Matthew T. Mangino - The Executioners Toll, 2010: The Crimes, Arrests, Trials, Appeals, Last Meals, Final Words and Executions of 46 Persons in the United States

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-1604-9

2014 Matthew T. Mangino. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover image Mark Goddard/iStock/Thinkstock

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

To my wife, Juliann,
and our children, Mark and Melina,
thank youI love you and couldnt have
done it without you.

This book will introduce you to every condemned killer who was executed in 2010. It provides the details of each killing that brought about a sentence of deathdetails revealed only through court documents. The tragic circumstances that belie the victims will be exposed as each chapter profiles at least two deaths: a murder and an execution.

Why 2010? The book could have covered any year in the modern era of the death penalty, but had to include one year from beginning to end. A single calendar year provides a true picture of the death penalty, executions and the anguish of victims.

This book is not a collection of high-profile executions or a review of the difficult, sensational or blood-curdling cases. This book could have examined 1997 or 2007it is a straightforward profile of every condemned killer executed in a single yearthe defiant, the remorseful and the indifferent.

Each chapter will explore the crime, the trial, the appellate review, the offenders time on death row and the execution. As the pages turn, you will hear directly from the offender, the prosecutors who tried the cases, at times the judges, the corrections officials and of course the family of the victims. What did the offender eat for a final meal? What were the offenders final words? How did the family and supporters of the victims react? How does the death penalty work? How has the death penalty evolved? The answers are all within these pages.

In 2010, the death penalty slowed in its application, method and consummation. There were 46 executions in 2010 as compared with 52 in 2009. The number fell to 43 in both 2011 and 2012.

There were 114 death sentences imposed by juries in 2010. In 2009, there were 112. Those numbers are dwarfed by the most prolific years of the death penalty. In 1999, 98 men and women were executed. There were 315 men and women sentenced to death in 1996.

A close look at the death penalty in 2010 provides some perspective for the future of capital punishment in America.

Twelve states carried out executions in 2010. Texas led the way with 17. Ohio was second with eight, the most there since the death penalty was reinstated in 1999. Alabama carried out five, the third most nationwide.

In 2010, the average age of the condemned at the time of execution was 43.93 years of age. The youngest person executed was 28-year-old Michael James Perry, who killed three people in 2001. The oldest was 72-year-old Gerald Holland, who raped and killed a 15-year-old girl in 1986.

The average age at the time of the offense was 27.45 years of age. The youngest was Peter Catu, who was 18 years and one month when he and fellow gang members raped and murdered two young girls near Houston in 1993. The oldest was Holland, who was 49 when he committed rape and murder.

The average time between offense and execution, much of which is spent on death row, was 16.7 years. The longest time spent on death row was 32 years by David Lee Powell, who murdered a police officer with an AK-47 during a traffic stop. He was one of the longest-imprisoned death row inmates in the country. In 2008, a prisoner in Georgia was executed after spending more than 33 years on death row. The shortest time on death row was spent by Gerald Bordelon. He sexually assaulted and murdered his girlfriends 12-year-old daughter. He spent only seven years and three months on death row because he waived his appeal rights and volunteered to be executed.

The racial make up of offenders included 27 white men, one white woman, 13 black men and five Hispanic men. Although there were 46 killers, there were 63 victims as a result of multiple killings by some offenders. A racial breakdown of victims looks like this: 39 white, 15 black, eight Hispanic and one Asian. Forty-five of the 46 offenders executed were men. However, 29 out of 63 victims were women. Twenty-seven, more than half of the killers, did not know their victim.

The method of execution has had the most significant impact on the declining number of executions across the country. In 2008, legal challenges to lethal injection limited the number of executions to 37. A challenge to lethal injection in the state of Kentucky made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Baze v. Rees, the court ruled that lethal injection did not violate the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

A nationwide shortage of one of the drugs, sodium thiopental, used in all 34 death penalty states in 2010 required executions to be postponed or cancelled in Arkansas, California, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Kentucky.

Arizona was able to carry out an execution by importing sodium thiopental from the U.K. The British government later intervened and now restricts further export of the drug for purposes of executions.

California built a state-of-the-art execution chamber, but the state Supreme Court subsequently ruled that more time is needed to review the states execution protocol established by the Department of Corrections.

Oklahoma received federal court approval to use pentobarbital, a drug used to euthanize animals, to replace sodium thiopental. On December 16, 2010, Oklahoma became the first state in the country to use pentobarbital when the state executed John David Duty. Nearly ten years before his execution, Duty was convicted of strangling to death his cellmate in an Oklahoma prison.

A number of states, led by Oklahoma, Ohio and Washington, have moved away from the three-drug protocol traditionally used by states with the death penalty to a single-drug protocol. Those states have successfully carried out executions using only a lethal dose of sodium thiopental. In March of 2011, Ohio moved to a single lethal dose of pentobarbital for all executions. As of 2013, 11 states are using a single-drug protocol.

Those who faced death in 2010 reacted to it in many different ways. Thirteen offenders chose to say nothing when offered the customary opportunity to make a final statement. Seventeen offenders apologized; 12 invoked religion in some way; only three cried and 14 remained defiant to the end.

Nearly one-third of offenders facing imminent death, often with overwhelming evidence supporting their conviction, would not apologize, ask for forgiveness or admit their crime. Julius Ricardo Young went to his grave saying, Im an innocent man, this is a miscarriage of justice, my attorney failed me, its a tragedy.