Posted on 01/22/2007 8:16:45 AM PST by WestTexasWend
'We can't understand why this has been put off this long,' victim's mother says.
LIVINGSTON (TX) — Condemned Texas prisoner Ronald Chambers describes himself as "loaded with patience." Now in his fourth decade behind bars, Chambers' patience hasn't wavered, but time finally may be running out for Texas' longest-serving death row prisoner.
It's been more than 11,300 days since Chambers arrived on death row on Jan. 8, 1976. Since then, 381 of his fellow prisoners have been executed.
He's set to join them this week.
"I knew it was coming," Chambers, 52, said of the letter he recently received notifying him of his Thursday execution date. "No rich folks here. I'm not mad at that. But again, if I had the money, I wouldn't be here."
Chambers' longevity gets him the designation "Old School" by younger inmates. The encounters with other inmates are infrequent because they are kept isolated and get only one hour of recreation time daily outside their cell — alone — in a small concrete enclosure.
Chambers' daughter recently brought her infant son to see his grandfather for the first time. It was a rare meeting with a relative, he said.
"There ain't nobody that owes me nothing," he said. "Always nice to see people, but then again at the same time, I've been gone a long time."
Chambers arrived on death row three days before his 21st birthday.
"By now, I thought it would be one way or another," he said. "I was looking for it to be executed or to get a life sentence."
Chambers, who grew up in the Dallas public housing projects, worked as a house painter and was a new father when he joined Clarence Ray Williams in the robbery, abduction and killing of one college student and the beating of another.
Gerald Ford had been president less than a year, and George W. Bush was in business school at Harvard on April 11, 1975, when Chambers and Williams carjacked Mike McMahan, 22, a mechanical engineering student at Texas Tech University, and Deia Sutton, a University of Texas at Arlington student.
McMahan and Sutton had been with friends at a Dallas club. On their way out, they were confronted at gunpoint by Chambers and Williams, who forced their way into their car. Williams drove to a levee on the Trinity River south of downtown Dallas, where the captors pushed the couple down an embankment.
Chambers ordered them to stop near the bottom, then fired five shots at them. As Chambers and Williams walked back up the hill, McMahan called to Sutton to see if she was OK.
"Deia doesn't respond," Dan Hagood, the lead prosecutor at Chambers' 1992 trial, said. "She wants him to be quiet. Mike says something louder.
"That's when the killers heard him."
The gunmen returned.
Chambers pummeled McMahan in the back of the head 10 to 20 times with a shotgun as Williams choked Sutton and tried to drown her in the muddy water. Chambers also pounded her three times with the shotgun. Then they left.
Sutton told police she counted 15 times to 60 before moving, saw McMahan dead nearby, then managed to walk a half-mile to a hotel to summon police.
McMahan's burned-out car was found in Calvert, nearly 150 miles south, after Williams had tried to sell it in Houston.
Chambers, according to testimony at his first trial, wiped blood from money stolen from the victims and divided it, then played a game of dominoes before going to sleep.
Within days, both Chambers and Williams were under arrest.
A Dallas County jury convicted Chambers, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his conviction eight years later, ruling that a state-appointed psychiatrist who questioned him failed to warn Chambers that his responses would be used against him.
He was retried in 1985 and convicted again.
The U.S. Supreme Court threw out that conviction four years later, ruling that prosecutors improperly excluded three black people from his jury. Chambers is black.
He was tried for a third time in 1992, convicted and sentenced again to die.
Williams, also from Dallas, pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and murder, accepted two life sentences and remains in prison.
If Chambers' patience remains firm, it's long been exhausted for McMahan's parents, now in their 80s.
"It has been horrible," said Bennie McMahan, of Kennewick, Wash. "No matter what they do, it's not going to bring our son back."
McMahan and her husband, Mabry, attended Chambers' trials. Now, given their age, they don't plan to trek to Texas to witness Chambers' death.
"We can't understand why this has been put off this long," she said.
Now, Chambers' attorneys are asking the Supreme Court to postpone his execution until justices rule on another Texas capital case, set for arguments early next year, that raises questions about whether jurors were properly instructed to consider mitigating factors when deciding death sentences for some convicted killers.
Another minor issue in the appeal is that Chambers "has been on death row too long to be executed." James Volberding, Chambers' lawyer, said.
"Frankly, there's not a whole lot else we can argue," Volberding said.
Buh Bye Ronald.
Where else but the USA can you be sentenced to die, and live for 30 years on the taxpayers nickel??? Do you think they last 30 years in Venezuela or Commie China ???
I do agree with Chambers' attorney - on one thing.
His client has been on Death Row for way too long.
The bastard should have been executed decades ago.
No. You are there because you are a stone hearted murderer...
Chambers, who grew up in the Dallas public housing projects, worked as a house painter and was a new father when he joined Clarence Ray Williams in the robbery, abduction and killing of one college student and the beating of another.
...when Chambers and Williams carjacked Mike McMahan, 22, a mechanical engineering student at Texas Tech University, and Deia Sutton, a University of Texas at Arlington student.
McMahan and Sutton had been with friends at a Dallas club. On their way out, they were confronted at gunpoint by Chambers and Williams, who forced their way into their car. Williams drove to a levee on the Trinity River south of downtown Dallas, where the captors pushed the couple down an embankment.
Chambers ordered them to stop near the bottom, then fired five shots at them. As Chambers and Williams walked back up the hill, McMahan called to Sutton to see if she was OK.
Chambers pummeled McMahan in the back of the head 10 to 20 times with a shotgun as Williams choked Sutton and tried to drown her in the muddy water. Chambers also pounded her three times with the shotgun. Then they left.
Hell no, it isn't, if it's held off for 30+ years.
Oh yes, we owe you something. Sorry it took so long to give it to you.
Although I have mixed feelings on the death penalty, it is ridiculous that a person stays on death row for years and years. I understand folks going for an appeal etc.---but the system is quite broken. I thought DNA would solve many of the dilemmas.
Two lawyers(liars) were able to retire on money from the the public dole shuffling papers in this case.
OJ ring a bell?
Well, its about time this bum joined the Tookster.
"Chambers' patience hasn't wavered", what a guy
Despite all that spare time he's had, he still didn't learn basic English in prison.
Perhaps he only wanted to 'make a difference' in the world.
James Volberding
One American Center
909 E.S.E. Loop 323
Suite 700
Tyler, TX 75701
Phone: (903) 597-6622
Fax: (903) 597-5522
In a word: Lawyers.
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