CHAPTER ONE: HOW MANY JUVENILE OFFENDERS DID HE EXECUTE?

 

           

            America is one of the few countries in the world where, before people can vote, buy a beer, or serve on a jury, they can be executed by the state. In order to understand the degree of international opposition to the execution of juvenile offenders (those who commit their crimes under the age of 18), one need only look to the 1995 United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, which calls for a prohibition of the death penalty for defendants under 18, substituting instead a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole. Every nation in the world has ratified that Convention except for the United States and Somalia.[1]

            Only a few countries, none of which include western industrial nations (except for the USA), actually execute juvenile offenders. Since 1990, only five countries are known to have formally executed juvenile offenders: Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and America. Two of the “Axis of Evil” countries – Iraq and North Korea, are not known to have formally executed any juvenile offenders during that decade. In total, the United States of America executed nine juvenile offenders, more than any other country, and of those nine Texas executed five.[2] And of those five juvenile offenders executed by the state of Texas, four were executed by Governor George W. Bush.

            Texas’ treatment of juvenile murder defendants under Gov. Bush was also skewed racially. As of August 2000, of the 24 juvenile offenders on death row in Texas, 11 were black, 11 were Hispanic, and 2 were white–a lineup entirely disproportionate to the population of the state, as well as disproportionate to the race of convicted juvenile murderers in the state. It simply appears that if a black or Hispanic juvenile kills in Texas he is much more likely to receive the death penalty than a white juvenile who kills.[3]

            During his tenure Gov. Bush refused to bring Texas’ juvenile justice system into line with international or national standards. In his first major appointment as Governor-elect Mr. Bush named Cameron County Judge Tony Garza, who supported capital prosecution of 13-year-old offenders, to the position of Secretary of State. At the time, the minimum age in Texas for death penalty prosecutions was 16.[4]

            Young and insane. Joseph John Cannon had a more difficult childhood than most. At the age of four, he was hit by a pickup truck and spent eleven months in the hospital. After release, he was placed in an orphanage. Cursed with severe learning disabilities, he was unable to function in school and expelled at the age of six. This expulsion led to a career sniffing glue and solvents, so that by the age of ten he was diagnosed with organic brain damage as well as schizophrenia. At home, he was sexually abused by his stepfather (his mother’s fourth husband) from age seven to eight, and between the ages of ten and seventeen he was regularly sexually assaulted by his grandfather. He attempted suicide when he was fifteen. All along, Mr. Cannon had been shuffling in and out of mental hospitals.[5]

            The safest thing for Texas to do, both for Mr. Cannon and for its citizens, would have been to care for him in a secured state institution for the mentally ill. But tax cuts resulted in spending cuts, and spending cuts forced mentally ill Texans onto the streets. In 1977 the homeless Mr. Cannon was taken in by good samaritan Anne Walsh, whom he tragically killed. Mr. Cannon was seventeen at the time of the crime.

            At his first trial, Mr. Cannon pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and his lawyers detailed Mr. Cannon’s childhood traumas. They lost, and Mr. Cannon was sentenced to death. That conviction was then overturned on procedural issues. So at his second trial, Mr. Cannon’s lawyers simply pleaded not guilty; they were afraid that Mr. Cannon’s childhood traumas made him seem scarier to the jury and had earned him the death penalty in his first trial. (In Texas, only those who allegedly present a clear future threat to society are executed.) Once again, they lost, and once again, Mr. Cannon got the death penalty. But this time there was no re-trial.

            The next 21 years were the most stable of Joseph John Cannon’s life: there were no cars to run over him, no stepfather or grandfather to sexually abuse him, no glue to sniff. He fulfilled a dream that most of us take for granted, and learned how to read and write. By all accounts, he was a docile, cooperative inmate.

            Nevertheless, his time ran out, and Mr. Cannon came up for execution under Governor George W. Bush. Pope John Paul II and Bishop Desmond Tutu wrote to the Governor asking for clemency, but to no avail.[6] Gov. Bush denied any reprieve, and Joseph John Cannon was executed on April 22, 1998.

            Young . . . and innocent? For information on Gary Graham, please see Chapter Seven: “Did He Execute Anyone Who Was Innocent?”

            Young, black, and gay. Glen Alan McGinnis was only seventeen years old when he murdered store clerk Leta Ann Wilkerson, mother of two. He had spent most of the previous few years on the streets living out of cars, or in juvenile lockups. His mother was in prison for prostitution when he walked into a laundromat and killed 30-year-old Ms. Wilkerson for $140. He had been released from jail for auto theft only five days earlier.

            The young black man was, according to his defense attorney, obviously gay. Young, black, homosexual murderers of white women generally don’t do well with 100% white, suburban Houston juries, and Mr. McGinnis was no exception. “He was polite, respectful, legitimately sorry for what he had done,” said his defense attorney, William Hall. “But he was also a black man who killed a white woman. And he was very, very gay. And that didn’t help.” Mr. McGinnis was sentenced to die.[7]                                                 

            After ten years on death row, Mr. McGinnis’ execution date finally arrived. Due to his youth, remorse, and good conduct the Vatican, European Union, American Bar Association, and Amnesty International offered pleas for clemency – a commutation to life in prison.

            But none was forthcoming. Gov. Bush denied any reprieve, and Mr. McGinnis was executed on January 25, 2000.[8]

            Young . . . and brain damaged. Robert Anthony Carter took a lot of abuse as a child, mainly upside his head. Born into an impoverished family with six children, he was raised hungry. His mother and stepfather would beat their children with wooden switches, belts, and electric cords. At the age of five he was hit in the head with a brick. Later, his mother threw a dinner plate at him which hit him in the head. At the age of ten he was hit so hard in the head with a baseball bat that the bat broke. In his late teens he was shot in the head by his brother, the bullet lodging in his temple. By this time he often suffered seizures and fainting spells.

            On June 24, 1981, at the age of seventeen, Mr. Carter walked into a gas station with the intention of committing armed robbery and accidentally shot 18-year-old Sylvia Reyes. He was arrested, held incommunicado, interrogated without a lawyer, and confessed to the crime.

            At trial, even the prosecution admitted that the shooting was accidental, occurring when Mr. Carter attempted to uncock the gun. The defense produced no evidence or argument to rebut the prosecution’s case that even an accidental killing constituted capital murder.

            At the sentencing hearing, the jury was not informed of Mr. Carter’s juvenile status, semi-retardation with an IQ of 74, brain damage, abused childhood, or that this was his first offence. They took ten minutes to sentence him to death.

            On death row, Mr. Carter expressed remorse for his crime. For the sixteen years that he resided there he was calm, peaceful, and cooperative with authorities. He had done what he was expected to do as a juvenile offender: reform. His prison chaplain said, “One of the saddest things to [Robert] was that even with his death that night, it would not be enough. He was so sorry.”

            Over the protests of human rights organizations and the international community, Gov. Bush denied any repreieve, and Mr. Carter was executed on May 18, 1998. Mr. Carter’s final words were, “I’m going to a better place. I hope the victim’s family will forgive me, because I didn’t mean to hurt or kill no one.”[9]