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Eight killers were executed in March 2003.  They had murdered at least 13 people.
Six killers were given a stay in March 2003.  They have murdered at least 9 people.

Date of scheduled execution	State	Victim name	Inmate name	Status
March 12, 2003	Texas	Richard Wayne Whitehead	Delma Banks	stayed
Not long before his death, Wayne had bought a 1969 Ford Mustang, which was his pride and joy. He left his parent's home on the night of April 11, 1980 to attend a high school dance. Wayne's body was found on the morning of April 15, 1980. He had been shot three times, twice in the head and once in the upper back. One shot had been fired at a maximum distance of 18 to 24 inches. Several empty beer cans and two spent shell casings were found near the scene. A female friend of Wayne's testified that she was with him during the evening of April 11, 1980. That evening, Wayne was driving his automobile, a 1969 Mustang with a light green colored body. Later, the pair ran into Banks at the local bowling center, and at his suggestion they purchased some beer. Wayne worked with Banks at the local Bonanza Steak House. The three went to the park near Nash, Texas and drank the beer. At approximately 11:00 or 11:15 p.m. Whitehead took the girl home. Another friend testified that Banks and Whitehead visited her at her house around 11:30 p.m. on April 11. They stayed for approximately 10 to 15 minutes. A man who lived about 100 yards from the park in Nash testified that at approximately 4:00 a.m. on April 12, he heard two gun shots. Charles Cook testified that he met Banks on the morning of April 12 in Dallas. Banks was driving a vehicle which had the same description as Whitehead's. Cook and his wife befriended Banks and allowed him to stay with them at Cook's grandfather's home. Cook had noticed a sprinkle of blood on Banks' pants and asked Banks about it. Banks told him that he "shot a white boy." Later that evening, Banks told Cook that he had killed someone. Banks told him he had been riding around with a "white boy" and his girlfriend, and after they took the girl home, he and the boy went to the woods together and drank beer. Banks decided to kill the person "for the hell of it" and take his automobile to Dallas. Cook eventually obtained a pistol and the automobile from Banks. Cook sold the pistol to his neighbor and left the automobile in West Dallas. It was never recovered. The pistol was recovered from the neighbor and was identified through ballistic testing as the murder weapon. Cook's wife and sister testified that they saw Banks driving a green Mustang on April 12. Cook's grandfather stated that Banks stayed at his house for a night or two. Additionally, telephone records reveal that Banks made a collect call home to Texarkana from Cook's grandfather's house during the course of the weekend. Cook's neighbor also testified that he met Banks during the same time. Banks told him he had a little misunderstanding with someone and had broken his jaw or "something like that." Banks did not testify and did not present any evidence during the guilt phase of his trial. At the time of Banks' 1980 capital murder trial, he did not have any previous felony convictions. However, during the punishment phase of trial, the prosecution offered evidence that Banks had pistol-whipped and threatened to kill a man only a few days before Whitehead's death. The State also presented evidence that Banks later attempted to recover the murder weapon so that it could be used in future armed robberies. Banks confirmed both incidents when he testified in his own defense during sentencing proceedings. Banks' sentence had been overturned by a federal judge, but was reinstated by the 5th Circuit court. Bowie County First Assistant District Attorney James Elliott prosecuted Banks in the original trial with then-Bowie County District Attorney Louis Raffaelli. Elliott was prepared to battle the Banks/Whitehead case in Bowie County had the appellate court upheld Folsom's ruling, which ordered a new sentencing trial for Banks. "I entertained a possibility that it would have to be tried over again, both