Texas inmate executed for Houston officer's death during adult bookstore robbery
A 61-year-old Texas inmate was executed Wednesday evening for killing a Houston police officer more than 3 decades ago.
Robert Jennings received lethal injection for the July 1988 fatal shooting of Officer Elston Howard during a robbery at an adult bookstore that authorities said was part of a crime spree.
As witnesses filed into the death chamber, Jennings asked a chaplain standing next to him if he knew the name of the slain officer. The chaplain didn't respond, and a prison official then told the warden to proceed with the punishment.
"To my friends and family, it was a nice journey," Jennings said in his final statement. "To the family of the police officer, I hope y'all find peace. Be well and be safe and try to enjoy life's moments, because we never get those back."
Outside the prison, more than 100 officers stood vigil. And a motorcycle club that supports police revved their engines, with the roar from the bikes audible in the chamber.
Jennings was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m., 18 minutes after the drug started. He became the 1st inmate put to death this year both in the U.S. and in Texas, the nation's busiest capital punishment state.
His attorneys had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to delay his execution, arguing Jennings' trial attorneys failed to ask jurors to fully consider evidence - including details of his remorse for the officer's shooting and possible brain damage - that might have spared him a death sentence.
Jennings had received an execution stay in 2016. But the high court and lower appeals courts rejected his request to delay Wednesday's execution and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down Jennings' request to commute his sentence.
A twice convicted robber, Jennings had been on parole for about two months when prosecutors say he entered Mr. Peeper's Bookstore with the intention of robbing the business. Since being paroled, Jennings had gone on a crime spree, committing about 10 robberies, including having already robbed the same adult bookstore 12 days before Howard's slaying.
Officer Howard, 24, was in the middle of arresting the store clerk for operating a pornographic video arcade without a permit when Jennings shot the officer twice in the head.
Howard, who had been wearing a jacket with the words "Houston Police" on it, staggered for a few feet before falling to the ground, where he was shot twice more by Jennings. The clerk later testified the shooting was so quick, Howard never had a chance to unholster his gun.
Jennings was arrested hours later when he went to a Houston hospital after being shot in the hand by his accomplice, who got angry at Jennings for shooting the officer.
Joe Gamaldi, the president of the Houston Police Officers' Union, said Jennings has spent more time on death row than Howard was alive.
Howard "was an honorable man full of integrity who did his job. He was absolutely one of the best and he was just taken entirely too soon by this animal who murdered him in cold blood," Gamaldi said.
After his arrest, Jennings confessed to killing Howard, telling police in a tape-recorded statement he was remorseful about what happened and would "face whatever punishment (he had) coming." Edward Mallett, one of Jennings' current appellate attorneys, said the inmate's trial attorneys failed to present sufficient evidence of his remorse as well as his history of brain damage, being abused as a child and drug addiction. He said the trial attorneys also failed to provide an instruction to jurors that would have allowed them to give sufficient weight to these aspects of Jennings' life when they deliberated.
Mallett said a prior appellate attorney also failed to argue these issues in earlier appeals.
"There has not been an adequate presentation of his circumstances including mental illness and mental limitations," Mallett said.
Jennings' trial in 1989 took place just as the Supreme Court issued a ruling that faulted Texas' capital sentencing statute for not allowing jurors to consider evidence supporting a sentence less than death.
The Texas Legislature changed the statute to address the high court's concerns but that took place after Jennings was convicted.
The Texas Attorney General's Office called Jennings' claim he had ineffective lawyers at his trial and during earlier appeals "specious," and said appeals courts have previously rejected allegations his personal history was not adequately investigated and presented at his trial.
"My hope is that on Wednesday (Howard's family gets) the closure that they've been searching for 30 years," Gamaldi said.
Jennings becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 559th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982.
Jennings becomes the 41st condemned inmate to be put to death since Greg Abbott became Governor of Texas in 2015.
Jennings becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,491st overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
Source: ABC News & Rick Halperin, January 31, 2019
30 years after killing a Houston police officer, Texas executes Robert Jennings
Jennings was put to death Wednesday for the 1988 murder of Elston Howard. The long sentence was complicated by constantly evolving death penalty laws.
Robert Jennings was on Texas’ death row for nearly 30 years. On Wednesday, the 61-year-old was put to death in the nation’s 1st execution of 2019.
Jennings was sentenced to death in the 1988 murder of Houston police officer Elston Howard. According to court records, Jennings walked into an adult bookstore to rob it, and Howard was there arresting the store clerk for a municipal violation. The clerk testified that Howard had no time to even reach for his gun before Jennings shot him multiple times, killing him.
Less than an hour after his final appeals were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, Jennings was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 6:15 p.m. in the state's execution chamber in Huntsville. He was pronounced dead 18 minutes later. In his final words uttered strapped to a gurney, he told his friends and family it was "a nice journey."
