Killer of Arlington optometrist set to die
07/23/2003
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - The long day of jury selection was over and everyone in the Tarrant County courtroom was somewhat relaxed when accused killer Cedric Ransom made his move.
With a 51/2-inch piece of broken glass taped at one end and hidden in his hand, the capital murder defendant tried to stab one of his attorneys in the back. Ignoring orders from a bailiff to back off, Ransom turned his attention to a nearby prosecutor.
"He was coming at me and his words were very clear: 'I'm going to kill you! I'm going to kill you!"' recalled Bob Gill, now a state district judge in Tarrant County. "He got to me and the fight was on. He and I went down. I knew what was in his hand and I grabbed that arm with both my hands."
Neither Gill nor the other attorney, Chris Phillips, was seriously hurt in the November 1992 attack but both were removed from the case.
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Ransom went on to trial and was convicted of capital murder for gunning down Herbert Primm, 47, an optometrist and part-time gun dealer, outside Primm's Arlington home Dec. 7, 1991. Ransom was 18 at the time.
Gill wound up being a witness to help show how Ransom was a continuing threat, one of the questions jurors had to answer when determining a death sentence.
Ransom's lethal injection was set to be carried out Wednesday evening.
Ransom, 29, would be the 19th Texas inmate executed this year and the first of two on consecutive nights.
"He was a bad guy," said Richard Bland, one of the prosecutors who worked to convict Ransom. "He was involved with four capital murders in 17 days, robberies of convenience stores.
"Most people go to an ATM to get cash, he'd go to convenience stores and not leave any witnesses."
Ransom's death sentence was overturned in 1994 when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled his trial judge improperly excluded a potential juror. Prosecutors returned him to court in 1997 for another sentencing trial where, against his lawyers' advice, he took the stand, denied he was guilty of the Primm slaying but confessed to multiple convenience store murders.
The second jury sentenced him to death.
In an appeal awaiting a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, Ransom contended he was mentally retarded, making him ineligible for execution under a high court ruling in another case last year.
Testimony showed Ransom and three companions went to Primm's house to look at some guns. Primm, who held a federal firearms license, opened the trunk of his car and the four pulled out their own weapons. According to testimony, Primm told the gun thieves to "just take them" but Ransom bent him over the hood of the car and then shot Primm once in the head with a .44-caliber pistol. He was arrested three days later.
While locked up in Fort Worth, records showed he attacked a jailer. And while on death row outside Huntsville, he and a second condemned inmate used a hacksaw blade to cut through a fence in 1997, climbed to the roof of the prison, then were making a run across an open area to try to scale a pair of perimeter fences when they were spotted by an officer who ordered them to halt.
"There is no question at all," said Gill. "This is one of the more dangerous guys I've come across in 20 years in the criminal courts."
Ransom, a ninth-grade dropout, declined to speak with reporters from death row in the weeks leading up to his scheduled punishment. His three companions during the Primm slaying also are in prison, serving terms of at least 20 years.
"We had a couple of the codefendants to testify against him," Gill said. "We had information that connected him to the operation before hand and connected him to the murder weapon. One or more of the guns stolen from the victim were found at his residence.
"It turned out all right. He got what I feel he deserved."
On Thursday evening, Allen Wayne Janecka faces lethal injection for being the hitman in a murder-for-hire plot that left four members of a Houston family dead. Among the victims was 14-month-old Kevin Wanstrath, who was fatally shot in his crib in 1979.
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/latestnews/stories/072303dntexexecute.b7d01c45.html