Dallas murderer hopes to avoid execution today
Posted on 08/28/2002 2:02:29 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Dallas murderer hopes to avoid execution today
Lawyer says Patterson's youth was tantamount to mental retardation
08/28/2002
A startled crowd gathered outside the house on Prichard Street in Pleasant Grove after Kimberly Brewer and her two young daughters were found fatally shot in June 1995.
The neighborhood's initial shock grew as police revealed more unsettling details. Within days, Ms. Brewer's cousin Toronto Patterson, 17, would be arrested and charged with murder. The motive: He wanted the young woman's expensive gold- and chrome-plated car rims.
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Although his execution is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday and almost all his appeals are exhausted, Mr. Patterson's attorney is hoping an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court will result in a delay of the death sentence or commutation to a life term.
At the heart of the appeals are the defense's questions about Mr. Patterson's maturity at the time of the slayings he was 17 when he was arrested. Gary Hart, an Austin attorney representing Mr. Patterson, said the age argument is valid because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that it is unconstitutional to execute mentally retarded offenders.
Mr. Hart points to research that he says suggests that the part of the brain that affects impulse control is not fully developed in 17-year-olds.
"A 17-year-old simply doesn't have a fully formed brain," he said.
Two Texas inmates who were 17 at the time of their crimes have been executed this year. Mr. Patterson's case is the first to link the appeal to the Supreme Court ruling regarding executing the retarded.
 Toronto Patterson |
T.J. Jones, who was executed this month for a Longview murder he committed when he was 17, asked his attorneys not to challenge the execution. In May, Napoleon Beazley was executed for a carjacking murder in Tyler in 1994 that he committed when he was 17.
Mr. Hart asserts that the consequences of Mr. Patterson's age were not adequately explained to jurors as they were considering whether to sentence him to death during his November 1995 trial.
"Basically, juveniles are the most rehabilitatable offenders because their brains are not fully formed," he said. "None of the medical or scientific basis for that was ever brought out at the trial."
Dallas County prosecutors said the jury did consider Mr. Patterson's age.
"It's a factor that could cut either way," said Assistant District Attorney Lori Ordiway. "The jury could have decided that because of his young age, he could be paroled at an age that he could pose a future danger."
Mr. Patterson is scheduled to be the 23rd prisoner executed in Texas this year and the fifth this month.
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From death row last week, Mr. Patterson, now 24, denied responsibility for the slayings in an interview with ABC News. He acknowledged stealing the car rims but said he was not present when Ms. Brewer, 25, was shot along with her two daughters, 3-year-old Ollie Brown and 6-year-old Jennifer Brewer. He stood trial on only one murder count, for the slaying of Ollie.
"I feel a great deal of responsibility and guilt for what has happened," he said. "I feel like I should be punished, but I don't feel death is just punishment for me because I did not commit murder."
Mr. Patterson said police investigators "coerced" him into a written statement detailing the slayings. A judge at his trial ruled that the statement was lawfully taken.
Mr. Patterson said he had sold drugs but he was not aware of the consequences of his actions. He said that despite being considered adults in the eyes of the law, 17-year-olds should not be subject to the death penalty.
"If we're not allowed to buy cigarettes, alcohol or vote ... I don't see any sense in them being able to kill us as adults," he said.
Mike Soler, president of the Youth Law Center in Washington, D.C., agreed.
"The reason we put restrictions on things they can do is because we recognize that they don't have mature judgment," he said. "This is not to say they shouldn't be punished; it's a question of exacting the death penalty."
Nearly seven years after his conviction, a rift remains in Mr. Patterson's family over the murders and his involvement. His grandmother, Mary Patterson, remains his strongest supporter. She said she plans to travel to Huntsville on Wednesday, but she does not want to watch the execution.
Although her sister Ms. Brewer's grandmother disagrees, Ms. Patterson said she believes that her grandson is not guilty of the slayings.
"You can't pinpoint anything on anyone unless you're there to see it," she said.
E-mail rtharp@dallasnews.com
Sorry, but at 17 you're responsible enough to pay the consequences of your actions.
I won't lose any sleep over the execution of this vicious animal.
"If we're not allowed to buy cigarettes, alcohol or vote ... I don't see any sense in them being able to kill us as adults," he said."
Is it just me, or does anyone else get the feeling that this guy has no remorse?
Thanks. I couldn't agree more........
Knowing Right from Wrong
http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2001-03-08/feature.html/1/index.html
Excerpt from this John Paul Penry article:
While Penry made sure no one was coming, Carpenter grabbed the pair of orange-handled scissors she had been using to make Halloween decorations and stabbed them into Penry's back. Penry then knocked the scissors out of her hand and pushed her to the floor. While she was on her way down, Penry whacked Carpenter's head on the stove. As she lay on the kitchen floor, Penry then stomped her with his work boots.
"We verified that later, because she had a perfect heel print on her side where he'd stomped her while she was on her stomach. It ruptured her kidney, and that's what actually killed her."
