Inmate set to die after brief reprieve
02:57 PM CST on Tuesday, January 20, 2004
HUNTSVILLE, Texas – Condemned inmate Kevin Lee Zimmerman was annoyed last month after receiving a reprieve that spared his life about 20 minutes before he could have been executed.
His disappointment may be short-lived.
Zimmerman, 42, now is scheduled to die Wednesday night for a fatal stabbing and robbery at a Beaumont motel some 16 years ago.
"I was ready to go," he told prison officials Dec. 10 after getting word of the postponement. "The stay only means 18 more months of this crap."
But it was only five days later that the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, rejected an appeal in his case, clearing the way for State District Judge Charles Carver to quickly set a new death date for Zimmerman.
He would be the third inmate to die this year in Texas, the nation's most active death penalty state. Another lethal injection is set for next week, one of at least nine on the execution schedule for Texas in the first quarter of the year.
Zimmerman, from Lafayette Parish, La., was condemned for the 1987 death of Leslie Hooks Jr., 33, a Louisiana oilfield worker staying at a Beaumont motel. Hooks was stabbed 31 times.
Zimmerman's December date was put off by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia after lawyers filed a suit contending the combination of drugs used in lethal injections contributes to unconstitutional pain and suffering.
The same suit allowed another Texas inmate, Billy Frank Vickers, to also avoid the death chamber last month. Like Zimmerman, however, Vickers quickly received another execution date – for Jan. 28 – after the high court's ruling in Zimmerman's case.
"Why is it that heartless criminals can commit such heinous crimes against humanity ... yet the victim's families are the ones who suffer the most injustice at the hands of a spineless legal system?" Steven Shaver, whose sister was married to Hooks, said in a statement on behalf of his family. "It's a gross miscarriage of justice when death row killers get more sympathy and compassion than the murdered victims and the grieving families they are forced to leave behind."
Zimmerman's attorneys said they would be returning to the Supreme Court on Tuesday with a renewed request that the high court examine the issue.
"He's aware of the issues and he's aware this appeal is not a challenge to his conviction or his death sentence," said A. Richard Ellis, one of Zimmerman's attorneys. "He realizes it's strictly directed to the method of execution and that it is simply something trying to find an appropriate method that does not involve cruel and unusual punishment.
"He accepts the fact he will be executed," Ellis added. "He just asks it be done in a humane manner."
"The family cannot comprehend why the murderer is not expected to suffer any pain when he himself inflicted such immeasurable and unimaginable pain on the man they called husband and dad," Shaver said.
Zimmerman attracted attention Oct. 23, 1987 when he went to a hospital for treatment of knife wounds. He was arrested after authorities were called to a Motel 6 in Beaumont where a maid discovered Hooks' body.
In a letter to a district attorney, Zimmerman said he killed Hooks for the oilfield worker's money. Hooks had met Zimmerman, another man, George Weber, and a woman, Kay Gonzales, at the motel and all went to a fair together earlier that day.
Gonzales testified that after they returned to the motel, she saw Zimmerman and Weber stabbing Hooks as he pleaded for his life. Weber received 91 years in prison. Zimmerman got the death penalty.
In 1992, Zimmerman and two other condemned inmates tried to escape from death row by sawing their way through a recreation yard fence. The escape attempt was halted when a guard opened fire on them.
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dallas/tsw/stories/012004txcnexecute.95060.html
