, then concerned, soon
he was shocked.
(Photo of Graham on document; Dick Burr typing at computer)
Mr. DICK BURR: The performance that he had in this case is an example of
something that should be intolerable to anybody that cares about justice.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Burr has worked on over 100 death-penalty appeals,
and freely admits many of his clients were guilty. But Graham? To him,
the Graham case was different.
(Graham)
Mr. BURR: I've represented people in capital cases for more than 20 years.
I have faith in the human beings that comprise the system. That faith
has been substantially shaken after 20 years by what happened to Gary
Graham.
CANNON: (Voiceover) What mainly happened to Gary Graham, Burr says, was
Ron Mock's failure, again and again, to do the most basic defense work.
First, Burr says had Mock done even a little investigation, he would
have discovered that at least two witnesses mentioned in the police
report would have contradicted Bernadine Skillern, the prosecution's
main witness.
(Mock; court documents; photos of witnesses)
Unidentified Woman #1: When they showed me the photo of Gary Graham,
"It's not him. It is not the guy I saw that night.
Unidentified Man #11: This is not the person that I saw that night in the
parking lot.
CANNON: (Voiceover) These two witnesses speaking to NBC News were both
working at the supermarket the night of the murder and were interviewed
by police in 1981. Mock never called them to the stand. In fact, he
never even called them on the phone.
(Photo of supermarket; Mock in court)
Mr. BURR: That's the tragedy of this case. They weren't heard from at
trial because Ron Mock never talked with them, he never investigated them.
CANNON: How did you know they didn't have anything important to say?
Mr. MOCK: I went from what I knew and what I felt. I had my feeling about
that.
CANNON: Mr. Mock, your client was on trial and could be put to death, and
you had a feeling that it wasn't important to talk to people who could
possibly contradict the prosecution's star witness?
Mr. MOCK: They could not--they could not. As far as I was concerned...
CANNON: But you never talked to them.
Mr. MOCK: I never did.
CANNON: So how do you know what they could or could not deliver?
Mr. MOCK: I don't know it at this day.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Mock says he read the police report and didn't see
any information worth pursuing because he said the report stated that
the witnesses never saw the shooter's face.
(Mock in court)
CANNON: Aren't you supposed to go and do your own investigation? You're
the defense attorney.
Mr. MOCK: When there's something to investigate. I didn't' feel that those
people could help me.
CANNON: How do you know...
Mr. MOCK: And I wasn't going to waste the time of talking to them. I just
really wasn't.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Mock says it was his carefully considered strategy
not to call those witnesses. If he had, he says their testimony would
have opened the door, allowing the prosecution to tell the jury about
Graham's admitted crime spree.
(Mock; Graham)
Mr. BURR: He could not make any kind of reasonable judgment about
calling them or not calling them unless he talked to them.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Then, there was Bernadine Skillern herself, the one
woman who picked Graham out of a lineup. In the police report, she said
the shooter was "clean shaven" and had a close-cut afro. Now, take
another look at this photo lineup Skillern was shown. All of the men have
either bushy afros, facial hair or both. All except this man, Gary Graham.
To Burr, the implication is clear: that police stacked the deck so that
Skillern would pick Graham.
(Skillern; police report with highlighted text; photos from photo lineup)
Mr. BURR: All you have is a possibility that she was accurate, and that's
wrong! That shouldn't have happened. And Ron Mock bears major
responsibility for that.
CANNON: You could have shown her the photo lineup that she reviewed,
could you not?
Mr. MOCK: Yes, I could.
CANNON: And you could have pointed out that in that photo lineup, Gary
Graham was the only one in the lineup who was clean shaven. He's the
only one in the lineup who had short hair.
Mr. MOCK: I could have done that. If I didn't...
CANNON: That could have raised some doubts about the method of the lineup.
Mr. MOCK: If I didn't do that, I didn't do it, and don't know why 20 years
later I didn't. I cannot say why I didn't, if I didn't. I really can't.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Finally, there was that .22-caliber gun found on
Graham, the same type of weapon used in the murder. But what the jury
never heard was that a ballistics test proved that the fatal bullet did
not come from that gun. Again, Mock says had he brought up the
gun, it would have allowed the prosecution to tell the jury about
Graham's other crimes.
(Gun; Mock in court)
CANNON: So again you felt like your hands were tied. You didn't want his
record to come in?
Mr. MOCK: Right. And it would've come in.
CANNON: So you're saying Gary Graham would've been convicted because
he's a bad guy, even though he may not have done this crime?
