|
[left.htm]
| |
Three killers were executed in February 2001. They had
murdered at least 3 people.
Two killers received stays of execution in February 2001.
They have murdered at least 2 people.
| Date of scheduled execution |
State |
Victim name |
Inmate name |
Status |
|
February 1, 2001 |
Oklahoma |
Stanley Eugene Buck Sr, 48 |
D.L.
Jones |
executed |
| An inmate on death row longer than
any other was executed Thursday for a 1979 murder at a Lawton bar. D.L.
"Wayne" Jones Jr., 61, was pronounced dead at 9:16 p.m. from a
lethal dose of drugs at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Jones, a Lawton
carpenter, was convicted of killing 48-year-old Stanley Eugene Buck Sr. He
also wounded Buck's 19-year-old son, Stanley Buck Jr., and Betty Jean Strain,
40. Jones had been on death row longer than any other because of an extended
appeals process that resulted from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a separate
case 16 years ago. He met Strain at another bar earlier that day and became
angry at her for slipping out while Jones was on the phone, said Sandy Howard,
chief of the criminal appeals division for the state attorney general's
office. He later encountered Strain at another bar, the Wichita Lounge, where a
bartender noticed a gun sticking out of his boot and asked Jones to cover it.
Jones threatened to shoot her, then brandished the weapon and opened fire,
saying he would kill everyone in the tavern. Strain was wounded under the
right breast and managed to walk to another bar for help while Jones
confronted the Bucks, who were drinking sodas, eating chicken and playing
pool. He did not know them and asked Stanley Buck Jr. what they were doing
before shooting the father in the head at point blank close range. Jones shot
Stanley Buck Sr. again as he lay dying. He shot Stanley Buck Jr. twice in the
bar and followed him outside and purportedly said "if I let you live
you'll tell the cops, won't you?" before shooting the son a 3rd time.
Stanley Buck Jr. managed to stumble to a nearby fruit stand and motioned to
call police because he could not talk. Lawton detectives arrested Jones
without incident at his home a short time later. Jones said a combination of
alcohol and drugs rendered him unconscious of the acts. Witnesses said Jones
did not appear drunk. Stanley Buck Jr., who was paralyzed on his left side from his
wounds, said Jones' execution was long overdue. "My father was not given
but an instant to contemplate his life. Jones has had 20 years to contemplate
his," the son wrote the state Pardon and Parole Board, which rejected
clemency last week. Strain's injuries resulted in the removal of her spleen at
the time. She has since died. Prosecutors successfully argued that aggravating
circumstances warranted the death penalty, partly because the act was
especially heinous, atrocious and cruel. Prosecutors also said Jones intended
to kill others at the bar, another aggravating circumstance. |
| Date of scheduled execution |
State |
Victim name |
Inmate name |
Status |
|
February 7, 2001 |
Missouri |
Thomas
S. Allen, 16 |
Stanley
Lingar |
executed |
|
On April 18, 1986, Thomas S. Allen, a 16-year-old high school junior, was
coming home from his girlfriend's home when his Jeep ran out of gas.
Stanley Lingar and his accomplice David Smith stopped and offered to take
Thomas into town for gas. Instead, they took him to Lingo Lake and forced Thomas to undress and to
perform sex acts, then took him to Lingar's parents' home and got a gun.
They then returned to Lingo Lake where Lingar again ordered Thomas to
masturbate while pointing the rifle at him. Thomas asked if he could get out
of the car to urinate, and Lingar agreed. Lingar
then shot Thomas in the back. Thomas was
able to get back in the car in an attempt escape. When he had difficulty
getting the car started, Lingar went to the passenger side of the car and
fired a shot striking Thomas in the head. Thomas
fell out of the car and as he tried to get up Lingar shot him a third time. Thomas
attempted to get up and Lingar began beating him in the head with a tire iron.
As Thomas made a final attempt to get up,
Lingar got into the car and backed it up running over the victim two times.
Lingar and Smith then drove away leaving Thomas
laying naked on the ground. After conferring with his brother Eddie, Lingar
and Smith returned to the lake to dispose of Thomas's
body. Upon arrival Lingar and Smith redressed Thomas,
placed his body in the trunk of the car and drove to a bridge on the Eleven
Point River. The two men threw Thomas's
body into the swift moving river and then tried to clean the car of blood,
discard Thomas's personal effects and burn
the forearm and stock of the rifle. The next day Lingar and Smith sold the
Mustang and a pickup truck. They used the proceeds to go to Bowling Green,
Kentucky where they attempted to destroy the remainder of the rifle. The
Ripley County Sheriff began an investigation into the disappearance of Thomas
which lead him to the blue Mustang. Upon learning that authorities wanted to
talk to him, Lingar returned to Ripley County where he and Smith made a
statement. Following the interview the Sheriff obtained a search warrant for
the car. During their search, the Sheriff found Thomas's
blood in the car and the trunk as well as .22 caliber shell casings. The Missouri State Water Patrol found
Thomas's
body in the river. Lingar was then charged with Murder First Degree. Lingar claimed they were drunk and had consumed 30 cans of beer in
addition to a quart bottle, plus a half a bottle of wine, however they were
not too drunk to be able to commit this crime. The US Supreme Court
refused to review Lingar's death sentence in 1989. |
| Date of scheduled execution |
State |
Victim name |
Inmate name |
Status |
|
February 8, 2001 |
Texas |
Elizabeth
Alvarado, 69 |
Adolpho
Gil Hernandez |
executed |
|
Adolpho
Hernandez was executed for the Sept. 30, 1988 robbery and murder of
69-year-old Elizabeth Alvarado who was beaten to death with a baseball bat
inside her Lubbock, Texas home. Her purse was stolen, with $350 in
cash. Elizabeth's daughter confronted Hernandez as he was fleeing and
managed to wrestle the baseball bat from him and hit him with it. He was
found hiding in the bushes a short time later, with blood stains on his shirt, pants
and shoes. In earlier appeals, Hernandez blamed
the slaying on an alcohol-induced blackout. In the past month, however, he
contended the murder was committed by a black man whose identity he did not
know. This week, defense attorneys produced a bloody shirt, stored in a garage
for 12 years, which they said would clear the former barber. A state judge,
however, refused to stop the execution. Elizabeth's family was again devastated one year later, when
Elizabeth's granddaughter, Melissa Ann Garcia, was raped and stabbed to death
by Texas death row inmate Jack
Wade Clark. Clark was executed on January 9, 2001. Hernandez
had multiple previous convictions: two counts of burglary in 1977 for which he
received 8 years of probation. This was revoked because of a DWI so he
was sent to prison in March 1978 and was paroled after almost two years;
larceny with an 8 year sentence, another burglary in 1981 for which he
received a 15 year sentence and was paroled in just over four years; then
returned as a parole violator with a new conviction and 15 year concurrent
sentence for "unauthorized use of a motor vehicle" from which he was
paroled just eight months before murdering Elizabeth. |
| Date of scheduled execution |
State |
Victim name |
Inmate name |
Status |
| February 20, 2001 |
Oklahoma |
Tessa
Leadford, 1 |
James
Malicoat |
stayed |
|
James Patrick Malicoat was sentenced to
die for the brutal murder of Tessa Leadford, his one-year-old baby daughter,
in Chickasha, Oklahoma. The baby's mother, Mary Ann Leadford, was
sentenced to Life Without Parole for allowing the beatings that led to this
murder. On February 21, 1997, Tessa had already been dead for several hours
when she was taken to the hospital. She had been beaten, cut and
bitten. Seven of her ribs were broken and she had suffered the rupture
of several internal organs, including her liver, her lungs and a kidney.
Bruises covered her body, she bled internally, she had a skull fracture and
her brain hemorrhaged. Malicoat worked nights and cared for Tessa during
the day while Leadford worked, Attorney General Drew Edmondson said.
Malicoat was married to another woman at the time and also had a child with
her. The jury took only 15 minutes to find him guilty and only 35
minutes to reach a death sentence. This is not a true execution date as
Malicoat had previously waived his appeals but has now changed his mind and
wants to continue to appeal. At a competency hearing in December before a
County judge, Malicoat told the Court that his death was the only way to
"atone for it," but has now given notice to the Court of Criminal
Appeals that he revokes his waiver of federal appeal remedies. At the
time of the competency hearing, prosecutor Brett Burns said "This was a
very difficult case." He said he and District Attorney Gene Christian had
both viewed the body of the child at the time of her death. "We saw the
torture and injuries inflicted by James Malicoat. At the time I had a small
child and I couldn't help identifying with Tessa," he said. Burns said
Malicoat's actions were such that death was the only adequate punishment.
"He showed no remorse. Now after four years he has found remorse. Even
though we despise his actions, we do have a respect for his feelings to forego
further legal appeals," he said. "He is resolved to the death
penalty and is at peace with it." UPDATE: 2/7/01 - An
inmate scheduled to be executed Feb. 20 received a stay Tuesday from U.S.
District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange. Miles-LaGrange postponed the execution of
condemned killer James Malicoat to give him time to pursue federal court
appeals. Malicoat earlier had wanted to waive his appeals, but he changed his
mind. He was convicted of 1st-degree murder in the 1997 slaying of his
13-month-old daughter at his Chickasha home. |
| Date of scheduled execution |
State |
Victim name |
Inmate name |
Status |
|
February 21, 2001 |
Federal |
Andrew Hunt Marti |
David
Paul Hammer |
stayed |
| David
Paul Hammer appears fated to die the way he killed his cellmate, Andrew Hunt
Marti--inside a small prison room, his arms and legs strapped down, lying face
up to a world that will do just as well without him. Hammer murdered Marti
nearly five years ago, slowly strangling him in his lower bunk in cell 103 of
the Allenwood penitentiary. With the federal government soon to begin
executing prisoners again, Hammer at this moment is the first in line. He is
scheduled to die in just a month, yet likely will exercise one final legal
appeal to put off that date. Whenever he goes, he would be the first federal
prisoner in more than a century put to death for killing a fellow inmate. Two
men, both federal prisoners, both destined to die. Marti was the misfit, a
wannabe, a terribly naive kid from California. He robbed a bank to get himself
into a local street gang. Then gang members turned their guns on him. Hammer
was the first son of parents who, according to court documents, repeatedly
beat, humiliated and sexually abused their children. He left home at 14. By 19
he would--but for a few weeks--spend the rest of his life behind bars. Marti
was young and tall and lumbering. Hammer is 42 and balding, round-faced and
flabby; a two-time escape artist, he claims to be tormented by multiple
personalities. Sometimes he is a chimpanzee named Jasper. On the night he
killed Marti, he was the evil Jocko. In a letter written Oct. 15, he said of
Marti: "He did not deserve to die and I certainly had no right to kill
him." Federal prosecutors assigned to prison murders generally do not
bother to go for the death penalty. More often than not, there simply is no
outraged public demanding retribution. But David M. Barasch, the U.S. attorney
who oversaw Hammer's prosecution, believed that he owed the victim and his
family more than a murder conviction. Noting that Andrew Marti might have been
released by now, he said, softly: "To me, his life matters." When
Robert Marti, the victim's father, testified at Hammer's trial in 1998, he
broke down and cried, struggling to read his son's last letter home from
prison. At the defense table, Hammer was crying too. The elder Marti owned
furniture stores, one in Lodi, Calif., and one outside Salem, Ore. Andrew was
the youngest of his four children. "We thought he was a normal
child," the father testified. "And then about the age of 2, his
mother was out in the kitchen one afternoon and all of a sudden Andy went to
the floor." Two years later he was having as many as 200 epileptic
seizures a day. Family members would hold his head, sometimes for 20 minutes,
so he did not hurt himself. Andy had severe learning disabilities. He took a
special course to help him pass Army boot camp. Still, he washed out of basic
training. He had disciplinary problems and could not get along with other
recruits. He was busted for stealing candy in the barracks. And his father
once testified that Andy was so clumsy with his weapon that "he could
never qualify" as a soldier. So Andrew drifted. He was gullible,
very easily swayed by others. He lived for a while with his brother Michael
and began stealing cash from him, $25 one time, $40 another. Later he lived
inside his 1984 Plymouth, filled with his world's possessions: $600 worth of
clothes. There were arrests: theft in 1990, robbery in 1991, federal bank
robbery in 1992, when his accomplices tried to kill him. "We got a call
one evening that our son had been shot," Robert Marti recalled in the
Hammer trial. "His mother and I went down to the hospital. . . . He was
perfectly coherent when I talked to him. I went in the room and I was not
sympathetic and I perhaps was angry that he would do such a thing. . . . And I
gave him the dickens." Hammer was born in 1958, 10 years before
Marti. He grew up in Oklahoma and Texas. There were allegations of severe
mental, physical and sexual abuse in his childhood. By 14, Hammer had
left home. He would report later to Oklahoma authorities that he was sexually
molested by an older man and that he once felt a strange urge to smother a
cousin with a pillow. He knocked around in odd jobs. According to his brother,
he became addicted to heroin. By 19, Hammer was in prison. His crimes were as
horrendous as his upbringing. High on PCP and threatening suicide, he went to
a Baptist hospital seeking help but instead pulled a gun and took hostages,
including a nurse and a pregnant receptionist. He gave up when a police SWAT
team arrived. Later, during one of his two prison escapes, he abducted a man
named Thomas Upton, drove him to the end of an oil field road outside of
Oklahoma City and forced him to disrobe. Then he shot him three times in the
head. Upton survived and later described Hammer as "crazy, man,
completely; completely insane." Back in prison, he wrote
threatening letters to judges. He fancied himself a jailhouse lawyer. Once he
obtained a minister's license and collected funds for his "church."
