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NationofChange / Op-Ed
Published: Friday 16 September 2011
“On Sept. 15, the scheduled execution day for Duane Edward Buck, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for Buck, who on Sept. 12 had his clemency request turned down by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, while it reviews the case.”
Duane Buck, Rick Perry And The Politics of Death
Simple rule for killers: If you are going to murder someone in the United States, don't try to get the job done in Texas. Keep the hostage alive in the car till New Mexico, which recently banned the death penalty, or press on to California, which retains the death penalty but makes available very large sums of state money — potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars — for a capable death penalty defense.
That's enough to hire good investigators, lawyers and expert witnesses who can spend many years on the case — first the trial and then the penalty phase and then the appeals process, which can go on for decades. California currently has 648 prisoners on death row in San Quentin, and since 1976, it has managed to execute only 13.
An indigent person charged with murder in the state of Texas, however, can count on maybe $500 for his court-appointed attorney to pay for special expenses. Yet the cost of importing an expert witness, who will be charging transportation, hotel and a fat fee, easily can exceed $10,000.
Business is correspondingly brisk in the lethal injection chamber in Huntsville, Texas. There are currently 413 on death row, and at the time of writing, 475 have been executed since 1976, 234 of them during Rick Perry's decade-long stint as governor.
It turns out we don't have to adjust the numbers yet. On Sept. 15, the scheduled execution day for Duane Edward Buck, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for Buck, who on Sept. 12 had his clemency request turned down by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, while it reviews the case.
No one claims that Buck, 48, didn't shoot to death his former girlfriend and her male companion and wound a third in Houston in 1995. He himself admitted to doing it. At issue is what an expert witness told the court during the sentencing hearing, where the jury decides whether the convicted murderer should go to prison for a life term or get lodgings on death row.
To get Buck lined up for the lethal needle, his prosecutors needed to prove "future dangerousness." How might Buck behave in the event he ever got out of prison?
Dr. Walter Quijano, a psychologist practicing in Conroe, a town just south of Huntsville (and no doubt filled with employees for the big prison in Huntsville), had actually been called by the defense, who hoped that he would testify that Buck's killing spree was an act of rage unlikely to be repeated.
Under cross-examination, however, the prosecutors asked Quijano: "The race factor, black, increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons; is that correct?"
"Yes," Quijano answered, probably out of sheer force of habit, because usually he was the prosecution's expert, and he had testified in similar fashion for the prosecution in six other cases, racially profiling the defendants into the Huntsville death house.
That was enough for the jury, which cut smartly through all uncertainty about Buck's future decisions by saying he should die, thus rendering speculation unnecessary.
In 2000, then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn (now a Republican U.S. senator), recognizing the constitutional abuse for what it was, called for Buck and the other six to receive a retrial. Buck is the only condemned man who hasn't gotten one. On Sept. 13, Linda Geffin, one of Buck's prosecutors in 1995, joined the chorus of voices calling on Gov. Perry to stay his execution.
What mostly has people marveling is Quijano's career stint in the 1990s as an "expert witness." Buck's was the only case for which he was called by the defense. Expert witnessing is a trade — often a very profitable one — in which by far the most desirable characteristic is predictability. A truly expert witness for the defense would have regarded it as his first duty to reassure the jury of Buck's lamblike character, utterly inconsistent with possibly lethal recidivism.
"Expert" covers many a bizarre résumé. One famous expert witness unearthed a few years back by the Chicago Tribune had made it her costly specialty to identify nose and lip prints — a forensic skill that apparently lacked any reliable foundation.
Juries like a well-spoken expert witness, flourishing forensic data. The popularity of shows like "CSI" has enhanced the reputation of forensic "experts," even though much forensic testimony, up to and including fingerprints, is disfigured by mishandled evidence, mendacity and incompetence.
Of course, it doesn't help that Buck's case has come down to the wire amid Perry's bid to get the Republican presidential nomination and right after Perry issued a fervent endorsement of the death penalty, earning him hearty cheers in the auditorium of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library when he stressed that imposing it has never lost him a moment's sleep.
The most notorious example of presidential ambition trumping any humane considerations came on Jan. 24, 1992, when Bill Clinton — beset by the Gennifer Flowers sex scandal amid his vital primary race in New Hampshire — hastened back to Little Rock, Ark., to preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a black man who had managed to botch a suicide bid after his murders and had no idea why they were strapping him down.
As they hunted for 45 minutes for a vein into which to shoot the sodium thiopental, Bill was having dinner with Mary Steenburgen. But that was Bill. Maybe Perry has been on his knees asking for guidance from the Lord or — the functioning modern equivalent — seeking reassurance from his pollsters.