the guilt/innocence phase and the punishment, due to our federal court's ruling. But the thing that makes me most happy about this case is not Delma Banks' death but that the Whiteheads' long nightmare may come to an end in part because of this. I'm sure it has been a long nightmare for them," Elliott said. Larry Whitehead said he and his wife, Jackie, had real fears that Banks would be tried again. He called Folsom's ruling a low point in their family's life. "After 20 years of this battle going for them to overrule it that way, when you try to start to get these people and witnesses together after all these years, it's tough. We actually started to try to track people down," Larry Whitehead said. "I respect a reasonable time to review a case, but 23 years is too long." Elliott said that his investigator on the case is dead. One of two key witnesses is dead. The surviving witness has had numerous felony convictions, which could be problematic for prosecutors. "It would have been difficult but not impossible," Elliott said. He had been with the prosecutor's office for a year and Banks' case was his 1st murder trial. During that trial Elliott handled the technical aspects of the case but has remained involved with it for the past 22 years. "I retired with 23 years of service and this lasted 22," Elliott said. "I did not want to leave this office with this one unresolved. This is almost like a permission slip to let my breath out after 22 years." The Whiteheads have remained in contact with Elliott throughout the years and shared with him their belief that the death sentence would be reinstated after they heard Banks' and the state's arguments before the 5th Circuit in March. "I actually felt pretty good after the hearing in March. My wife and I went to the hearing in March and sat through it. I felt pretty good about the questions that the judges were asking and what was going on at that time. I felt like we would get a favorable decision," Larry Whitehead said. But he says it is still a waiting game as the appeals are not yet exhausted. Larry Whitehead called the 5th Circuit's ruling a major hurdle to overcome. "Getting that overturned and sent back was a big step. We kind of feel now that we're on the downhill of this climb," Larry Whitehead said. Elliott said in all likelihood, Banks' execution will be set for early 2003. Larry Whitehead said he understands the need to set an execution date up to 150 days away to accommodate the time necessary for Banks' final appeals to clear. Elliott said based on the lengthy 5th Circuit ruling, he does not think the court will reverse itself. He and Whitehead also doubt Banks will have any success with the U.S. Supreme Court. Banks has 90 days to petition the nation's high court once the 5th Circuit's ruling becomes final. For the Whiteheads, the appellate ruling does not yet seem real. "We've been disappointed so many times in the past, it's hard to take anything solid anymore. You just kind of wonder what's going to happen. I never expected that it would come up for retrial after 20 years like it did," Larry Whitehead said. He and his wife plan to attend the execution if it is carried out. But that will not totally ease the pain that he says they suffer daily since losing their son 22 years ago. "Of course, nothing will bring our son back, but we do feel that justice needs to be served," Larry Whitehead said. Through the various court battles over the years, Elliott says he has no personal hatred for Banks. "I hate what he did, but I don't hate him," Elliott said. He does not believe the killing was so Banks could steal Whitehead's car. The car was ditched in Dallas. "He says he killed a white kid for the hell of it. I have no idea how Delma Banks felt about white people," Elliott said. But he believes it was cold-blooded since Banks had worked with Whitehead at Bonanza the summer before the murder. Whitehead was giving Banks a ride home on a rainy Friday night after the 2 saw each other at an area bowling alley. It is the victim in the case that makes it personal for Elliott. "I still remember Wayne Whitehead's face and how he looked at death," Elliott said.