Mr. MOCK: Absolutely, I've seen it happen too many times. And it's not
right. I don't agree with it. But that is what is.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Is Gary Graham innocent? Even Dick Burr doesn't know
for sure. He admits Skillern was a persuasive witness, but he thinks she
was mistaken, and he believes it was Mock's mistakes that may have put
the wrong man on death row. For seven years, Burr fought to save
Graham's life. But in the end, the US Supreme Court, the Texas Board of
Pardon and Paroles and Texas Governor George Bush all agreed the
execution should move forward.
(Graham; Burr; Supreme Court building; George W. Bush)
Governor GEORGE W. BUSH: Mr. Graham has had full and fair access to
state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court.
After considering all the facts, I am confident justice is being done.
CANNON: People say, 'Look. Gary Graham had his day in court over and
over and over again. He was on death row for almost 20 years. It is an
example that the system worked.'
Mr. BURR: The reality is that for seven years, once this evidence was
discovered, Gary Graham and his beleaguered lawyers knocked at
courthouse doors, and the damn doors were locked.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Locked, Burr says, because appellate courts never
allowed a second jury to weigh the evidence about the witnesses, the gun
and the lineup, evidence the jury that sentenced Graham to death never
heard. And locked in prison, the week before his scheduled execution,
Graham said he didn't deserve to die.
(Death row sign; photos of witnesses; gun; photo lineup; Graham)
Mr. GARY GRAHAM: (From file footage) I should not be executed, I should
not be lynched for a crime in which there is overwhelming and compelling
evidence to prove my innocence.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Time had run out for Gary Graham. On June 22nd,
hundreds of people protested outside this Texas prison. Inside, strapped
to this gurney, Graham began his final statement saying, "I did not kill
Bobby Lambert." And then uttered, "They are murdering me tonight." At
8:49 PM, Gary Graham died.
After Graham's execution, we wanted to know more about Ron Mock,
the man who so many times has stood between his clients and the death
chamber. Here's what we found: in one death penalty case, a
defendant complained to a judge, having Mock as a lawyer, is "like not
having one at all." Another client's father wrote, "Mock refuses to
show interest in his son's case. And even a federal judge wrote about
Mock's representation in one case, that if Mock was not an ineffective
lawyer, "there is no such animal. And we should quit talking as if there
is." In fact, so many of Mock's death-penalty cases, 11 of at least 13
clients have been given the death penalty, that some people have even
called Texas death row, "the Mock wing." How could such a controversial
lawyer get handed one death penalty case after another? Why would judges
continue to appoint him? And who is watching the system?
(Graham; protesters outside prison; gurney; Graham; gurney; syringe; Mock;
letter from defendant with highlighted text; letter from client's father
with highlighted text; court documents with highlighted text;
death row cells; Mock in court; gavel; Texas flag)
PHILLIPS: Returning to our story, for years defense attorney Ron Mock has
been appointed by the courts to take on the toughest of cases. At least
13 of them involving the death penalty. In 11 cases his clients have
been found guilty and sentenced to death row. Are these men getting
justice? Another case is about to create another controversy. Here again
Len Cannon.
CANNON: You, in effect, have become a lightning rod, a poster boy, if you
will, for bad attorneys and what is wrong with court-appointed
attorneys. You realize that?
Mr. RON MOCK: I understand that, and that's why I'm talking to you,
because it's not so.
CANNON: You don't ever fall short in your defense?
Mr. MOCK: I have never done that.
CANNON: In your ability to defend people?
Mr. MOCK: I have never done that.
CANNON: You've never fallen short?
Mr. MOCK: I've never fallen short. Never fallen short.
CANNON: How many grievances have you filed against you?
Mr. MOCK: I don't know. Maybe even 100.
CANNON: A hundred?
Mr. MOCK: Maybe. Maybe. In 26 years, yes. Because when clients don't
like what you are saying they're going to receive, they want another
lawyer. 'Well, I'll just fire you. I'll get another lawyer.'
CANNON: (Voiceover) One client who asked for a new lawyer but didn't get
one was Anthony Ray Westley, convicted of murder in 1987. He and two
other men robbed a store. The owner was killed. To have any chance of
saving Westley from the death chamber, Mock needed to prove his client
was not the triggerman.
