Arizona inmate facing death for 2 murders seeks clemency

Daniel Wayne Cook

An Arizona death row inmate convicted in two gruesome sex-torture murders and scheduled for execution next week has filed a petition for clemency that will be heard by a state board Friday.

Daniel Wayne Cook, 51, wants his death sentence reduced to life in prison and says that he was denied the chance during sentencing to present mitigating circumstances that would warrant leniency.

Cook, in his clemency petition, said he was molested and beaten as a child, factors the trail prosecutor said would have prevented him from seeking the death penalty.

Cook and John Eugene Matzke were convicted in the deaths of 26-year-old Carlos Cruz-Ramos and 16-year-old Kevin Swaney. Prosecutors showed that Cruz-Ramos was tortured and that both victims were raped.

Matzke, who testified against Cook, was released from prison in 2007 after serving a 20-year prison sentence. Cook was sentenced to death.

The clemency petition said Cook, who was 26 at the time of the killings, suffered early in his life at the hands of relatives and others. That abuse "was the same abuse he inflicted upon his victims in his psychotic and delusional state," the petition said.

Evidence regarding abuse in Cook's past and brain damage he suffered because his mother drank alcohol while she was pregnant with him could have saved him from a death sentence, the petition said. But the trial judge refused Cook's request, which would have allowed such evidence into trial, the petition said.

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Source: AZCentral, August 1, 2012

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