U.S.

Tight Security For Texas Execution

June 20, 2000 / 12:46 PM EDT / AP

Yellow police tape surrounded the Texas Department of Criminal Justice building Wednesday as prison officials began preparing for the execution of convicted killer Gary Graham, whose impending punishment has fueled debate over the death penalty in the nation's most active capital punishment state.

Graham was set to die after 6 p.m. Thursday for a 1981 fatal shooting during a Houston robbery.

He and his supporters insist he is innocent and was convicted unfairly, primarily on the testimony of a single eyewitness who saw the murder. Prosecutors say his case has been reviewed repeatedly, as many as three dozen times, and it was time to bring the case to an end.

A protester in Austin Monday.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles was considering a request for a 120-day reprieve or a commutation to a lesser sentence. Gerald Garrett, the board chairman, said his 18-member panel, appointed by Gov. George W. Bush, would announce its decision by noon Thursday, a few hours before Graham's scheduled punishment.

Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was interrupted this week at a California appearance by Graham demonstrators but repeated Wednesday his contention that no innocent person had been executed in Texas during his five-and-a-half years in office.

"I analyze each case that comes across my desk and look at the innocence and guilt of each person," Bush said in Los Angeles. "That's my job, to uphold the laws of the land of the state of Texas. I will continue to do so as long as I'm the governor.

"I believe the system is fair and just."

Bush, normally empowered to grant a one-time 30-day reprieve in death penalty cases, only could consider a recommendation from the parole board in Graham's case. Graham, who pleaded guilty to 10 aggravated robberies during a May 1981 crime spree when he was 17 but denied any murder, already received a gubernatorial reprieve in 1993.

His court appeals were exhausted.

Graham would be the 222nd condemned killer to die in Texas since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982, the 135th of Bush's tenure. He would be the 23rd this year.

Security plans in Huntsville, about 80 miles north of Houston, were being kept under wraps.

"We're aware of threats and we'll react accordingly," prison spokesman Larry Fitzgerald said. Most offices in the building will be closed Thursday and prison employees who live on the grounds close to the unit's front door were advised to leave for the day.

The entire block aroun the prison system office building across the street from the Huntsville Unit prison, which houses the death chamber, was ringed with tape. The building, normally open during business hours, was locked Wednesday and visitors needed an escort to enter.

Graham has said he would not go quietly, that he would "fight like hell" when led to the death chamber, and at one point urged supporters to come to town armed to protest what he called his legal lynching and assassination.

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Jesse Jackson

"He may go kicking or screaming. We hope that does not happen," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has been speaking in support of Graham and planned to attend the execution. "As for those of us who protest on the outside, our protests should be non-violent and discliplined."

Graham was convicted of killing Bobby Lambert, 53, of Tucson, Ariz., who was fatally shot the evening of May 13, 1981. A Houston woman, Bernadine Skillern, watched from inside her car as Lambert was confronted by the gunman, struggled with him and was shot.

He was arrested, naked and asleep, a week later at the home of a 57-year-old woman he abducted at gunpoint and raped. "I saw Mr. Graham shoot and kill Mr. Lambert on that parking lot in 1981," Skillern, who has been pressured over the years by Graham backers, said last week. "That has not changed. It's not going to change. I saw him shoot and kill him."

Graham's attorneys challenged the credibility of a single eyewitness and wanted the testimony of two other people who were at the Safeway store that night to be heard. Their claims, that Graham was not the killer, differed from the stories they told police during the initial investigation when they said they could not identify the gunman and did not see his face.

"Their testimonies were reviewed and found to have no merit," Texas Attorney General John Cornyn said Wednesday. "Neither of these people were actual eyewitnesses to the crime."

Survivors of Graham's May 1981 crime spree have said they are alive today only because he was a bad shot.

"My story is a nightmare with a killer," said David Spiers, who nearly had his leg blown off when Graham fired a shotgun at him after abducting and robbing him and threatening to send him to "honkie hell."

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, who halted an execution earlier this month as acting governor, asked the parole board to hold a public hearing on the Graham case because of concerns about evidence, but Garrett termed the chances of a full board hearing remot.

By Michael Graczyk