His accumulated prison sentence slowly grew to 1,200 years. Under a contract
with the federal government, the state turned him over to the U.S. Bureau of
Prisons. There his security is so tight that detention officers strip-search
him four and five times a day. When he is moved, he is marched in handcuffs,
leg irons and a belly chain. When he was sentenced to die after pleading
guilty halfway through his 1998 murder trial, Hammer told the court that,
despite all of his childhood pain, he still loved his parents. "They are
not responsible for who I am or how I turned out," he told the judge.
"A lot of things happened along the way." Along the way he met
Andrew Marti. Marti went to prison for bank robbery in 1992. He had tried to
join a black Bloods gang in the Portland, Ore., area, despite the fact he was
a young white man with no real street sense. To prove his mettle, he was
directed to either kill a rival Crips member or rob a branch bank in Salem,
Ore. He later told the court that because he "could not kill another
individual," he "chose the bank robbery." Thin, 6-foot-5, a ski
mask hiding his face and a fully automatic 9-millimeter Lima pistol at the
ready, he burst into the bank one chilly January day. He leaped over the
teller counter, scooped up the loot and made off in a maroon Dodge Omni.
Later, at a rendezvous in a nearby industrial area, he and his gang
confederates--fellows named "Rip" and "Smurf" and "Drak"--counted
the money, just under $11,000. But as Marti was returning to the car, he was
shot four times in the chest and stomach by one of the others. He told the FBI
later that he "played dead" and overheard the others laughing as
they sped away. In court, he pleaded guilty. "I am sorry I did
this," he scrawled across the plea form because his injuries left him
unable to write or clench a fist. His court-appointed attorney, Andrew Bates,
described him as like a "puppy dog. . . . It was as if you were dealing
with a kid with a junior high mentality. He didn't have friends. He didn't
have much going for him." Marti was sentenced to 106 months. The court's
pre-sentence report included a line from Marti's mother, Patricia, who said
her son wanted approval from others so desperately that he would "latch
onto anyone who would give him half a smile." Marti walked into prison
already a marked man. He was an informant who had rolled over on the gang
members. In prison, he became known as a snitch, telling guards about other
prisoners' activities. In retaliation, he was assaulted several times, once
with a baseball bat. He was moved about the prison system, usually because he
had been attacked, sometimes severely. Marti's prison file shows that
officials were aware that "Mr. Marti's life was in danger." Even
after Marti was examined by a prison psychologist, the doctor noted: "He
was paranoid about his safety, but this seemed rational due to the previous
assaults." Partly for protection, he aligned himself with a violent
Mexican prison gang. He took a nickname, "Espanta Fajaros," or
"frightened birds." He sported tattoos, including one of a
scarecrow. "He was afraid of what could happen to him there,"
recalled his lawyer, Bates. "He was emotional about it. It was like a
very young kid not knowing what was happening, and he was definitely scared of
the retaliation." Once, Marti wrote the warden. "I'm scared for my
safety. A man can't learn anything while being stuck in SHU [Special Housing
Unit]. I want to learn, I want to work, I want to be safe, warden!" Three
weeks before his murder, he sent his last letter home. He wrote it in block
letters, and enclosed a birthday card for his 66-year-old father. "Smile
and be happy," he wrote. "I know you feel that I'm a black sheep of
the family and you're right. I just didn't like being told what to do and
wanted to go on my own way, Dad." He added: "When I get out of
prison, maybe we can start on the other foot." He died at 2:30 in the
morning, April 13, 1996. He was 27 years old. Marti was face up on the lower
bunk. His arms and legs were strapped down by a knotted sheet, tied so tight
that the coroner had to cut them loose. A sock was stuffed in his mouth. A
separate, braided cord had been used to strangle him. Hammer immediately