But Carpenter wasn't dead yet, nor was Penry through. After stomping her, he got down on the floor and raped her.
"Then he got up and went across the room and picked up those damn scissors," says Price. "Came back, sat down on her stomach and said, 'I'm sorry, but I've got to do this.' Said something about he couldn't have her squealing on him. And then he buried the scissors in her chest." That act, says Price, was a clear indication that Penry knew he had done something wrong and that he was in big trouble.
Even then, the notoriously strong-willed Carpenter refused to die.
"He thought that would kill her instantly," says Price, "but she reached up and pulled the goddamn scissors out. When she did that, it scared him and he jumped up and ran out of the house."
Carpenter managed to pull herself across the room to the telephone. First she called a friend, and then an ambulance. At the hospital, emergency room doctors were aware of only the stab wound. They mended the hole in Carpenter's chest and thought they had her stabilized. But when a catheter was inserted, her damaged kidney began hemorrhaging. Pam Carpenter immediately went into shock and died.
If his last request was for a smoke, would he get it?
Inmate was 17 when he killed 3 relatives, including 2 children
08/29/2002
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Apologetic but maintaining his innocence, a former teenage drug dealer was executed Wednesday evening for killing a 3-year-old cousin at her Dallas home - one of three relatives gunned down so he could steal some fancy car wheels.
"I am sorry for the pain, sorry for what I caused my friends, family and loved ones," Toronto Patterson, now 24, said while strapped to the death chamber gurney.
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"I feel a great deal of responsibility and guilt for what happened.
"I should be punished for the crime, but I do not think I should die for a crime I did not commit."
Patterson said that while he was sorry, nothing could bring back the victims. He prayed his death would bring peace and unite his family.
"I ask for your forgiveness and that you will all forgive me," he said. "I invite you all to my funeral. We are still family."
As the drugs began taking effect, Patterson exhaled and then gasped. Nine minutes later at 6:20 p.m. CDT, he was pronounced dead.
Patterson was 17 when he was arrested for the fatal shootings of Ollie Brown, 3; her sister, Jennifer, 6; and their mother, Kimberly Brewer, 25.
His age at the time of the slayings renewed criticism of capital punishment for teenagers from death penalty opponents.
Two other condemned killers were executed in Texas - one three weeks ago and another in May for crimes committed when they were 17. While execution critics referred to them as juveniles, under the law in Texas and at least 21 other states they were adults.
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"I'm scared, but being here, seeing so many other people with dates dying, and how everything gets in motion, I pretty much seen how things are going to go. I guess you'd say something like a routine," Patterson said in an interview last week on death row, where he is known as "Tonto."
Patterson was the 13th Texas inmate and the 21st in the United States put to death since 1976 for a murder committed when the killer was younger than 18.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles earlier this week refused requests for a reprieve or for clemency.
Patterson's attorneys appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, contending his punishment, because of his age at the time of the crime, would be unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. About two hours before his scheduled execution time, the high court, in a 6-3 vote, rejected his appeal.
"Such executions not only violate international norms, they also offend human decency," said Steven Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "The mind of a juvenile offender is by definition less developed than the mind of an adult."
Not so, said George West, one of the Dallas County district attorneys who prosecuted Patterson.
"The stated age of an individual is one thing, their maturity and experience is another," West said. "And this guy wasn't a dummy."
Evidence showed Patterson went to the home of his great-aunt on June 6, 1995, so he could steal the chrome wheels from a BMW stored there. Similar wheels on his own car had been stolen.
Armed with a .38-caliber pistol, prosecutors said he shot Brewer, his cousin and his great-aunt's daughter, as she was seated in a recliner. Then he moved on to the children, shooting the 6-year-old as she watched cartoons on television, and the 3-year-old as she cowered in a corner of the room, her hands over her ears.
"It was extremely sad," West said this week. "The only person who could stop him physically was Kimberly, the woman... But what does he do? He decides: 'I've got to eliminate eyewitnesses because that means I could try to increase my odds of not getting caught. So I eliminate the two kids who know me.'
"No question about thought processes there," West added. "There was no need to kill the kids otherwise."
Authorities said he then took three rims from the car but was unable to remove the fourth. His fingerprints were found on the rims, left at his girlfriend's house. His bloody clothing was traced to the victims. He told his girlfriend he had robbed and shot someone.
He was arrested the following day. Police saw him in news footage in the crowd outside his cousins' house as the bodies were being removed. He was not grieving, prosecutors recalled.
In testimony at his trial and in interviews, he blamed the deaths on unnamed "Jamaicans."
"I wasn't there when the shootings occurred," he said last week.
"It was a hokey story," said Jason January, another of the prosecutors in Patterson's case. "We were very very confident we got the right man."
Nope. TDC (Texas Department of Corrections) routinely turns down death rower's last requests for cigs.
A poor black what?
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