"To the family of the police officer, I hope this finds you peace," he said. "... Enjoy life's moments because we never get them back."
The lengthy stretch of time between Jennings' 1989 sentencing and his execution shines a light on the complications that can arise during the appeals process in the face of constantly evolving death penalty law. In their last attempt to halt Jennings' execution, his lawyers zeroed in on changes in how death penalty juries weigh "mitigating evidence"— factors that can lessen the severity of the punishment that are largely based on the defendant's background, like an abusive childhood or intellectual disability.
An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court pointed out that, at the time of Jennings' trial, Texas juries were not told they could opt for a sentence of life in prison rather than death if they believed the defendant’s background or character warranted mercy — a key aspect of death penalty trials now.
Rather, the so-called "special issue" questions Texas juries were required to answer after finding someone guilty of capital murder asked them to determine whether the murder was deliberate or provoked — and whether the defendant was a potential future danger.
At the punishment portion of Jennings' 1989 murder trial, when the jury was supposed to answer those questions, the prosecution brought up Jennings’ long rap sheet — he had been to prison multiple times for aggravated robbery and had been released on parole only 2 months before Howard’s murder, according to court records. In his confession to police after his arrest, he also confessed to several other robberies in the 2-month span.
Meanwhile, Jennings’ lawyers only brought forth a Harris County jail chaplain, who said Jennings wasn’t “incorrigible,” in reference to potential danger posed. The jury also heard Jennings’ recorded confession, in which he admitted he had been drinking and using drugs and expressed remorse for the shooting.
But days before the trial, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in an unrelated case that a death penalty jury must be specifically directed to determine whether mitigating evidence warrants sparing the defendant from execution. In an attempt to address the ruling at the last minute, Jennings’ jurors were told after closing arguments to consider any mitigating evidence already introduced and, if they found it appropriate, to answer against the death penalty in one of the already-existing questions.
The jury was unconvinced, and Jennings was sentenced to death. It wasn’t until more than a decade later that the Supreme Court again took up the issue and determined that telling a jury to weigh mitigating evidence by overwriting an existing special issue is not constitutional.
Jennings’ lawyers have argued that the jury’s inability to properly weigh his drug use and how remorseful he was for Howard’s death warranted him a new trial with the new special issue questions, which now include a question on mitigating evidence. They also said if the trial counsel had known to raise other mitigating evidence, including mental deficits and a troubling childhood, the jury would have reached a different conclusion.
“It gets extremely complicated because the law evolves, and then the question is: Do new decisions get applied retroactively?” Randy Schaffer, one of Jennings’ lawyers, told The Texas Tribune Tuesday.
But not every death sentence handed down before juries were instructed to consider mitigating factors was tossed after the Supreme Court ruling.
Rather, the nation's highest court said it depended on the nature of the evidence presented at trial. Ultimately, the courts said Jennings’ remorse didn’t make the cut — although he did get one execution date taken off the calendar as a Texas court took up the issue in 2016.
Jennings’ lawyers argued against the court decisions by pointing to dozens of other capital murder cases that got new sentencing trials after the Supreme Court rulings. Specifically, they pointed to the case of Arthur Williams, another man who was sentenced to death for the murder of a Houston police officer under the old punishment standards and eventually re-sentenced to life in prison based largely on showing remorse for the killing.
"Both Williams and Jennings exhibited remorse after killing a police officer in Houston. They were convicted and sentenced to death in the same court," Schaffer wrote in a pending appeal before the Supreme Court. "However, they have been treated differently thereafter."
The state said in its response that the Supreme Court “has never held that remorse alone is sufficient to grant” a new punishment trial.
“In this case, Jennings' attorneys presented their limited evidence of remorse to the jury. And the jury rejected it,” wrote Texas Assistant Attorney General Ellen Stewart-Klein.
Complicating matters further, another appeal landed in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday, in which Jennings’ other lawyers faulted Schaffer, Jennings' longtime appellate lawyer, and his trial lawyers for “bad lawyering.” They argued that the trial lawyers were at fault for not calling for changes to the trial after the Supreme Court ruling on mitigation, instead blindly accepting improper jury instructions from the prosecution. And they said Schaffer, as the appellate lawyer, didn't properly raise the trial counsels' mistakes in the appeals process to get Jennings a new punishment trial.
The court rejected both appeals about 40 minutes before the 6 p.m. execution time. Jennings' execution was the first of the year in the state and nation, his death coming only 2 days after four Houston police officers were shot during a narcotics bust. Earlier this month, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stopped the execution of Blaine Milam based on changes to forensic science and death penalty law.
Source: The Texas Tribune, Jolie McCullough, January 30, 2019
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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
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde