“The hell with Texas and the justice system…”

October 27th, 2004 | The Random Thinker, WM3

That’s a quote from Andre Lastrapes-Luckett, whose father was killed in the October 1992, which Dominique Green was tried and convicted for. The problem is, “Green won a reprieve from a federal judge in Houston, who agreed with defense claims that 280 newly discovered boxes of evidence improperly stored and catalogued by the Houston Police Department’s crime lab could contain information related to Green’s case.” As such, Dominique Green was executed by lethal injection Tuesday evening.

Below is the Associated Press article about Dominique Green:

Inmate executed after two-hour appeals delay
Oct 27, 2:02 AM EDT
By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press Writer

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Late appeals to the federal courts and the pleas from relatives of a murder victim who wanted him to live failed to stop the execution of convicted killer Dominique Green.

Green, 30, expressed love to friends and thanked them for their love and support, then received a lethal injection for the shooting death of a Houston man during a robbery outside a convenience store a dozen years ago.

“I am not angry, but I am disappointed that I was denied justice,” he said in a barely audible voice, looking at five friends he invited to watch him die. “There is so much I have to say, but I just can’t say it all… Please keep the struggle going.

“Please keep my memory alive,” he said just before the drugs took effect, causing him to gasp slightly.

Nine minutes later he was pronounced dead.

The execution was delayed by about two hours until the U.S. Supreme Court, acting on an appeal by his lawyers, refused to stop the punishment.

About seven hours earlier, Green won a reprieve from a federal judge in Houston, who agreed with defense claims that 280 newly discovered boxes of evidence improperly stored and catalogued by the Houston Police Department’s crime lab could contain information related to Green’s case.

“The state’s interest in carrying out the judgment and sentence of death is outweighed by the need for certainty,” U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas wrote.

State attorneys, however, appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, arguing Green’s lawyers couldn’t prove any evidence was missing. Harris County prosecutors, who tried the case in 1993, had said all evidence had been accounted for in Green’s case.

When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the New Orleans’ court ruling, it cleared the way for Green to become the 18th Texas inmate executed this year and the fifth this month.

The punishment had been opposed by relatives of Andrew Lastrapes Jr., the man Green was convicted of killing, and by religious leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu. Tutu was listed by Green to be among his execution witnesses but did not attend.

“I felt it was dirty,” Andre Lastrapes-Luckett, whose father was killed in the October 1992 attack, said outside the Huntsville prison where he stood with about three dozen protesters as Green was being executed.

He, his brother and mother all opposed the execution and said they forgave Green.

“They’ll have their chance to face a higher authority and that is God,” he said of Texas officials. “The hell with Texas and the justice system…

“I know God’s got a place for him in heaven,” he said of Green.

In a rare face-to-face session in a Texas prison between a death row inmate and a relative of a murder victim, Lastrapes-Luckett met for 90 minutes Monday with Green, then returned for another session Tuesday morning.

In his final statement, Green briefly referred to Lastrapes-Luckett.

“Tell Andre and them that I didn’t get a chance to reach my full potential, but you can help them reach theirs,” he said.

Lastrape’s widow, Bernatte Luckett Lastrapes, also filed an affidavit asking that Green’s life be spared.

“I forgave that child a long time ago,” she said.

“That’s just a very personal thing,” Roe Wilson, an assistant district attorney in Harris County who handles capital murder appeals, said Tuesday. “Legally, it doesn’t mean anything.”

Green acknowledged being at the scene where Lastrapes was fatally shot and robbed of $50 but insisted he wasn’t the gunman.

Two companions, who like Green were black, testified against him at his trial and received lesser sentences for robbery. A fourth person at the scene, a white man, never was indicted, spurring complaints of racial bias from Green’s appeals lawyers and Lastrapes’ family.

Harris County prosecutors denied any bias, saying the case against the fourth person went to a grand jury but the panel refused to indict.

Green was arrested three days after the fatal shooting after leading police on a 50-mile chase in a stolen car. According to testimony at his trial, a gun in the car was traced to the Lastrapes slaying.

Appeals attorneys said problems at the Houston police crime lab raised questions about the validity of that evidence.

At his trial, nine victims identified Green as the person who robbed them during a three-day crime spree. His defense lawyers argued he had been abused by a mentally ill mother and turned to the streets to help provide support for two younger brothers.

As much as I hate to say it, this is not an isolated event. Here is another article, again from the Associated Press, about the execution of another man in Houston, who coincidentally shares the same last name as the previous situation. Edward Green III was tried and convicted for a double murder case. Edward Green was executed on the evening of Monday, October 5th. The link between the two Greens? The DNA evidence in both of their cases was done in the same Houston, Texas crime lab that has been “called into question by two state senators and the police chief himself.”

