December 2021 | Page 25 of 26

Robert Harris Texas Execution

Robert Harris was executed by the State of Texas for five murders. According to court documents Robert Harris was fired from his job and would return later and opened fire killing five people. Robert Harris would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Robert Harris would be executed by lethal injection on September 20 2012

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Robert Wayne Harris, who confessed to killing five people at a Dallas-area car wash a week after he was fired from his job there in 2000, was executed Thursday evening.

Harris, 40, received a lethal injection less than two hours after the U.S. Supreme Court refused appeals to halt his punishment.

Harris expressed love to his brother and three friends who were watching through a window.

“I’m going home. I’m going home,” Harris said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be alright. God bless, and the Texas Rangers, Texas Rangers.”

He snored briefly as the lethal dose of pentobarbital began, then all breathing stopped. He was pronounced dead at 6:43 p.m.

Harris was convicted of two of the five slayings in March 2000 at the Mi-T-Fine Car Wash in Irving. He also was charged with abducting and killing a woman months before the killing spree and led police to her remains.

Harris didn’t deny the slayings, but his lawyer unsuccessfully contended in appeals he was mentally impaired and should be spared because of a Supreme Court ban on execution of mentally impaired people. Attorney Lydia Brandt also argued prosecutors improperly removed black prospective jurors from serving on his trial jury. Harris is black.

Harris died “without ever having had a fair trial” on the issues, Brandt said.

Harris’ brother asked to leave the death chamber before the procedure was complete. A half-dozen friends and relatives of the victims also were present, watching in another room. Harris never looked at them. Two of them hugged after it was apparent Harris was dead. They declined to speak with reporters afterward.

State attorneys opposed Harris’ appeals, saying IQ tests disputed the mental impairment claims and that no racial component was involved in jury selection.

Harris had served an eight-year sentence for burglary and other offenses and had been working at the car wash for about 10 months when he was fired and arrested after exposing himself to a female customer. The following Monday, he showed up before the business opened, demanded the safe be opened and then shot the manager, the assistant who had fired Harris and a cashier.

Three more employees reporting to work also were shot, two of them fatally. Harris was arrested the next day.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-executes-robert-harris-confessed-killer-of-five-after-failed-supreme-court-appeals/

Donald Palmer Ohio Execution

Donald Palmer was executed by the State of Ohio for the murders of two strangers. According to court documents Donald Palmer would shoot and kill Charles Sponhaltz and Steven Vargo following a minor traffic accident. Donald Palmer would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Donald Palmer would be executed by lethal injection on September 20 2012

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An Ohio death-row inmate used his last words today to repeatedly apologize to the family members of his two victims, telling them that he hopes they can let their pain die with him.

Donald Palmer, 47, was executed at the state prison in Lucasville in southern Ohio about 23 years after he shot and killed two men he didn’t know along a rural Ohio road in 1989.

“I want you to know I’ve carried you in my heart for years and years,” Palmer told six women in the room who are the widows, daughters and a niece of the men he killed. “I’m so sorry for what I took from you …I hope your pain and hurt die with me today.”

Palmer also told the women that he knows the pain of losing a parent, a sibling and a child, and that he wished his execution could bring their loved ones back to them.

“I know it can’t,” he said. “I pray that you have good lives now. I’m sorry.”

His time of death was 10:35 a.m.

Palmer was convicted of fatally shooting Charles Sponhaltz and Steven Vargo in the head along a Belmont County road in eastern Ohio on May 8, 1989.

Palmer didn’t know the men, who were both married fathers.

Palmer’s Columbus attorney, David Stebbins, said Wednesday that Palmer was sorry for the murders and never got the chance to apologize to the men’s families.

“He has always accepted responsibility for this and wants the families of his victims to have justice,” said Stebbins, who had planned to be among the witnesses to the execution

Palmer had decided not to request mercy from the Ohio Parole Board, which can recommend clemency for a condemned inmate to the governor.

Belmont County prosecutor Christopher Berhalter told the board the execution should proceed because Palmer’s guilt is undisputed and because of the brutality of the crimes.

According to court records, Palmer told police that he and co-defendant Edward Hill were driving from Columbus to the Belmont County home of a man who had dated Palmer’s ex-wife and Hill’s sister.

As they were driving back and forth in front of the home, Sponhaltz — who was keeping an eye on the house — lightly hit the back of their pickup with his own truck and yelled at them: “What in the hell are you trying to prove?” according to the records.

Donald Palmer then shot Sponhaltz twice in the head.

Vargo, a passing driver, stopped and asked “What the hell did you guys do,” Palmer told police, according to the records. Palmer then shot Vargo twice in the head.

Sponhaltz’s body was dumped in a field; Vargo’s was left on the road.

Hill, 46, was convicted for his role in the crimes and sentenced to 35 years to life in prison.