 

Date of scheduled execution	State	Victim name	Inmate name	Status
March 17, 2003 (week of)	Maryland	Dawn Marie Garvin, 20 Patricia Antoinette Hirt Laurie Elizabeth Ward, 25	Steven Oken	stayed
Steven Oken sexually assaulted and murdered Dawn Garvin at her home in Baltimore County. At midnight on Sunday, November 1, 1987, Keith Douglas Garvin arrived at the United States Navy base in Oceana, Virginia. Mr. Garvin, who had a pass from his naval superiors, had just spent the weekend with his wife, Dawn Garvin, at their apartment in the Baltimore County community of White Marsh and was returning to his station in Oceana. Upon his arrival at the base, Keith attempted to call his wife to notify her that he had arrived safely. Although the telephone rang at their White Marsh apartment, there was no answer. After making several additional unsuccessful attempts to call his wife, Keith became worried and telephoned his father-in-law, Frederick Joseph Romano. Because Frederick lived in close proximity to the Garvins' apartment, Keith asked him to check on Dawn. Mr. Romano agreed, and attempted to telephone his daughter twice. Both times there was no answer. Concerned about the fact that numerous calls to his daughter had gone unanswered, Frederick decided to drive to his daughter's apartment. When he arrived, he found the front door to the apartment ajar, all the lights in the apartment turned on, and the television blaring. Sensing that something was wrong, he rushed into the apartment and found his daughter, Dawn, in the bedroom lying on the bed nude with a bottle protruding from her vagina. While attempting to perform CPR, Dawn's father observed that there was blood streaming from her forehead. He immediately called for assistance, and paramedics arrived shortly thereafter. A paramedic then began to administer CPR, but his efforts were in vain. Dawn Marie Garvin was dead. At 2:30 a.m., on November 2, police arrived at the Garvins' apartment to inspect the scene of the murder. A detective testified that when he entered the Garvins' apartment he saw no signs of forced entry. Once inside, he observed a brassiere, a pair of pants, tennis shoes, a shirt, and a sweater on the floor near the sofa in the living room. The brassiere was not unhooked, but instead, was ripped on the side. The pants were turned inside out. The detective also noticed a small piece of rubber on the floor near the television set. In the bedroom, he found two spent .25 caliber shell casings on the bed, one of which was lying on top of a shirt. The shirt was blood-stained and had what Roeder believed to be a bullet hole in it. An autopsy of Dawn's body revealed that she had died as the result of two contact gunshot wounds; one of the bullets entered at her left eyebrow and the other at her right ear. Less than two weeks after Oken murdered Dawn Garvin, he sexually assaulted and murdered his sister-in-law, Patricia Hirt, at his Maryland home. He then fled Maryland for Maine, where he sexually assaulted and murdered Lori E. Ward, the 25-year-old desk clerk at his Kittery, Maine hotel on November 16, 1987.  He was arrested in Maine on November 17, 1987, and was ultimately convicted in Maine for first degree murder, robbery with a firearm, and theft arising out of Lori's murder. Oken was sentenced to life without parole on the murder charge, twenty years on the robbery charge, and five years on the theft charge, all sentences to run concurrently. Oken was returned to Maryland where he faced separate prosecutions for charges arising out of other two homicides. He was indicted in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County in the Garvin case for first degree murder, sexual offenses, burglary, daytime housebreaking, robbery with a dangerous or deadly weapon, theft, and a handgun violation. The State's evidence was very strong. The murder weapon, a handgun, was found in Oken's home shortly after the murder and a rubber portion of Oken's tennis shoe was found in Dawn Garvin's living room on the night of the murder. In addition, several witnesses at trial identified Oken as the person in the neighborhood who had attempted to gain entry to residences in the vicinity of the Garvin home a few days prior to the murder.  The Kittery Maine Police Chief Edward Strong said the Ward murder was very difficult for him because at the time, his daughter was the same age. "The poor girl was working her way through school and putting herself through college," Strong said. "Oken just checked into the motel and a couple hours later murdered her." Strong testified in the two murder trials in Maryland because he found bloody materials and other evidence in the Coachman Motor Inn that linked the three murders. "This individual brutally murdered the three women," Strong said. "I have no doubt that he would have murdered again if we hadn't caught him." Strong said Oken's punishment is suitable for the crimes he committed. "I've never in my law enforcement career seen a person who deserves the death penalty more than this individual," Strong said. "I'm just glad they have the death penalty in Maryland." That Oken would be the first in line to die under the new governor's administration is no surprise. Baltimore County prosecutors expected him to be executed last spring -- until a moratorium was declared by then-governor Glendening. Given Governor Ehrlich's campaign promise to lift the ban, the state's attorney's office in the county began preparing a death warrant around the time of Ehrlich's Jan. 15 inauguration. "Oken is on a fast track," said Assistant State's Attorney Ann Brobst, who noted that Oken's conviction and sentence have "never been reversed for any reason."