Copyright Creators.com
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ABOUT Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Cockburn is co-editor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the new book "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils," available through www.counterpunch.com. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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By Kiley Kroh
7 comments on "Duane Buck, Rick Perry And The Politics of Death"
September 16, 2011 11:36pm
Would it make you feel better if I posted the much, much longer list of all the murderers who were never released, never escaped and never killed again? How about the list of all the murderers who were paroled and never killed again? It is also longer. How about the list of people murdered in prison at the hand of someone who was incarcerated for something other than murder? That's a longer list too. Perhaps we should just kill all inmates, lest they murder someone in prison. Using your logic, it's the only appropriate thing to do.
Putting aside the fact that no one is advocating this guy ever be released, if recidivism was the main factor in determining eligibility for parole, we'd parole all the murderers and keep the burglars behind bars. Murderers, when paroled, have the lowest recidivism rate of all criminals.
September 16, 2011 11:41pm
Doctor Idiot,
Please stop copying & pasting that irrelevant laundry list on every article having to do with this case. With all the changes in the criminal justice system over the last 10-20 years or so, including the elimination of parole and the advent of "Super Max" prisons, most of it is so outdated that you may as well be dragging up statistics from the 1800's. Sheer repetition does not create relevance. It simply makes you look more like the manic fool you apparently are.
September 16, 2011 3:09pm
his guilt nor his execution for that matter is in question. it's the fact that the comment was made regarding his race being a factor in his denial of life instead of the death penalty, and his denial of a retrial.
September 16, 2011 3:09pm
his guilt nor his execution for that matter is in question. it's the fact that the comment was made regarding his race being a factor in his denial of life instead of the death penalty, and his denial of a retrial.
September 16, 2011 3:09pm
his guilt nor his execution for that matter is in question. it's the fact that the comment was made regarding his race being a factor in his denial of life instead of the death penalty, and his denial of a retrial.
September 16, 2011 3:09pm
his guilt nor his execution for that matter is in question. it's the fact that the comment was made regarding his race being a factor in his denial of life instead of the death penalty, and his denial of a retrial.
September 16, 2011 2:59pm
A SHORT LIST OF MURDERERS RELEASED TO MURDER AGAIN
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John McRae -- Michigan/Florida. Life for murder of 8-year-old boy. Pedophile. Paroled 1971. Convicted of another murder of a boy after parole, in Michigan 1998. Charges pending on 2 other counts in Florida.
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John Miller -- California. Killed an infant 1957, convicted of murder, 1958. Paroled 1975. Killed his parents 1975. Life term 1975.
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Michael Lawrence -- Florida. Killed robbery victim. Life term, 1976. Paroled 1985. Killed robbery victim. Condemned 1990.
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Donald Dillbeck -- Florida. Killed policeman in 1979. Escaped from prison in 1990, kidnapped and killed female motorist after escape. Condemned 1991.
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Edward Kennedy -- Florida. Killed motel clerk. Sentenced to Life. Escaped 1981. Killed policeman and male civilian after prison break. Executed 1992.
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Dawud Mu'Min -- Virginia. Killed cab driver in holdup. Sentenced 1973. Escaped 1988. Raped/killed woman 1988. Condemned 1989. Executed 1997.
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Viva Nash -- Utah/Arizona. Two terms of life for murder in Utah, 1978. Escaped in 1982. Murdered again. Condemned in Arizona, 1983.
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Randy Greenawalt -- Escaped from Prison in 1978, while serving a life sentence for a 1974 murder. He then murdered a family of 4 people, shotgunning them to death, including a toddler.
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Norman Parker -- Florida/D.C. Life term in Florida for murder, 1966. Escaped 1978. Life on another count of murder in 1979.
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Winford Stokes -- Missouri. Ruled insane on two counts of murder 1969. Escaped from asylum, 1978. Murdered again. Executed for this murder, 1990.
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Charles Crawford -- Missouri. Life term in 1965 for murder. Paroled 1990. Convicted of murder again in 1994.
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Jack Ferrell -- Florida. Committed Murdered 1981. 15 years to life, 1982. Paroled 1987. Murdered again 1992. Condemned 1993.
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Timothy Buss -- Murdered five-year-old girl. Sentenced to 25 years in 1981. Paroled 1993. Murdered 10-year-old boy. Condemned 1996.
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Martsay Bolder -- Missouri. Serving a sentence of life for first-degree murder in 1973. Murdered prison cellmate 1979.