Valerie Vargo Jolliffee, 51, Vargo’s widow, told The Associated Press that she was planning to attend Palmer’s execution because he ruined her life.

She said that she and Vargo fell in love at first sight and had been married just two months when he was killed.

“I was looking forward to growing old with him,” she said. “I just can’t wait until it’s over. And it won’t be over until they put him to death.”

Sponholtz’s widow, two daughters and his brother also were expected to watch the execution.

Corrections officials say that Palmer asked that his last meal include a chipped ham and Velveeta cheese sandwich, ranch-flavored Doritos, peanut M&Ms, hazelnut ice cream, cheese cake and soda.

Ten Ohio inmates, including Palmer, are scheduled for execution through March 2014. Palmer will be the second this year if the execution goes forward.

https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2012/09/ohio_executes_donald_palmer_fo.html

Michael Hooper Oklahoma Execution

Michael Hooper was executed by the State of Oklahoma for a triple murder. According to court documents Michael Hooper would go to his ex girlfriends home and kill her and her two children. Michael Hooper would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Michael Hooper was executed by lethal injection on August 14, 2012

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An Oklahoma death row inmate who tried to delay his execution by challenging the state’s lethal injection method was executed Tuesday evening just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to step in.

Michael Hooper, convicted for the December 1993 shooting deaths of his former girlfriend and her two young children, received a lethal dose of drugs at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Hooper was sentenced to death for killing 23-year-old Cynthia Lynn Jarman and her two children, 5-year-old Tonya and 3-year-old Timmy. Prosecutors said the three were with Hooper in a pickup truck in a mowed field when he placed a 9mm pistol under Cynthia Jarman’s chin and shot her, then shot the children to prevent them from being witnesses.

Each of the victims was shot twice in the head, and their bodies were buried in a shallow grave in a field northwest of Oklahoma City.

In an effort to at least stall his execution, Hooper had sued the state last month claiming Okahoma’s three-drug lethal injection protocol was unconstitutional. The lawsuit sought to force the state to have an extra dose of pentobarbital, a sedative, on hand during his execution.

Pentobarbital is the first drug administered and is used to render a condemned inmate unconscious. It’s followed by vecuronium bromide, which stops the inmate’s breathing, then potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Hooper’s attorney had argued that if the sedative were ineffective, the remaining drugs could cause great pain in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The lawsuit also noted that other states have adopted a one-drug process using a fast-acting barbiturate that supporters say causes no pain.

But the claims were rejected by a federal judge, then upheld by a federal appeals court. And the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Hooper’s request without elaboration earlier Tuesday.

Hooper was the fourth death-row inmate executed in Oklahoma this year.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-hooper-okla-man-executed-for-killing-ex-girlfriend-and-kids/

Daniel Cook Arizona Execution

Daniel Cook was executed by the State of Arizona for the sexual assault and murders of two men. According to court documents Daniel Cook would sexually assault and murder two men that he worked with at a restaurant in the middle of a robbery. Daniel Cook would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Daniel Cook would be executed by lethal injection on August 8 2012

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On July 19, 1987, Daniel Wayne Cook stole money from his roommate, Carlos Ramos, who was also a coworker of his at a restaurant in Lake Havasu City. When Ramos, a Guatemalan national, began searching for the money, Cook lured him into his bedroom where he and another roommate, John Matzke, tied Ramos to a chair and began a night of horrifying torture.

Over the span of six to seven hours, Cook and Matzke beat Ramos with a metal pipe and a wooden stick, Matzke cut Ramos across the chest with a knife while Cook sodomized him, burned his genitals with a cigarette and stapled his foreskin to the chair. Ramos remarkably lived through the torture before having his throat crushed by both Cook and Matzke as they pushed on it with the metal pipe.

Later that night, another coworker, 16-year-old Kevin Swaney, arrived at the home and was forced upstairs to see Ramos’ body. While Matzke slept, Cook sodomized Swaney and after Matzke woke, they strangled Swaney with a bed sheet.

On July 21, Matzke turned himself in to the Lake Havasu Police Department. Police arrested Matzke and Cook after finding the bodies of the victims in Matzke’s closet.

After his arrest, Cook was asked how the bodies got into the closet and he told police, “We got to partying, things got out of hand now two people are dead.”

The trial started on June 27 and lasted ten days. Matzke pled guilty to a second-degree murder charge and testified against Cook.

Cook was initially represented by a public defender, however prior to trial, Cook decided to waive his right to counsel and to represent himself. The trial judge strongly advised Cook against this but accepted his waiver of counsel as “knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily” given, and appointed Cook’s former counsel to continue in the role of trial advisor.