Convicted Killer in Houston Case Executed

Wed, Oct. 06, 2004
MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A convicted killer was executed even though the handling of his case by Houston’s troubled police lab had been called into question by two state senators and the police chief himself.

Edward Green III, 30, was put to death Tuesday night despite his attorneys’ pleas that evidence relevant to his double murder trial might be in some 280 recently discovered boxes that had been mislabeled and improperly stored.

Green’s lawyers as well as the senators and the police chief had wanted all executions out of Harris County stayed pending review of the boxes. In Green’s case, prosecutors said all evidence had been accounted for.

Gov. Rick Perry refused to impose a blanket moratorium on Harris County executions and rejected a 30-day reprieve for Green.

The U.S. Supreme Court and Texas’ high court also declined to block Green’s execution, and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles twice refused clemency requests.

“The main evidence leading to Green’s conviction is his own confession to these brutal and senseless murders,” the governor said.

Green was convicted of fatally shooting Edward Haden, 72, and Helen O’Sullivan, 63, during a 1992 robbery.

Green’s lawyers have questioned the reliability of ballistics evidence, but the Houston police lab controversy for the past two years has centered on the reliability of its DNA testing procedures.

The lab’s DNA section has been closed since a 2002 audit revealed possible contamination of evidence, inadequate training for analysts and insufficient documentation.

DNA retesting has been ordered in about 400 other cases, including 17 of death-row inmates who have not been assigned execution dates.

Green made a final statement, apologizing to families of the victims.

“I do not come here with the intention to make myself out to be a person I am not,” Green said in a brief final statement. “I never claimed to be the best person. … I did the best I could with what I had.”

I first caught wind of this epidemic in Houston after watching an special on CourtTV by Al Roker called “Al Roker Investigates”. In this session he took “…an in-depth look at a Houston, Texas crime lab where crucial DNA evidence was misinterpreted, and sometimes lost.”

In this special he spoke with one of the state senators who helped bring attention to the horribly conditions in that Houson crime lab. He was shown pictures that show rain damage to the ceiling tiles, with a big plastic garbage bin catching leaking rainwater, right next to the area where blood and semen samples were to be tested. The hallways had mounds of confiscated marijuana lying around due to lack of storage. As a result of the dilapidated conditions of that DNA testing lab, hundreds of cases involving DNA evidence tested at the lab are under evaluation for the need to re-test and possible re-try convicted persons - many of which may be serving time on Texas’s death row. Given this new information the Texas justice system has an obligation, both to the victims and to those convicted, to do the right thing and see this through. The problem, is, they are and have not. At least two inmates have been executed when there is serious doubt over the accuracy and validity of the DNA testing that was used to convict them. The truly frightening part of this is that a mistake like this can cost someone his or her life. If a re-evaluation of someone’s case determines they are, in fact, guilty of the crime they are serving time in jail or on death row for, then by all means, uphold their sentence. But, if there is even a shadow of a doubt that the conviction may not be truly justified then that inmate deserves the opportunity to have their case evidence reviewed. Once you kill someone, there are no do-overs and the Houston justice system does not appear to understand that.

I was always in favor of the death penalty and believed it could serve as a deterrent for would-be criminals. It would certainly stop me from killing someone. However, I do believe that the appeals process, the lack of care and attention that is required, by those who keep the process moving have turned the death penalty into a paper tiger, so to speak. I have always believed that if someone is convicted beyond a shadow of a doubt to be guilty then that’s all society has to go on.

Until now.

The more I have read and become involved with the West Memphis Three the more I have come to question my stance on the death penalty. I do not follow the typical “an eye for an eye leaves the world blind” mantra that most of the anti death penalty crowd follows. However, given the situation the WM3 are in, and the situations that Edward and Dominique Green were in, I cannot believe that society should let this practice continue when there are such blaring and obvious holes in the system that one cannot even dispute. All we have now is a system of killing run by people in a position of authority who are too scared to do the right thing and cause an uproar and would rather go with the flow and kill potentially innocent human beings.

Again, if a re-evaluation of their case evidence once again proves they are guilty, then they should remain in prison. But I’m not so sure following through with their death would be the best course of action. I am definitely not a professor of Administration of Justice and I do not have a Ph.D. However, I know what I feel is right and I do not see how the death penalty process for those who are not completely and obviously guilty is right. The death penalty should be reserved for those such as Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacey, and Jeffrey Dahmer.

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