Death Penalty News

On Friday, October 13, the sole surviving family member of murder victim Gary L. Dickerson joined dozens of faith leaders and others in asking the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles for clemency for Will Speer.  Mr. Speer is set to be executed on October 26, 2023.  After a childhood of horrific abuse, a life sentence by age 18, and a judgment of death by age 23, Mr. Speer devoted himself to the study of Christianity and has become a prominent prison minister.  “In my heart, I feel that he is not only remorseful for his actions but has been doing good works for others and has something left to offer the world,” said Sammie Gail Martin, Mr. Dickerson’s sister. 

LIVINGSTON—If Texas Death Row inmate William Keith Speer is executed as scheduled Oct. 26, two men whose lives have been transformed by God will be present—one on the death chamber gurney and one in the adjacent viewing area. Speer is a convicted two-time killer who committed his life to Christ while in prison and was baptized in June 2022 after spending six months in the faith-based program at the Allan B. Polunksy Unit, a maximum-security facility near Livingston. Later, he was selected as inmate coordinator for the program and has mentored fellow prisoners on Death Row.

Speer has been on death row for decades after strangling another inmate at a Texas prison. The victim’s sister and faith leaders have both called on the parole board to halt the execution . The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the execution of William Speer on Thursday, just hours before he was scheduled to be executed. He was sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of a fellow prison inmate. Speer’s attorneys alleged that prosecutors did not disclose evidence and presented false testimony during his 2001 trial, which prosecutors deny. Additionally, his current legal team said Speer’s trial lawyers did not include evidence about the physical and sexual abuse he endured as a child.

The case of prison convert Will Speer shows the significance of ‘peers’ leading ministry behind bars. The first death row prisoner to help lead a death row ministry in Texas’s Allan B. Polunsky Unit, a state prison with maximum security units, is scheduled to be executed on Thursday, October 26. On Tuesday, Texas denied Will Speer ’s application for clemency, meaning his execution will go forward.

Texas offers religious education to the condemned but rarely values spiritual growth when considering clemency requests. Every day at 6 a.m., Will Speer’s testimony is broadcast across the airwaves on the Polunsky Unit’s radio station. He talks to his fellow prisoners about redemption, salvation, and faith.  He is scheduled to be executed October 26.   Speer was convicted and sent to prison for the murder of his friend’s father when he was 16 years old. While incarcerated at the Telford Unit, he killed fellow prisoner Gary Dickerson in an attempt to gain membership to a prison gang. He was sentenced to death. 

A Fort Bend death row prisoner scheduled for execution in February for his role in a plot to kill his own family is begging for a reprieve in a request bolstered by 58 letters of support - including seven fellow death row prisoners. Thomas "Bart" Whitaker is slated to die on Feb. 22 for the 2003 slayings of his mother and younger brother, who the Sugar Land man had killed in a murder-for-hire scheme aimed at snagging a hefty $1 million inheritance. The attack wounded Whitaker's father, who has since fought against his son's death sentence and serves as the centerpiece of the commutation request now before the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. "There is only one person on Earth who is intimate with the murderous attack, the lives and deaths of the other victims, and the life of Thomas Whitaker - Mr. Whitaker's father, Kent. Kent was there," the condemned man's attorneys wrote in their petition. "For the rest of us, the case again...

Saving souls, destroying bodies Since late 2021, Texas has been working to rehabilitate death row inmates through a new project known as the Faith-Based Program. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice writes that the Faith-Based Program “is based on the belief that individuals, no matter their past, can change if given the right tools and opportunity to do so.” Inmates and their attorneys have praised the program. They say it’s helping to improve relationships on death row. But that success hasn’t had any noticeable effect on executions. In fact, from late October until mid-November, TDCJ has scheduled lethal injections for three of the Faith-Based Program’s enrollees.

Peter Charlap A supermax prison isn’t the best place to sit for a portrait, but Peter Charlap’s subjects have no other choice. CHRIS YOUNG, A DEATH ROW INMATE at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, is an avid chess player who can manage multiple games at once without using a board, just by calling out the moves to prisoners in neighboring cells. Will Speer, another inmate, converted to Judaism in prison and worked tirelessly to get officials to let him wear the Star of David on a chain. Eugene Broxton, a third inmate, became skilled in the art of origami, sending his creations to people all over the world until the mail room guards began unfolding them before they were sent out, leaving their recipients scratching their heads at flat sheets of colorful paper lined with traces of tiny folds. “Unless you know how to do it, you can’t fold it back,” says one of those recipients, Peter Charlap, sighing. “So he stopped doing it.” Over the past few years, Charlap has tra...

Paul Anthony Ciancia Attorneys for the 24-year-old suspect accused in a deadly shooting spree at Los Angeles International Airport raised the specter of a mental health defense for the 1st time Monday in court, indicating that such an argument may be used in their attempt to save their client from the death penalty. Paul Anthony Ciancia could be executed if he is convicted of killing federal Transportation Security Administration Officer Gerardo Hernandez during the Nov. 1, 2013, attack that also left 3 other people wounded -- 2 other TSA workers and 1 traveler. According to a proposed trial schedule, jury selection is set to start on Jan. 25, 2016, with interviews to begin about a month later for death- qualified potential jurors. Both sides on Monday discussed a schedule for when the defense would file notice of their intent to possibly use mental impairment as part of their case. Prosecutors filed papers with U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez, requesting t...

Thomas Whitaker is scheduled for execution on Feb. 22 for setting up the ambush that killed his mom, brother. His father survived the shooting and, after learning to forgive his son, is asking state officials for mercy. Thomas Whitaker is on Texas death row because he lured his family out to dinner so a friend could slip into their Sugar Land home to gun down his mother, father and brother when they returned. Shot in the upper chest in the 2003 attack, Kent Whitaker barely survived the ambush, but only after hearing the first 2 bullets that killed his youngest, Kevin, a college sophomore, and wife Tricia, whose last sounds he heard were a series of weak, wet coughs as blood filled her lungs. His father, however, is making a last-ditch plea to spare his son's life despite the heartache and suffering he has caused. In a plea for clemency on the father's behalf, Austin lawyer Keith Hampton and Houston lawyer James Rytting asked Gov. Greg Abbott to issue a ra...

It doesn't matter what side of the capital punishment argument a person falls on, some conversations are universally important to have. That includes what it's really like for those who have gotten a date for their execution. Before that conversation, though, there are a few important things worth noting — like the fact that for many people, execution comes only after years behind bars and oftentimes, in solitary confinement.