Courts have gotten in the way this week......
Appeal delays execution 08:46 PM CST on Tuesday, December 9, 2003
Associated Press
HUNTSVILLE, Texas – Career criminal Billy Frank Vickers headed to the Texas death chamber Tuesday for fatally shooting a North Texas grocery store owner during a botched robbery attempt almost 11 years ago.
Vickers would be the first of two condemned killers set for execution on consecutive nights this week in Texas and the 25th this year in the nation's most active capital punishment state.
An appeal to stop Vickers' execution and review his case was rejected earlier Tuesday by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In another legal action, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of Vickers and the two other Texas inmates who were facing execution this week seeking a permanent injunction against lethal injection, contending one of the chemicals used in the procedure caused an unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. The suit was dismissed by a federal judge in Houston but was in the federal appeals courts and delayed Vickers' scheduled injection.
A combination of lethal drugs has been used in executions in Texas since 1982.
Vickers, a 58-year-old former car salesman who dropped out of school after the sixth grade, was convicted of the slaying of Phillip Kinslow.
Armed with a handgun, Vickers confronted Kinslow the evening of March 12, 1993, as Kinslow, who normally carried home cash from his store in nearby Arthur City, got out of his truck to open a gate outside his home in rural Lamar County. Vickers didn't know Kinslow also was armed.
The men exchanged gunfire.
Kinslow, 50, suffered three wounds, one of them a fatal shot to the chest. Vickers, who never got the bag of money Kinslow had with him, also was struck three times, but survived, was arrested and condemned.
Testimony showed Vickers, with numerous convictions and prison terms, plotted with two friends to stage the robbery. They inspected Kinslow's store several times and watched his pattern of taking a money bag with him home to his home about 120 miles northeast of Dallas and just south of the Red River that divides Texas from Oklahoma.
Vickers was arrested the next day hobbling on makeshift crutches about two miles from the shooting scene.
He gave a written confession to police, according to court records, but maintained his innocence. Vickers' lawyers had argued the evidence was insufficient to tie him to Kinslow's fatal wounds.
A bullet taken from Vickers' knee came from Kinslow's .38-caliber pistol. His shoe print was found at Kinslow's gate. A hat found nearby had hairs that matched his hair. And .22-caliber hollow-point shells found at his home matched the bullets fired at Kinslow.
"It was a typical Vickers deal," Kerye Ashmore, the district attorney who prosecuted Vickers, said. "Vickers had been involved in so many things."
Vickers first went to prison in 1967, getting a 21/2-year term for burglary. Then he picked up at least two more burglary convictions, plus multiple arson convictions and a federal gun possession conviction.
Tommy Perkins, 51, who was with Vickers at the shooting scene, received a life prison term. Jason Martin, 34, who was supposed to be the getaway driver and was waiting a short distance away when the gunfire erupted, got 25 years.
On Wednesday, Kevin Lee Zimmerman, 42, was set to die for the 1987 fatal stabbing and robbery of a California man at a Beaumont motel.
A third execution set for this week, on Thursday night, was stopped Tuesday when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to consider arguments Bobby Lee Hines is mentally retarded and ineligible for the death penalty under a Supreme Court ruling last year. Hines, 31, was condemned for the 1991 robbery and fatal stabbing of a woman at a Dallas apartment.