 

Date of scheduled execution	State	Victim name	Inmate name	Status
March 18, 2003	Federal	Tracie McBride, 19	Louis Jones, Jr.	executed
The federal prosecutor with a Southern accent came to Jim and Irene McBride's door in Centerville with a weighty question few Minnesotans have ever had to answer. Did they want the death penalty for the man who killed their daughter? It was 1995. Army Pvt. Tracie McBride, 19, had been kidnapped by a stranger and bludgeoned to death months earlier as she stood watch at an Air Force base laundry room in Texas. The McBrides didn't hesitate in their answer. Yes, they said, Louis Jones Jr. should die for what he did. If Tracie could no longer feel joy, could no longer call her family, why should he? A federal jury in Texas agreed. Jones, a decorated Army veteran, is scheduled to be executed March 18. In the nearly eight years since her death, McBride family members haven't wavered in their opinion that the sentence should be carried out, Tracie's mother and sister said. Their opinions and those of other relatives and friends -- in the form of more than 70 letters to the U.S. Department of Justice pardon attorney -- could play a role once again. Jones and his attorney have asked President Bush to spare Jones' life, claiming that his crime was affected by brain damage he suffered from toxins he was exposed to when he served in the Gulf War. The clemency petition, which followed two appeals and other court proceedings, has dredged up painful memories once again for the McBride family, they said. If the death sentence is carried out, they feel they won't be forced to dwell on the horror of the crime each time a legal proceeding pops up, said Stacie McBride, the victim's sister. "We're not going to have these constant reminders in the negative sense." Irene McBride is counting on Bush to let the sentence stand. She plans to witness Jones' execution. "We're not looking for comfort out of this," she said. "We're looking for justice. His execution will not bring Tracie back, but it will show us that the justice system in America still works." Jones drove onto the base in San Angelo, Texas, fixated on finding his ex-wife, who worked there and had made it clear that their separation was permanent, his defense attorney said in the petition. But other evidence showed Jones had just gotten off the phone with his wife and knew she wasn't on the base, Irene McBride said. Somehow, shortly after 9 p.m. Feb. 18, 1995, Jones ended up at the laundry room where Tracie McBride was chatting on the phone with her best friend in Minnesota. The next morning, military officials phoned Tracie's parents to say Tracie was missing. Two people had seen a man abduct her the night before. When one man tried to follow, Jones assaulted him, that man later testified. Nearly 2 weeks later, Jones confessed to killing Tracie and led police to her body under a bridge about 27 miles from San Angelo, a city of about 100,000 residents in western Texas, about 225 miles west of Austin. Jones said he had beaten her with a tire iron. Prosecutors, in a statement of facts sent to Washington, said Jones also had admitted sexually assaulting McBride. The mental images of what happened that night still haunt her family, they said. "It's always a part of you," Stacie McBride said. Evidence of brain damage was discovered in connection with Jones' trial in 1995, according to his defense attorney, Timothy Floyd. But attorneys didn't know its cause or the role it played in the crime, he said. Now, Floyd contends, medical research has linked Jones' type of brain damage to exposure to chemicals in the Gulf War. University of Texas epidemiologist Dr. Robert Haley has found that those suffering from a certain form of Gulf War Syndrome have symptoms including hostility, aggression, rigid thinking and obsessiveness, according to the petition. Floyd argues that Jones had fixated on talking to his former wife the night of the kidnapping. The syndrome, Floyd wrote, "can cause people like Mr. Jones to embark on a course of behavior that is driven -- from which they cannot step back or modulate." After 22 years of service in the Army, Jones struggled in civilian life. He dropped out of college because of poor grades, delivered newspapers and drove a shuttle bus. He became increasingly aggressive and irritable, leading to the breakup of his marriage, ex-wife Sandy Lane testified at his trial. Lane testified that Jones raped her at his apartment 2 days before he kidnapped McBride. She