(Photo of Anthony Ray Westley; crime scene photos)
Mr. BRIAN WICE: I have read over 300 records and all kinds of felony
cases, and I'm telling you that I have yet to see the type of deficient
conduct that I saw in the Westley case in any of those cases.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Brian Wice, a Houston attorney and part-time
municipal court judge, presided over a hearing to review Westley's case.
His conclusion? Mock was so ineffective that Westley should get a new
trial. That recommendation was sent to the Texas court of criminal appeals.
(Brian Wice on bench)
Mr. WICE: I think that in large part, Anthony Ray Westley's death warrant
was signed when Ron Mock was appointed to represent him.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Among Wice's findings had Mock investigated, he
would have known that three months earlier in a different trial,
prosecutors were telling a jury that one of the other robbers, not
Westley, was the triggerman. And Wice wrote that Mock should have
consulted a ballistics expert to help prove Westley didn't fire that
fatal shot. Wice, who is in favor of the death penalty, says it all adds
up to incompetence.
(Mock; empty jury seats; documents)
Mr. WICE: I called them like I saw them. I critiqued him based upon my
review of the record that was created, and the case law as I understood it.
Mr. MOCK: Yes. I know what the bastard said.
CANNON: You disagree with him.
Mr. MOCK: I totally disagree with the little lying, no good, rotten son of
a bitch. He had made that allegation on me at least three or four times.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Mock says he had too many cases to monitor that
other trial and was handcuffed by a system that didn't give him the
resources he needed to aggressively defend his client.
(Mock at computer)
CANNON: Could you have hired your own ballistic expert?
Mr. MOCK: No.
CANNON: You could not have done that?
Mr. MOCK: No.
CANNON: Because?
Mr. MOCK: Because there was no money. You had $ 500 total to work with.
Absolutely total. That was it for any and all purposes.
CANNON: Did you ask for extra money?
Mr. MOCK: No, I did not. It was not available by statute. The judge would
not and could not give me extra money. He could not do it.
CANNON: (Voiceover) It's true money is tight for court-appointed lawyers
and no matter what, they always have less than the prosecution. But
DATELINE spoke with ten former and current Harris County judges,
including the judge who presided over Westley trial. All said Mock could
have asked for more money and would have received it, if he proved he
needed it.
(Empty jury chairs; photo of Westley; Mock in court)
Mr. WICE: In this case, you've got to do more than say, 'I didn't think I
could get it.'
CANNON: (Voiceover) And consider this. During jury selection, sheriff's
deputies interrupted the trial to take not Westley, but Mock to jail.
Held in contempt of court, Mock was sentenced to three days behind bars
for failing to file papers in yet another death penalty case.
(Courtroom scene; police; gavel; barred window; newspaper article)
CANNON: How would that look to Anthony Westley during his jury
selection? You actually had a meeting with him while you were in jail,
in your jail cell.
Mr. MOCK: It looked damn good to him, I was there.
CANNON: You see how that looks?
Mr. MOCK: It doesn't look bad to me, pal. I wasn't there because I
committed a crime. I was there because a judge was upset that I didn't
write a letter.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Mock says he did all he could for Anthony Westley.
He points out that two higher courts rejected Wice's recommendation and
ruled Westley had a fair trial. He was executed on May 13th, 1997.
(Mock at window; photo of Westley; table)
Mr. WICE: The fact that judges that sit in New Orleans or judges that sit
in Austin disagree with me, doesn't mean that I was wrong. Because I
know in my heart of hearts they shouldn't have killed that kid.
CANNON: So if Mock was as bad as his critics say he was, then how did he
keep getting appointed to so many death penalty cases for so long? And
was he the only controversial lawyer in Harris County, or was he part of
a much larger problem?
Mr. JAY BURNETT: After about three years on the bench, I saw that we had
a real problem, a--a tremendous problem.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Jay Burnett should know. As a former judge in Harris
County, he presided over 12,000 cases, including many death penalty
trials. Burnett is a Democrat. But we spoke to judges and lawyers and
found he's widely praised by both Democrats and Republicans in the
county as a fair and impartial authority on the court-appointed system.
Today, Burnett is a
defense lawyer who specializes in death penalty appeals.
(Jay Burnett; photo of Burnett on bench; Burnett)
CANNON: What were the requirements, the standards, for someone to try a
capital murder or death penalty case in the '80s in this county?
Mr. BURNETT: In this county, you had to have a law license.
CANNON: That's it?
Mr. BURNETT: That was it.
CANNON: (Voiceover) So when Mock was trying death penalty cases, there
were no standards or regulations. Judges could appoint any lawyer
regardless of experience, expertise or ability.
