Texas executes Beunka Adams

Beunka Adams

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas man condemned for his role in a robbery in which three people were shot, one fatally, has been put to death.

Beunka Adams became the fifth person executed in Texas this year. His lethal injection was carried out Thursday evening in Huntsville.

The execution came less than three hours after the U.S. Supreme Court refused a last-day appeal to postpone the punishment.

The 29-year-old Adams won a reprieve from a federal district judge earlier this week. But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the death warrant Wednesday.

Adams and another man were sent to death row for the 2002 slaying of 37-year-old Kenneth Vandever during the holdup of an East Texas convenience store. Two female clerks were shot but survived. One of the women was raped.

Adams becomes the 5th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 482nd overall since Texas resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982. Adams also becomes the 243rd condemned inmate to be put to death since Rick Perry became governor of Texas in 2001.

Adams becomes the 17th condemned inmate to be put to death in the USA this year and the 1294th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. Adams is the 4th person to be executed in the USA since April 18; 4 more condemned inmates are scheduled to be executed in the country in May. 

Source: AP, Rick Halperin, April 26, 2012

Justices refuse stay for Texas man's execution

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to halt the scheduled execution of convicted killer Beunka Adams.

The 29-year-old Adams faces lethal injection in Huntsville Thursday evening for a slaying a decade ago during an East Texas robbery where 3 people were shot and abducted and one of the victims was raped. The ruling came about 3 hours before Adams could be taken to the Texas death chamber.

Adams' attorneys argued the justices should halt the punishment, review his case and allow Adams to pursue appeals focusing on whether his legal help at his trial and during earlier stages of his appeals was deficient.

Earlier this week, Adams won a reprieve from a federal district judge but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision, reinstating the death warrant.

Adams, 29, would be the 5th person executed in Texas this year. His attorneys asked the nation's highest court to halt the execution, review his case and let him pursue appeals claiming he had deficient legal help at his trial and during earlier stages of his appeals. Adams won a reprieve from a federal district judge earlier this week, but the Texas attorney general's office appealed the ruling, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the death warrant Wednesday.

Adams was 1 of 2 men sent to death row for the slaying of Kenneth Vandever, 37. He was in a convenience store on Sept. 2, 2002, in Rusk, about 115 miles southeast of Dallas, when 2 men wearing masks and carrying a shotgun walked in and announced a holdup.

After robbing the store, Adams and Richard Cobb drove off with the 2 female clerks and Vandever in a car belonging to one of the women.

Testimony at Adams' trial showed he gave the orders during the holdup and initiated the abductions. They drove to a remote area about 10 miles away in Cherokee County, where Adams demanded Vandever and 1 woman get into the trunk of the car and then raped the other woman. Testimony also showed he forced all 3 to kneel as they were shot.

Vandever was fatally wounded. The women were kicked and shot again before Cobb and Adams, believing they were dead, fled. Both were alive, however, and one was able to run to a house to summon help. Adams and Cobb were arrested several hours later in Jacksonville, about 25 miles to the north. Adams was identifiable because he had slipped off his mask after one of the women said she thought she knew him.

During questioning by police, Adams "didn't fully say what he did but enough to show guilt under the law of parties," said Cherokee County District Attorney Elmer Beckworth.

That Texas law makes an accomplice equally culpable as the actual killer. Beckworth said evidence pointed to Cobb as the gunman, although testimony at trial showed Adams bragged to another jail inmate that he was the shooter.

The law of parties became an issue in some of Adams' appeals, with his lawyers arguing trial lawyers and earlier appeals attorneys should have contested jury instructions related to the law.

Assistant Attorney General Ellen Stewart-Klein countered in court documents that Adams showed "total participation in a capital murder and the moral culpability required of one sentenced to death."

Cobb, who was 18 at the time of the holdup, was convicted and sentenced to die in a separate trial 8 months before Adams, who was 19 at the time of the crime. Evidence tied the 2 to a string of robberies that happened around the same time.

"You could see with their prior aggravated robberies the level of intensity was rising," Beckworth said.

Cobb does not yet have an execution date set. At Adams' trial, Adams was portrayed as "a kind of tag-along" influenced by Cobb, said Sten Langsjoen, a trial lawyer for Adams. The two had met as ninth-graders at a boot camp. Evidence showed they began committing burglaries together, then switched to more lucrative armed robberies.

Adams declined to speak from death row with reporters as his execution date neared.

Vandever had suffered a brain injury as a result of a car accident, said Beckworth, who described him as mentally challenged. He was known around Rusk for riding his bicycle and keeping folks company at the convenience store, the prosecutor said. Vandever was in the store's eating area, not near the women, and the robbers apparently didn't spot him until he got up to leave.

Source: Associated Press, April 26, 2012