also said he acted "very crazed" and was "spinning out of control, bouncing from thought to thought." Prosecutor Tanya Pierce portrayed Jones as a calculating, cold-blooded killer who meticulously sought to cover his tracks. The petite McBride, who was 5-foot-2 and weighed about 100 pounds, had volunteered for laundry-room duty at Goodfellow Air Force Base the evening of Feb. 18, 1995, when Jones kidnapped her at gunpoint. He raped her at his apartment, then made her gargle mouthwash and clean her genital area with towels and peroxide. Jones washed Tracie McBride's clothes after assaulting her and made her walk out of his apartment on towels, believing it would prevent her boots and clothes from picking up carpet fibers, which might link him to the crime. She also had to sit on towels as Jones drove her to a bridge about 20 miles outside town. About 2 weeks after the kidnapping, Jones led investigators to the bridge where he had dumped McBride's body. Her head had been crushed with a tire iron. Prosecutors presented evidence of Jones' aggressive behavior before the Gulf War. They cited 4 incidents in which he had beaten up co-workers or fellow soldiers and offered testimony that he had slapped his wife.  The evidence of Gulf War Syndrome isn't an excuse for Jones' actions, but an explanation and a mitigating factor, the clemency petition says. In his letter to Bush, Jones described his sorrow and explained that he has reformed. "By succombing [sic] to my temptations," he wrote, "I destroyed the family of Specialist Fourth Class Tracie Joy McBride, as well as my own." Floyd argued in the petition that the jury already was struggling with whether to impose the death sentence and the link to Gulf War Syndrome would have changed the outcome. "Had the jury known of the link between the crime and Mr. Jones's brain injury from honorable service to our country in the Gulf War, the jury very likely would not have imposed the death penalty," he wrote. Haley's office said the epidemiologist has never presented his research in a court case, but Gulf War Syndrome has been cited in other criminal cases. In one, a man convicted of killing his girlfriend and three children in Florida in 1998 had been diagnosed with Gulf War illness 2 years earlier. A judge in his case said there was no correlation between the diagnosis and the murders, according to an Associated Press report. Guy H. Baker, accused of shooting two St. Paul police officers to death, claimed that Gulf War Syndrome had put him in severe pain. He pleaded guilty to the murders in 1994. The possibility of the syndrome has been raised in the case of accused Washington-area sniper John Allen Muhammad, who has yet to face trial. Under federal law, a defendant sentenced to death gets an automatic appeal that is limited to evidence presented at the trial. The defendant can also file a petition for post-conviction review to bring up evidence not presented at the trial, explained Elisabeth Semel, director of the death penalty clinic at the University of California, Berkeley. While more than one petition can be filed, "the opportunity to succeed on a second petition is extremely limited to situations such as actual innocence," Semel said. Floyd pointed out that the president can grant clemency for any reason. Irene McBride said she doesn't expect to feel comforted if Jones is put to death. "Nobody's going to win. . . .All this is going to be is justice," she said. Comfort would only come, if when Jones died, "we got Tracie back," she said. The family simply wants to grieve in a normal way "rather than it being brought up over and over and over again," Irene McBride said. The family wants to focus on the happy memories of Tracie: Her energetic smile. The way she loved to make classmates happy by baking chocolate chip cookies so often that she knew the recipe by heart. Her soprano voice at church, she said. How would they feel if, as in Minnesota, the death penalty were not an option and Jones was sentenced to life in prison? "No matter what somebody is convicted of . . . they always try to appeal for something lower," Irene McBride said. "I think it would be worse to think that he could ever get out." Often, Irene McBride wonders what her daughter's life would have been like. She imagines Tracie Joy McBride marrying the Marine she was dating 8 years ago. She sees her teaching music to children, baby-sitting the 7 nieces and nephews born after her death and helping her sister prepare for her upcoming