Was Execution Justified?

This story does not sit right with me. I am not proclaiming this man's innocence, but that his story casts enough doubt for an alternative outcome.

July 25, 2007

By ALLAN TURNER and ROSANNA RUIZ
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

Protest mild as Johnson executed for Magnolia murders Former DA Holmes ran powerful death-penalty machine Capital punishment on decline in Harris County HUNTSVILLE ?- Lonnie Earl Johnson, convicted of the 1990 robbery-murder of two Magnolia teenagers, became the 100th killer sent to Texas' death house by a Harris County jury on Tuesday.

The execution took place without the street theater and bullhorn-amplified protests that normally mark such events.

No television cameramen jockeyed for position as witnesses marched into the Huntsville Unit.

Seven death penalty opponents watched wordlessly from a distance.

Little emotion was displayed, either by Johnson's sole witness or by relatives of the victims, who declined comment Tuesday.

Johnson's execution was delayed about 30 minutes as the Supreme Court considered his final appeal.

Lethal drugs were administered at 6:30 p.m. Johnson was declared dead 14 minutes later.

Before the drugs began to flow, Johnson looked toward the witness room occupied by his friend Carrie Christensen and said, "Carrie, it's been a joy and a blessing. Take care, give everybody my regards. I love you, and I'll see you in eternity. Father take me home. I'm gone, baby, I'm ready to go."

Johnson did not acknowledge the presence of his victim's relatives in an adjacent witness room.

Johnson, 44, was convicted of killing Leroy "Punkin" McCaffrey and his friend, Gunar "Bubba" Fulk, after the teens offered him an early morning ride from a Tomball convenience store on Aug. 15, 1990. They told the store clerk they were assisting a stranded motorist. Their bodies were found beside a remote farm to market road hours later.

Johnson consistently maintained he had killed the youths in self-defense.

"A beautiful soul was killed today," Christensen said after the execution. "His only crime was to defend himself against racist aggressors."

Death penalty opponents Tuesday blasted Johnson's execution as emblematic of a system of justice that is too prone to kill.

"Excessive blood lust" characterizes Harris County prosecutors "who seem to go for the death penalty at every opportunity," charged David Atwood, president of the Houston-based Coalition To Abolish The Death Penalty. "The love affair they have with the death penalty exceeds by far what you see in district attorneys around the country."


Little stir at DA's office
The next Harris County execution, that of Johnny Conner ?- condemned for a 1998 convenience store robbery-murder ?- is scheduled for late August.

Johnson's status as the 100th killer executed at the behest of Harris County juries since Texas reinstated the death penalty in 1982 caused little stir at the district attorney's office.

District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal dismissed it as "insignificant."

About a dozen anti-death penalty advocates stood on the sidewalk outside Rosenthal's southwest Houston home for about an hour Tuesday evening. They called for a moratorium on the death penalty in Texas, saying it was racist and anti-poor.

The protesters said they were astounded that so many people from Harris County had been executed.

Dianne Clements, president of Justice for All, a pro-death penalty group, upbraided anti-death penalty advocates.

"Where were these people when the 100th murder happened? Nowhere." she said. "Those are the numbers that should be considered, not the executions of murderers. It goes without saying that murder victims are tenfold the number of executed killers ?- and that's pretty much it."


Self-defense claim
In a prison interview, Johnson insisted that he had been railroaded to death row on what he called the prosecution's erroneous analysis of the crime.

"I am innocent by reason of self-defense," he said. "The only difference between me and James Byrd Jr. is that I lived," he said, alluding to the 1998 racially motivated dragging murder of a Jasper County black man.

He said the youths offered to drive him to his Tomball home, then took him to a remote location, where they forced him from the truck at gunpoint, urinated on him and threatened to kill him. When the teens relaxed their guard, Johnson said, he grabbed the pistol and shot them.

Fulk was shot three times in the head and once in the chest. McCaffrey was found entangled in a fence about 350 feet away. A bullet severed his spinal cord, killing him instantly. Investigators found a knife in his outstretched hand.