On appeal, Cook’s appeal lawyers accused the trial lawyer of being drunk and incompetent, thus forcing Cook to represent himself. In his appeal, he reported that his attorney did virtually no investigating, and developed no “theory of defense” or “plan for mitigation.” Cook also said he smelled alcohol on his breath in court.

They also said that when Cook asked to represent himself the judge never asked him why or informed him of his option to retain a different lawyer.

Cook’s appeal attorneys won a short reprieve in April 2011, when the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the execution to consider a claim saying that he “did not have effective legal counsel.” Lawyers said previous counsel failed to present evidence that he was physically and sexually abused by family members and a foster care worker when he was a child. However, the supreme court later dismissed the appeal, clearing the way for him to be executed.

In paperwork filed at his clemency hearing Cook is shown as “a seriously mentally ill individual because, in part, he endured a childhood replete with sexual and physical abuse.” It goes on to describe the abuse he suffered, “The horrors that Dan (Cook) suffered were the same horrors that Kevin and Carlos suffered. Dan’s grandparents tied him to chairs as punishment; he was repeatedly raped as a child; his father burned his genitals with cigarettes; his sexual abuser had him circumcised as a teenager; and he was beaten with belts, boards, and fists. Each of these acts was done to one or both of the victims.”

n his adult life, his attorneys reported, Cook covered his pain with drugs, alcohol and self-inflicted injuries. Cook spent some time in the U.S. Army Reserves, but he was honorably discharged. They reported that Cook lacked the ability “to adjust to the stress of military life, as evidenced by his self-inflicted injury.”

In his clemency hearing it was reported that the prosecuting attorney Eric Larsen said: “Had I been informed of this mitigating information regarding Dan’s severely abusive and traumatic childhood and his mental illnesses, I would have not sought the death penalty in this case.”

His attorneys pleaded with the clemency board to reduce his sentence to life imprisonment without parole, but they were unsuccessful.

https://www.abc15.com/news/crime/death-row-diaries-tortured-man-tortures-co-workers-the-story-of-daniel-cook

Marvin Wilson Texas Execution

Marvin Wilson was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of a man who informed police about his activity. According to court documents Marvin Wilson blamed the victim for getting him arrested on a drug charge. Once released from jail Marvin Wilson would find the victim and fatally shoot him. Marvin Wilson would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Marvin Wilson would be executed by lethal injection on August 8 2012

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The state of Texas executed convicted killer Marvin Wilson Tuesday, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his lawyers argument that he shouldn’t have been eligible for the death penalty due to his low IQ.

Wilson, 54, was pronounced dead Tuesday evening after receiving a lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville.

In their appeal to the Supreme Court, Wilson’s attorneys argued he was too mentally impaired for capital punishment, pointing to a 2004 psychological test that pegged his IQ at 61, below the generally accepted minimum competency standard of 70.

But lower courts agreed with state attorneys, who argued that Wilson’s claim was based on a single, and possibly faulty, test. His mental impairment claim wasn’t supported by other tests and assessments over the years.

Lead defense attorney Lee Kovarsky said he was “gravely disappointed and saddened” by the ruling, calling it “outrageous that the state of Texas continues to utilize unscientific guidelines … to determine which citizens with intellectual disability are exempt from execution.”

Wilson was convicted of murdering 21-year-old police informant Jerry Williams in November 1992. The murder happened several days after police seized 24 grams of cocaine from Wilson’s apartment and arrested him.

Witnesses testified that Wilson, who was free on bond, and another man, beat Williams outside of a convenience store, accusing Williams of snitching on him about the drugs. They said the men abducted Williams, and neighborhood residents said they heard a gunshot a short time later. Williams was found dead on the side of a road the next day

In Wilson’s Supreme Court appeal, Kovarsky said Wilson’s language and math skills “never progressed beyond an elementary school level,” that he reads and writes below a second-grade level and that he was unable to manage his finances, pay bills or hold down a job.

The Supreme Court issued a 2002 ruling outlawing the execution of the mentally impaired, but left it to states to determine what constitutes mental impairment. Kovarsky argued that Texas was trying to skirt the ban by altering the generally accepted definitions of mental impairment to the point where gaining relief for an inmate is “virtually unobtainable.”Edward Marshall, a Texas assistant attorney general, said records showed that Wilson habitually gave less than full effort (on the testing) and “was manipulative and deceitful when it suited his interest,” and that the state considered his ability to show personal independence and social responsibility in making its determinations.

“Considering Wilson’s drug-dealing, street-gambler, criminal lifestyle since an early age, he was obviously competent at managing money, and not having a 9-to-5 job is no critical failure,” Marshall said. “Wilson created schemes using a decoy to screen his thefts, hustled for jobs in the community, and orchestrated the execution of the snitch, demonstrating inventiveness, drive and leadership.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marvin-wilson-convicted-killer-executed-by-texas-despite-claims-of-having-too-low-iq/