Mr. BURNETT: So consequently, what we had, unfortunately, were some
people who should not have been trying capital-murder cases and were
being appointed.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Burnett says most judges appoint competent lawyers,
especially in death cases. But he also says some judges are more
interested in politics than justice. He points out that in Harris
County, in fact in all of Texas, judges are elected. And to win votes,
Burnett says, some want to
move cases quickly and keep convictions high to show voters they're tough
on crime. And that's why, he says, some judges select attorneys who they
know won't put on an aggressive defense.
(Empty courtroom; scales of justice ; flag)
Mr. BURNETT: I think it's entirely possible that a judge would fail to
appoint a truly aggressive lawyer who will not move the cases, yes.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Was that true of Ron Mock? Burnett says he never
appointed Mock. He didn't think Mock was up to the job. But DATELINE
spoke to judges who did. They told us that Mock was aggressive, was an
excellent lawyer, fought hard for his clients and communicated well with
juries. And even Burnett admits that Mock did have a reputation for
handling the most difficult defendants.
(Building; Mock walking)
Mr. BURNETT: You'd hear about a really very bad, heinous case. And the
defendant's raising Cain, won't come into the courtroom, is cursing
everybody, and whatever. The judge will say, 'Get Mock.'
CANNON: (Voiceover) And, for many years, Mock was one of only a handful
of African American lawyers in Harris County. It's another reason,
Burnett says, that Mock was often appointed.
Mr. BURNETT: In my mind, there's no question about it. Because the
judges were attempting to diversify, yes.
CANNON: (Voiceover) And as ineffective as Burnett thinks Mock is, he says
Mock is by no means the worst lawyer in Harris County. He points to two
other attorneys who have even been caught sleeping at the defense table
during death penalty cases. Both cases ended in convictions and both
inmates are still on death row today. Harris County has sent more people
to death row than any county in the country. And there, as everywhere
else in America, most of those condemned had court-appointed lawyers. It
begs the inevitable question.
(Empty courtroom; newspaper article; jail)
CANNON: Do you think there have been people in Texas who've been
executed because they had a bad court-appointed attorney?
Mr. BURNETT: There's no question in my mind that someone has slipped
through the cracks and that there has been an innocent person executed.
CANNON: (Voiceover) As striking as it is for a former judge to make that
claim, Burnett has no case or name he can point to. No evidence to prove it.
(Sign; prison)
Mr. BURNETT: Nobody can prove that? Well, who do you ask? When the state
of Texas inflicts its ultimate punishment, nobody investigates. That
case is over with. Nobody pulls up goes and talks to the witnesses.
Nobody goes back and looks at that.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Burnett was so disturbed by the problems he saw, he
led the way to change the system. In 1995, for the first time Harris
County set standards. Now, before lawyers can be appointed to a death
penalty case, they have to have five years of experience, take a course
and pass an exam. More than 15 years after he tried his first death
penalty case with
eight of his clients on death row and three already executed, Ron Mock
took that test.
(Empty courtroom; building; Mock in courtroom)
CANNON: You signed up to take the certification test in 1995. What happened?
Mr. MOCK: I took it.
CANNON: Did you pass it?
Mr. MOCK: No, I did not.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Mock says he failed intentionally because he didn't
want to be appointed to death penalty cases any longer. For him, he says
they became emotionally draining.
(Mock at desk)
CANNON: The argument could be made, sir, that you flunked the test
because you really didn't know the questions being asked. And you failed
because it's a demonstration that you are an incompetent lawyer.
Mr. MOCK: And I wouldn't give a damn what any assessment would be. I
know what I did and why I did it.
CANNON: (Voiceover) Mock hasn't tried a death penalty case since failing
that test in 1995. And despite all of the criticism, no court has ever
ruled that he gave ineffective counsel to any of his clients. Today,
Mock is still in the courtroom, still representing defendants in
criminal cases and still insists he's
one of the best lawyers a defendant can get.
(Mock in courtroom; Mock walking down hall)
Mr. MOCK: People will continue to criticize. But I am strong. And I will
continue to fight. I am not a bad lawyer. I'm a damn good lawyer.
PHILLIPS: Several legal experts we talked to say reforms have made a
difference. The system is better in Harris County. But that's not
necessarily true in other parts of the state. Texas has no state wide laws
to monitor court-appointed attorneys. Four hundred fifty--five prisoners
are now on death row in the lone star state.
(source: NBC television)
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