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Henry Brisbon, Illinois. Murdered 2 in robbery. Sentenced to 1000- 3000 years. Killed inmate in prison 1982. Sentenced to DP. Commuted by Governor Ryan.
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Randolph Dial -- Oklahoma. Life for murder 1986. Escaped from prison with deputy warden's wife as kidnap victim. 1989. Still at large. Warden's wife never found.
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Arthur J. Bomar, Jr. -- released from prison in Nevada on parole in 1990. Bomar had served 11 years of a murder sentence for killing a man over an argument about a parking space. Six years later in Pennsylvania, Bomar brutally kidnapped, raped and murdered George Mason University star athlete Aimee Willard.
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Dwain Little -- Oregon. Raped/Stabbed 16-year-old girl. Life term 1966. Paroled 1974. Returned as Parole Violator 1975. Again Released 1977. Then shot family of 4. Three consecutive life terms for rape and murder 1980.
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Arthur Shawcross (The 'Monster of the Rivers') -- Released after serving a 25 year sentence for a child murder, turned to murdering prostitutes. At least 10 in all. Now serving ten consecutive sentences of 25 years to life - 250 years in all.
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Samuel D. Smith -- in prison for murdering Zita Casey, 79, during a burglary in St. Louis in 1978. While in prison he murdered another inmate, Marlin May, during a knife fight in 1987 in prison.
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Darrell P. Pandeli -- After being released from prison after a conviction for murder, Pandeli murdered a prostitute, cut off her nipples and flushed them down the toilet. Now on DR in Arizona for that second recidivist murder.
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Chad Allen Lee -- Convicted of capital murder. Sentenced to other than death. Released and went on murder spree. Murdering Linda Reynolds, a pizza delivery person, and 9 days later robbed and murdered David Lacey, a taxi cab driver. Lee then robbed a mini-market 7 days after than. Shooting the owner, Harold Drury, multiple times without reason.
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Scott Lehr -- Convicted of capital murder. Sentenced to other than death. Later released. After release, between Feb 91 and Feb 92 lured 10 different female victims, between the ages of 10 and 48-years-old, into his car. Raping and beating them unconscious, stripped and adandoned them in the desert. Three of his victims died in those acts.
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James Erin McKinney -- Convicted of capital murder. Sentenced to other than death. Later released. Then murdered Christine Mertens in a home invasion robbery. Later murdered James McClain in another separate home invasion robbery.
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Michael Murdaugh -- Convicted of capital murder. Sentenced to other than death. Later released. After release murdered David Reynolds. Beating him to death. When 'dumping' the body, Murdaugh severed Reynold's head and hands, pulled out his teeth, and buried the body parts.
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Charles Daniels -- was convicted and sentenced to Life for the 1965 rape and murder of a Louisiana woman. Later having his sentence commuted, he was release. And he again killed another woman, 32-year-old Debbie Tatum.
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Jarmarr Arnold -- who, while on DR, murdered another DR inmate by stabbing him in the forehead with a sharpen spike. Proving that not even a death sentence can prevent murder until the sentence is carried out.
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Robert Lee Massie -- Sentenced to the DP, but overturned by Furman, which resulted in him committing further new murders.
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Kenneth McDuff - Sentenced to the DP, but overturned by Furman. Subsequently released, and murdered as many as 19 young women after his release. Finally executed in 1998 for the murder of Melissa Ann Northrup see ... Who once remarked "Killing a woman is like killing a chicken. They both squawk."
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Darryl Kemp -- Sentenced to the DP, but overturned by Furman. Subsequently released. Authorities now say he raped and strangled a woman jogging, less than 4 months later.
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Timothy Hancock -- Serving a life sentence for a murder he committed in 1990, murdered his cellmate, Jason Wagner, in November 2000, while serving his life sentence.
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Howard Allen -- murdered an elderly woman.. Opal Cooper, in Aug 1974, and was sentenced to 21 years in prison. By January 1985, less than ten years after being incarcerated, Howard Allen was released. On May 20, 1987 Howard Allen broke into the home of eighty-seven year old Laverne Hale, and savagely beat her to death. Six weeks later Allen struck again. On July 13, 1987 Howard Allen knocked on the door of Ernestine Griffin. At lunchtime the following day she was found murdered. On June 11, 1988 Allen was found guilty was found guilty of Ernestine’s murder.
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Melvin Geary -- originally sentenced to L wop, for the stabbing death of a woman in 1973 with a boning knife. Changed to Life.. released... After his release, Geary was subsequently convicted of murdering 71-year-old Edward Colvin of Sparks, again with a boning knife after Colvin took him in.
