Man who killed 3 wins execution stayAttorneys argued that jurors didn't weigh his troubled past
10:23 AM CDT on Wednesday, August 20, 2003
By TERRI LANGFORD / The Dallas Morning News
A convicted killer won a stay of execution Tuesday, the day before he was to be put to death for the 1989 slaying of an elderly Dallas woman during a robbery.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted Wednesday's scheduled execution of Mark Allen Robertson after his attorneys questioned whether jurors should have considered the ninth-grade dropout's troubled childhood before sentencing him to death for the capital murder of Edna Brau, 81.
Ms. Brau, who lived in Preston Hollow, was the last of three people Mr. Robertson killed during a 10-day period.
Although Mr. Robertson admitted to police that he killed Mrs. Brau and her 19-year-old grandson, jurors in his 1991 capital murder trial for Mrs. Brau's slaying were not told that they could consider the physical and verbal abuse he received from his alcoholic father, and his addiction to drugs, when deciding whether to sentence him to death or life in prison.
That omission is crucial in appeals because Mr. Robertson's death sentence falls inside a two-year window – from 1989 to 1991 – when Texas judges did not have clear guidelines for instructing juries about how to consider mitigating circumstances such as Mr. Robertson's in death penalty deliberations.
"The appeal is based on the unconstitutionality of Robertson's jury instructions," said Randy Shaffer, Mr. Robertson's attorney in Houston.
The Texas Legislature later enacted guidelines regarding death penalty jury instructions after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in another Texas case that involved Johnny Paul Penry, a mentally retarded death row inmate who is awaiting a new trial.
Mr. Penry's attorneys successfully challenged their client's conviction for the 1979 rape and murder of Pamela Moseley Carpenter, arguing that his mental retardation was a mitigating circumstance that jurors should have considered before sentencing him to death.
Halted once before
This is the second time a scheduled execution for Mr. Robertson, now 35, has been interrupted. In May 2001, Mr. Robertson was spared four days before he was to be executed when the Supreme Court granted him a temporary reprieve.
In January 2002, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, acting on an order from the U.S. Supreme Court, threw out Mr. Robertson's death sentence, then reinstated it two months later.
On Friday, the Supreme Court declined to overturn the 5th Circuit's decision, prompting attorneys to try again.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the stay of execution Tuesday – the 14th anniversary of the Preston Hollow slayings.
Mr. Robertson's attorneys will try to convince the Texas appeals court that their client deserves a resentencing. If the appeals court agrees, the case would return to state District Judge Manny Alvarez's court in Dallas, where it began in 1991.
"This is the second time we have been through this," said John Brau, Mrs. Brau's son, who works as consultant in Alvin, Texas. "Every time, there's an emotional strain on all the family members because you essentially relive those terrible times."
Mr. Robertson was 21 when he used a stolen .38-caliber handgun to shoot his 19-year-old friend Sean Hill, who was fishing behind the Preston Hollow home of his grandmother, Mrs. Brau.
Mr. Robertson then entered the home and found the 81-year-old grandmother dressed for bed, watching television in her den. Mr. Robertson shot her, then rifled through the family's belongings until he found Mrs. Brau's purse and car keys. He fled in the woman's 1985 Cadillac.
Eight days later, Las Vegas police, making a routine license plate check of cars parked outside the Circus Circus casino, came across the stolen Cadillac and arrested Mr. Robertson.
Confession to killings
Upon his arrest, Mr. Robertson confessed to the slayings. The murder weapon was still under the seat of the car. He told police at the time that Mr. Hill was his drug dealer and that he shot him because he wanted to steal drugs that Mr. Hill kept at his grandmother's home.
Mr. Brau said there were no drugs kept at the home of his mother, and an autopsy of his nephew's body did not show that he was a drug user.
Mr. Robertson eventually was pegged as the suspect in a murder of 7-Eleven store clerk Jeffrey Saunders, who was killed 10 days before Mrs. Brau and her grandson. Mr. Robertson also was convicted of that murder and Mr. Hill's, but he was sentenced to die only in Mrs. Brau's death.
"Three cold-blooded murders in 10 days, and he still had that gun," said Mr. Brau, who sat through the capital murder trial. "It was loaded, and the only reason for a murderer to keep a murder weapon is to use it again."
Mr. Shaffer informed Mr. Robertson about 12:30 p.m. Tuesday that his scheduled execution had been halted indefinitely.
"I think, considering the alternative, he was fairly pleased about it," Mr. Shaffer said. "I think he was thinking of terms of eating that last meal."
Texas, the nation's leader in capital punishment, has executed 309 inmates since the death penalty resumed in 1980, including 20 executed this year.
E-mail tlangford@dallasnews.com
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/localnews/stories/082003dnmetrobertson.9e9c2.html
They should release the sob and make his lawyer keep him at his/her house.
His lawyer is the same type sorry b!23$#%^ that he is or he/she would not be defending him.