confessed to the murder. He and Marti had been cellmates for just a few months
in the prison's special housing unit and Hammer has over the years hinted at a
number of reasons why he killed the younger prisoner. His most consistent
story has been that Marti wanted to be transferred to another prison because
he did not feel safe. To that end, Hammer convinced him that, if they could
make it look like he was injured in a prison assault, he certainly would be
moved. So Marti consented to be bound and beaten. But the ruse turned too
violent. Hammer knew of Marti's reputation as a snitch and he told some
confidants that he would silence his cellmate to win favor with other
prisoners. Indeed, Hammer once bragged that he would "get Marti moved in
with me and rock him to sleep." Hammer's defense lawyers had their own
theory. They argued that he was tormented by his multiple personalities, torn
between Jasper the friendly chimpanzee and the evil Jocko. In a later
videotaped hypnosis session sponsored by his attorneys, Hammer blurted out:
"Jocko killed him. Jocko killed him. I didn't kill him." Regardless
of why he killed Marti, Hammer from the start boasted that he did not fear the
ultimate penalty. He wrote out seven reasons for killing Marti, Nos. 1 to 4
dealing with Marti's reputation as a snitch and Hammer's desire to "make
a statement." No. 5: "I do not fear the death penalty or anything
else the government can do to me." No. 6: "Human life holds very
little meaning for me as anyone can kill or be killed." No. 7:
"Given the opportunity, I will kill again!" In pleading guilty,
Hammer told Judge Malcolm Muir: "The bottom line is I did in fact with
these hands kill Andrew Marti. . . . The bottom line is I tied him up. I tied
him to the bed and killed him." At his sentencing, he said: "This
case began with the death of Andrew Marti and apparently it's going to end
with my own death." He rambled for a while, citing Shakespeare and T.E.
Lawrence (the "Lawrence of Arabia"). "Our sins speak, but
murder shrieks and that somehow seems appropriate to describe what happened to
Andrew Marti." He added, "I see this as just the end of
something that started way back. And I don't see it as a . . . as a total
loss. . . . He who dies pays all debts." On Sept. 20, he told the U.S.
3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that he was dropping all of his
legal appeals. The appellate court took him at his word. Muir set his
execution for Nov. 15. A day later, Hammer wrote a postcard: "I have
mixed feelings about it all, but after almost 23 years of continuous
incarceration and no hope of ever leaving prison alive, I'm ready." In
these final days, Hammer claims to have found religion, and was confirmed into
the Roman Catholic Church. In Washington, the Bureau of Prisons has also been
busy, preparing its protocol for the executions. It has been a long time.
There is much to be done. Then in the middle of October, Hammer and his
lawyers filed a clemency petition with President Clinton. He asked the
appellate court to reinstate his appeal. And he asked Muir to set aside the
Nov. 15 date so he could challenge the death sentence. The appellate court
said it would not hear any more appeals from Hammer. Muir then set Hammer's
execution for Feb. 21, but will postpone that date if Hammer and his lawyers,
as expected, file one final legal appeal by the end of this month. Many
believe that Hammer is toying with the system again, trying to make one more
splash before he takes his final bow. His motives are as elusive as the man
himself. Yet he still can vividly recall his victim. "Andrew was a son, a
brother, an uncle, a gang member, a bank robber, an informant for the
FBI," Hammer wrote on Oct. 15. "Andrew was loved and hated. . . . He
was a follower, not a leader." He added one thing more: "Andrew had
numerous tattoos. One which comes to mind was two masks, happy and sad faces,
with words beneath that said, 'Play now, pay later.' Andrew paid in full with
his life."
UPDATE: David Paul Hammer had been scheduled to die by injection on Feb. 21
for strangling his cellmate, but he is again pursuing appeals and a judge
vacated that date without setting a new one. |
Page visited 
times
Page last updated 03/22/04 |