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William Coday Jr. -- convicted of murdering 19-year-old Lisa Hullinger in September 1978. After spending just 15 months in a German prison, he was released. In April 2002, he was convicted of having murdered Gloria Gomez on 13 July, 1997.
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Corey R. Barton -- In 1983 he murdered 16-year-old Shari-Ann Merton. He received 18 years in prison. He was released after serving 9 years and 8 months. In November 1998, he murdered 27 year-old Sally Harris of North Carolina.
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Cuhuatemoc Hinricky Peraita -- Rainbow City, Alabama, who was serving life without parole for 3 murders in Gadsden, Alabama was found guilty of capital murder for murdering a fellow inmate.
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James Prestridge -- Sentenced to L wop, for murdering Esfandiar Ateighechi, as he begged for his life in 1989. Escaped from prison along with John Doran. After their escape Prestridge murdered his fellow-escapee John Doran, shooting him in the back of the head.
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Jimmy Lee Gray -- who was free on parole from an Arizona conviction for killing a 16-year-old high school girl, kidnapped, sodomized, and suffocated a three-year-old Mississippi girl.
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Jack Henry Abbott, who had murdered a fellow prison inmate, was released early from a Utah prison. On July 18, 1981, six-weeks after his release, Abbott stabbed actor Richard Adan to death in New York.
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Benny Lee Chaffin, on December 7, 1984 kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 9-year-old Springfield, Oregon girl. He had been convicted of murder once before in Texas, but not executed.
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Thomas Eugene Creech, who had been convicted of three murders and had claimed a role in more than 40 killings in 13 states as a paid killer for a motorcycle gang, killed a fellow prison inmate in 1981 and was sentenced to death.
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Wayne Henry Garrison, 42, was convicted of 1st-degree murder in the death of Justin Wiles 13, of Tulsa. As a teenager, Garrison had killed two children in Tulsa. Police earlier said the circumstances of those killings were similar to Justin's death.
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Tommy Arthur -- sentenced to die in Alabama's electric chair for killing Troy Wicker in a 1982 murder for-hire scheme in Muscle Shoals. Arthur had already been convicted in 1977 of killing the sister of his common-law wife. He had been sentenced to life for that murder.
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Robert Lynn Pruett -- a convicted killer already serving a life sentence, fatally stabbed prison guard Daniel Nagle with a sharpened rod while patrolling the Texas Department of Criminal Justice McConnell Unit near Beeville in South Texas. It was the first fatal attack on a Texas corrections officer since guard Minnie Houston was stabbed to death in 1984 by an inmate at the Ellis Unit near Huntsville, a prison official said.
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Miguel Salas Rodriguez -- charged in the murder of a sheriff's deputy. Sgt. David M. Furrh, 40, in Dec 2000. Rodriguez had a December 1973 conviction of homicide without malice, for which he was sentenced to five years in prison. And yet ANOTHER conviction for murder in April 1979, for which he was sentenced to 70 years in prison. Rodriguez was paroled in October 1989.
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Bennie Demps --condemned to the DP for the 1976 murder of Alfred Sturgis, a prison snitch. Originally, Demps was sent to death row for the murders of R.N. Brinkworth and Celia Puhlick, who were fatally shot in a Lake County citrus grove. A year after Demps was sent to death row, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out capital punishment across the country, ruling death sentences had been imposed in an arbitrary way. Another failure of the Furman-commuted murderers.
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Leroy Schmitz -- convicted of strangling his live-in girlfriend in 1986, during an argument. He was sentenced to 18-20 years for that homicide. He was later convicted of murdering his wife, in Whitefish, Montana in 1999.
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Vernon Sattiewhite -- In 1977, Sattiewhite had been sentenced to five years for a murder but was paroled two years later and granted clemency. In 1984, he was convicted of robbery and sentenced to two years in prison but was paroled after less than six months. Soon after he murdered his ex-girlfriend, Sandra Sorrell.
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Tomas G. Ervin -- Sentenced to death in 1990, after conviction of the December 1988 murders of Mildred L. Hodges, 75, and her son, Richard E. Hodges. Bert Hunter, who was arrested along with Ervin pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder charges. Hunter and Ervin had met in the Missouri State Penitentiary, where they were both serving life sentences for previous murders.
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William Michael "Billy the Kid" Mason -- killed his wife three weeks after he was paroled on another murder conviction.
