A Fort Worth killer once deemed too insane to execute now has a date with death.
Emanuel Kemp of Tarrant County is slated for execution on Nov. 7 in the Huntsville death chamber, according to prison spokesman Jeremy Desel.
The high-school dropout had been out of prison for just five days when he hijacked a public transit bus at knifepoint in 1987, forcing the driver to drive around town while he raped and murdered the only passenger, Johnnie Mae Gray.
The 34-year-old died from nine stab wounds to the chest and throat according to Texas prison records. The driver was stabbed in the neck but lived.
Kemp was arrested three days later, and sent to death row the following year after a whirlwind six-day trial.
In the years after his conviction, Kemp was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, according to his attorney, Greg Westfall.
"He has been very psychotic (...) out there since about 1990," Westfall said.
By the mid-90s, a court deemed Kemp incompetent for execution. After years of medication, a higher court reversed that decision and he was given a death date in 1999.
But with days to go, a federal court intervened and spared his life.
In the years that followed, Kemp's attorneys raised claims of bad lawyering, violations of due process, questions about jury selection and denial of funds to get mental health experts.
The courts rejected some of the arguments on technical grounds, and decided his mental health claims weren't "ripe." That is, he couldn't argue he was too insane to execute unless he had an execution scheduled.
But, according to Westfall, even after he lost in federal court in the early 2000s, the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office under another administration agreed not to seek another death date.
"It was agreed that he was too insane to execute," Westfall said. "But since then, the leadership there has changed and now they have sought an execution date. It was really out of the blue."
The district attorney's did not address any prior agreements or considerations regarding an execution date, but did offer a statement late Monday.
"The defendant has a court-appointed attorney, and there has not been an objection to the setting of this date by the defense," said spokeswoman Samantha Jordan. "Should a potential issue of mental illness be raised, we'll consider the evidence presented at that time."
Currently there are no pending appeals, but Westfall said he plans to file claims questioning his client's competency for execution.
The Lone Star State has executed seven men this year. Including Kemp, there are eight more death dates on the calendar. The next, Christopher Young, is slated to die Tuesday.
Source: Houston Chronicle, Keri Blakinger, July 16, 2018
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