wedding. But on Feb. 18, 1995, Louis Jones Jr. kidnapped the 19-year-old Centerville, Minn., soldier from the Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas, raped her and bludgeoned her to death. She had been there just 9 days. Amid the debate over the fairness of capital punishment and executing a former soldier with Gulf War syndrome, her family says it boils down to this: Jones deserves to die because Tracie deserved to live. "Closure is a big word. We're not expecting comfort from all this," said Irene McBride. "All we're expecting is justice." Tracie's parents, her siblings and nieces and nephews will be in Terre Haute for Jones' execution. More than 70 family members and friends have written letters opposing his clemency petition. In one of the letters, Dawn Bryant relives the last time she heard from her best friend. Tracie had called and the 2 were chatting about their boyfriends when the phone was muffled and Tracie started talking to someone else. The phone was disconnected, but Bryant had no idea that Jones had just abducted her friend from the laundry room. "I wish I had called somebody," Bryant said eight years later. "I was the last person she spoke loving words to. I was the last person who heard her laugh." Friends and family say Tracie was always cheerful, an achiever who earned the nickname "Guy Smiley" from her drill instructor. She graduated from basic training at the top of her company before being transferred to Goodfellow for military intelligence training. She baked cookies for other soldiers, although those who were mean to her friend, Tracie Rafn, missed out on many a treat. "I was T1 and she was T2," said Rafn. "I hear my name, and I want to stay in touch with her parents, but how do I call them and say, 'It's Tracie?' There's always going to be that reminder of her." After Tracie's death, residents tied yellow ribbons in the tiny Twin Cities suburb, and a park was later dedicated to her. A choir director wrote a song in her memory, because she was active in the choir, band and theater there. Mike Smith, the family's pastor, describes himself as forgiving but says forgiveness is not an issue here. "This was one of the most heinous crimes," said Smith. "It's not so much vengeance against Louis Jones, but there needs to be justice for the crime -- and justice is the death penalty." In the past few months, friends and family were forced to relive painful memories as Jones petitioned President Bush for clemency, claiming that Gulf War syndrome contributed to his crimes. "It's like packing tape stuck to your thigh and then tearing it off," said Rafn. "There's literally physical pain when you think about what happened." People went to the Gulf War and didn't commit murder, said Irene McBride. "We feel bad for his family, but he made the choice, and now he has to (suffer) the consequences. The rest of us are paying for the choices he made." Irene McBride said. "I don't want him living in a prison where he can watch cable TV, lift weights, go to the library, eat, sleep, talk with his family," Stacie McBride said. "Where was the mercy when Tracie pleaded? . . . She did nothing. . . . he refused to have any lenience on her."  UPDATE: Jones, a decorated Army veteran who blames childhood abuse and exposure to nerve gas during the Gulf War for his killing of a female soldier has asked President Bush to spare his life. Jones has exhausted his appeals. McBride's mother, Irene McBride, said the petition is a ploy by Jones to escape the consequences for killing her daughter. "I agree with the judge, the jury, the Supreme Court and the appellate court," she said. "They didn't feel (the brain damage) was enough. A lot of people have come back from the Gulf War and not murdered people. I feel they are still just looking for an excuse for murder. Brain injury, Gulf War syndrome -- that's not an excuse to murder somebody." Members of the McBride family in Centerville, Minn., their friends and others who knew Tracie McBride have written letters to the Justice Department, pleading that Jones' execution take place as scheduled.  UPDATE: "Today was a day of justice for Tracie," Irene McBride, the victim's mother, said after she witnessed the execution. "Today Louis Jones finally was made accountable for his actions, and today he will meet his ultimate judge. Everybody is glad this is over. It's been a long 8 years," she said. "The healing is not over; it's just beginning."

 

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