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Daniel Joe Hittle -- convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for murdering a police officer Hittle, 40, was described by witnesses as a man who gleefully killed or tortured animals and who routinely beat women and children. He was on parole for the killings of his adoptive parents in Minnesota when he shot Garland police officer Gerald Walker during a traffic stop. Hittle then sped to East Dallas, where he fatally shot Mary Alice Goss, 39; Richard Joseph Cook Jr., 36; Raymond Scott Gregg, 19; and Goss' 4-year-old daughter Christy Condon.
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Tony Walker -- Texas. Convicted of murder in 1978. Sentenced to 5 years. Murdered a 66 year-old woman and her 81 year-old husband in 1992. Jerome Butler -- Found guilty of the shooting of cab driver Nathan Oakley, 67. Oakley had been a Houston cab driver for 30 years. Butler had an extensive criminal history, including a 1959 conviction on two counts of robbery and assault in New York City. Butler had previously served about 10 years of a 30-year sentence after pleading guilty to the murder of A.C. Johnson, 69.
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Dalton Prejean -- killed a taxi driver when he was 14, . When he was 17, he gunned down a state trooper in Lafayette, Louisiana. Despite protests from the American Civil Liberties Union and other abolitionist groups, Prejean was executed for the second murder on May 18, 1990.
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Phillip Jablonski -- Carol Spadoni married Jablonski on June 16, 1982, while he was serving a prison sentence for the 1979 murder of his third wife, Melinda Kimball. After she became his pen-pal correspondent in prison. Jablonski murdered his prison pen-pal wife and her mother. And the day before those murders he had murdered Fathyma Vann, 38, in Indio, about 25 miles from Palm Springs, Vann was found shot and sexually mutilated in the desert with ``I love Jesus'' carved in her back." Now GET THIS -- See... It seems that Phillip Jablonski, now in prison after ALL those murders, placed an ad for a pen-pal -- "Jewish Death Row inmate, white, 51 years old, seeking understanding and open female or male for honest correspondence. Amateur poet, artist. Will answer all correspondence received. PHILLIP JABLONSKI, C-02477/SE95, San Quentin, CA 94974"
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Jerry Michael Ward -- Originally sentenced to die in the electric chair, for committing murder with malice in the rape and murder of a Houston school girl. His sentence was commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in 1972. Although the death penalty was reinstated, the sentence was not. He was subsequently paroled in 1984 after serving 18 years in prison. He was the number one suspect in two new cases, involving the the disappearance of Connie Sue Cooke, and the murder of Brenda Maureen Hackett. But althought police were on the verge of arresting him, Ward committed suicide in a self-inflicted execution.
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David E. Maust -- Hammond, Illinois. Murdered a 15-year-old boy in 1981. After released murdered three teenage boys, in circumstances similiar to John Wayne Gacy... burying their bodies in concrete in his basement.
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James Homer Elledge -- sent to prison for life in 1975 after beating a Seattle motel owner to death with a ball-peen hammer. In the years that followed, he won parole 3 times, most recently in August 1995. prosecutors have now charged Elledge with 1st-degree murder for allegedly stabbing and strangling Eloise Jane Fitzner, 47, in a church basement.
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Zeno E. Sims -- sent to prison for eight years for the murder of a 24-year-old-man. Released on parole, in Kansas City, he then murdered DeAntreia L Ashley, a 15-year-old-girl, after a minor traffic accident.
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Arthur James Julius -- convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. In 1978, he was given a brief leave from prison, during which he raped and murdered a cousin. He was sentenced to death for that crime and was executed on November 17, 1989.
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In March 1979, a Graterford (Pa.) prison guard was murdered brutally by an inmate. The inmate -- at the time he murdered the guard -- already was serving a life sentence for the triple murder of two infants and an elderly woman.
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In 1994, an inmate who already was serving two life sentences in the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center was sentenced to three more after he was convicted of stabbing three prison guards.
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In 1995, two death-row inmates at the Florida State Prison in Starke were killed by their fellow inmates.
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In 1999, a Beeville (Texas) prison guard was killed by an inmate already serving a sentence for murder.
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On November 9, 1983 Associate U.S. Attorney General D. Lowell Jensen told a Senate subcommittee that it is impossible to punish or even deter such prison murders because, without a death sentence, a violent life-termer has free rein "to continue to murder as opportunity and his perverse motives dictate."
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On October 22, 1983 at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, two prison guards were murdered in two SEPARATE instances by SEPARATE inmates who were both serving life terms for previously murdering inmates.
How many 'chances' would you GIVE THEM GENTLE READER? HOW MANY CHANCES?