Nuts About Needles

Even the normally reticent members of the Statesman's editorial board are incensed about this month's lethal-needle frenzy on Texas' death row, with four inmates executed so far -- including a foreigner and a juvenile offender. The execution of juvenile offender Toronto Patterson was scheduled for Aug. 28; Patterson was 17 in 1995 at the time of the murder of three of his cousins, for which he was convicted (he insists he's innocent). August's quintet brings this year's total of executions to 23, and with 13 more scheduled before New Year's, the number of Texas inmates executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty will reach a whopping 292 by the end of 2002.

Starting off the month, on Aug. 7 the state executed Richard Kutzner just hours after the Montgomery Co. District Attorney's office told Texas Defender Service lawyers it would release biological evidence for DNA testing that Kutzner had requested for nearly a year before his execution. With just hours left until Kutzner's execution, his lawyers' last resort was an ordered stay by Gov. Rick Perry. "DNA testing in this case will either prove Mr. Kutzner's innocence or will erase the shadows of doubt which linger over his conviction," Barry Scheck, head of the New York-based Innocence Project, wrote to Perry on Aug. 6. (The Innocence Project advocates for DNA testing in cases where death row defendants have asserted their innocence.) "Without your intervention, the state of Texas runs the risk of executing a man despite the availability of modern technology that may exonerate him." That logic didn't sway Perry, and Kutzner died that night. Nonetheless, the DNA materials have been shipped for testing, said TDS lawyer Bryce Benjet, and results should be available some time next month. Perry's office did not return calls from the Chronicle requesting comment.

Aside from Patterson's execution, pending as the Chronicle goes to press, the Aug. 8 execution of T.J. Jones also has raised moral questions about killing offenders who were juveniles at the time of their alleged crimes. Jones admitted his involvement in a 1988 car-jacking that took place when he was only 17, and filed no appeals. Nevertheless the Statesman, concurring with research by the Texas Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry that suggests mental development continues through the teen years, published an editorial proclaiming that executing juvenile offenders is "cruel and unusual punishment." The U.S. is one of only three countries that executes children, and nationwide Texas leads the pack by a long-shot, having executed 12 juvenile offenders since 1985.

On Aug. 14, Texas managed to alienate our oft-touted ally Mexican President Vicente Fox by executing Mexican citizen Javier Suarez Medina, convicted in the 1988 slaying of a Dallas police officer. Though Suarez eventually admitted his guilt, Texas never contacted the Mexican consulate at the time of his arrest -- a violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Fox called the execution illegal and cancelled a long-scheduled trip to Texas, during which he was slated to meet with President George W. Bush at his Crawford ranch.

Of all the inmates executed in August, it seems only Gary Etheridge's Aug. 20 injection failed to spark any outcry. Etheridge was convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering a 15-year-old girl in Brazoria Co. in February 1990.