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Biden Fails a Death Penalty Abolitionist’s Most Important Test

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The mystery of Joe Biden’s views about capital punishment has finally been solved. His decision to grant clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shows the depth of his opposition to the death penalty. And his decision to leave three of America’s most notorious killers to be executed by a future administration shows the limits of his abolitionist commitment. The three men excluded from Biden’s mass clemency—Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers—would no doubt pose a severe test of anyone’s resolve to end the death penalty. Biden failed that test.
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Texas executes Franklin Dewayne Alix

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HUNTSVILLE — Condemned prisoner Franklin Dewayne Alix has been put to death for fatally shooting a Houston man during a robbery.

The 34-year-old Alix was given a lethal injection Tuesday evening for killing 23-year-old Eric Bridgeford. Bridgeford interrupted Alix during the robbery of Bridgeford's sister's apartment more than 11 years ago. The sister also was abducted and raped in what authorities said was part of a six-month crime rampage by Alix.

The execution was the fifth this year in Texas, the nation's busiest capital punishment state.

Alix's appeals to the courts were exhausted and no last-day attempts to stop the punishment were raised.

The execution was the fifth this year in Texas, the nation's busiest capital punishment state.

Alix's lawyer, Robert Rosenberg, said appeals to the courts to stop the execution were exhausted.

"I know I messed up," Alix told The Associated Press recently from death row. "I killed the dude. I wasn't trying to but I did. The dude wasn't bothering me. I was bothering him.

"I don't want to die. I'm remorseful. But I won't apologize."

According to trial testimony, Alix abducted Bridgeford's sister Jan. 3, 1998, forced her into the trunk of a car, drove around and raped her, then brought her home. As he was ransacking her apartment, Bridgeford came in, saw Alix with a gun and ran off but was shot in the back. Alix fled and was arrested a few days later.

Alix denied the rape, said he spotted the woman outside her apartment at night and considered her "easy prey."

He said he threatened to put her in the trunk of a car and she "volunteered to give me her TV" if he wouldn't kill her.

"That's how I got in her house," he said. "Her brother came home. It was just a simple robbery. My intention was never to kill anybody. I'm looking to rob, not kill."

He said he was behind a door when Bridgeford entered the apartment.

"I swung around, put the gun in his face," Alix said, "If I wanted to, I could have shot him between the eyes. I pushed off, and the gun went off. It happened in a second. It felt like hours. I looked at him and took off running."

Asked what he took in the robbery, he replied: "I didn't get nothing."

At his 1998 trial, his lawyers tried to persuade the jury he didn't intend to kill Bridgeford. Jurors deliberated five hours before convicting him of capital murder. Alix said a debt of "a couple of thousand" dollars to a friend got out of control and forced him to turn to robbery to get money.

Harris County prosecutors said the slaying was one of three plus two rapes and dozens of robberies they tied to Alix from August 1997 through January 1998.

"He was just a major league crime spree," Luci Davidson, a former prosecutor now in private practice, recalled last week. "He's probably one of the worst criminal defendants I ever tried as a prosecutor."

She said he confessed to most of the crimes. Alix said he confessed to the rape of Bridgeford's sister because he believed it would help him not get the death penalty.

"I'm on death row because I was confused," he said. "I came here with confusion. I'm leaving a better person."

DNA evidence used in his trial also played a role in a scandal involving the Houston Police Department's crime lab when retests discredited the initial results.

But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, affirming a federal district judge's findings, said the DNA evidence was part of a "larger body of proof," including Alix's long history of violence, that showed jurors he was dangerous and should be sentenced to death.

Source: AP, March 30, 2010
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