BRIAN KEITH ROBERSON

OLIVER CRUZ

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - Two convicted killers, including a prisoner described by death penalty opponents as mentally retarded, were executed Wednesday in the nation's busiest death chamber.

 Before he was given the lethal injection, Brian Keith Roberson, 36, condemned for the 1986 stabbing deaths of an elderly couple who lived across the street from him in Dallas, lashed out at family members and police officers who testified against him at his trial.

``You ain't got what you want,'' he said.

 The second inmate, Oliver David Cruz, 33, was executed about an hour later for the 1988 abduction, rape and fatal stabbing of a 24-year-old woman stationed at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio.

 Cruz's IQ tested as low as 63, leading death penalty opponents to argue that he should not be executed. The Supreme Court, which has allowed other mentally ill or retarded inmates to be executed, voted 6-3 Wednesday to allow the execution to go on.

The court also rejected an appeal by Roberson.

 The injections were to be the first multiple executions in Texas since 1997. The execution dates were set by separate local judges, so the timing is a coincidence, said Heather Browne, a spokeswoman for the Texas Attorney General's office.

 The Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, in identical 18-0 votes this week, refused to recommend to Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites) that he halt Wednesday's executions, the 27th and 28th in Texas this year. That left the Republican presidential nominee the option of granting the inmates one-time, 30-day reprieves to pursue further appeals.

 Cruz and an accomplice abducted a Kelly Air Base linguist, Kelly Donovan. Cruz raped her and stabbed her to death.

 Cruz blamed the attack on his drug use, which he said began at age 13. He said he and his accomplice, who testified against him in exchange for a 65-year prison term, had taken LSD and drank ``a couple of bottles of liquor.''

 Cruz's attorney, Jeff Pokorak, argued that the jury was not given enough information about his client's lifelong mental impairment. An IQ under 70 is considered at least mildly retarded, but prosecutors noted that Cruz scored 83 when he entered prison in 1989.

 Among the 25 states that allow the execution of retarded killers, some are considering laws prohibiting the practice. The Texas Legislature, which killed a bill last session outlawing the execution of someone whose IQ is below 65, will revisit the issue in 2001.

 In the other case, Roberson stabbed James Boots, 79, and his wife, Lillian, 75, while robbing their home. Roberson said he was ``juiced up'' on PCP and liquor.

 The double execution is a far cry from Feb. 8, 1924, when Texas prison officials, taking over execution duties from the counties for the first time,  inaugurated the electric chair in Huntsville by putting five inmates to death. 

Oliver Cruz was put to death in Texas this evening, hours after the Supreme Court refused to block his execution, for raping and killing a young woman in his hometown of San Antonio more than a decade ago.

Mr. Cruz, 33, was given a lethal injection in the state prison at Huntsville. In a recent interview with The New York Times, he accepted responsibility for his crime, which he said he committed while drunk
and on LSD.

"I'm not going to use this as an excuse for what happened," he said.

Mr. Cruz's fate was intensely debated in recent weeks because of his mental condition. His I.Q. had been described as 64 or 76 or 83, depending on when he was tested and by whom, but prosecutors and defense lawyers alike agreed that he was of borderline intelligence, and perhaps was mentally retarded.

The defense argued that it was wrong to execute him because of his mental condition. The prosecution argued that he was smart enough to know what he was doing, and that he was highly dangerous.

Of the 38 states that have capital punishment, 13 have laws prohibiting the execution of someone who is mentally retarded. Federal law bars the execution of people convicted in federal courts. Texas lawmakers have debated similar legislation but have not acted on it.

On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 18 to 0 to deny Mr. Cruz clemency. The vote was no surprise; since Gov. George W. Bush took office in 1995, the panel has rejected all but 1 of 74 clemency requests from death row inmates.

This morning, the Supreme Court voted, 6 to 3, to deny a stay of execution, with Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer dissenting.

The high court's decision was not unexpected, since the justices rarely intervene at the 11th hour, and it was issued without comment, as is customary. That left Mr. Cruz's fate in the hands of Lt. Gov. Rick
Perry, sitting in for the campaigning Governor Bush.

Under Texas law, the state's chief executive can grant only a 1-time 30-day delay of execution. The American Bar Association and the European Union called on Governor Bush to stop the execution, but he declined. His spokeswoman, Linda Edwards, said last week that Mr. Bush believes it is up to the jury to weigh the evidence about a defendant's mental capabilities, and whether a death sentence is appropriate.

Because Mr. Bush is seeking the presidency, and because of the protests from Europe, where capital punishment has virtually disappeared in recent years, Mr. Cruz was in the spotlight longer than many death row inmates.  In 1988, Mr. Cruz and another man abducted Kelly Donovan, who was 24 and stationed at an Air Force base in San Antonio. She was raped repeatedly, then stabbed to death. The other suspect accepted a plea bargain and got a 65-year sentence (with the possibility of parole after a quarter of that) in return for testifying against Mr. Cruz.

Mr. Cruz's lawyers argued that it was unfair for the other defendant to get a break at Mr. Cruz's expense.

Mr. Cruz's execution overshadowed that of Brian Roberson, 36, who was put to death earlier tonight for the 1986 robbery-slayings of an elderly couple who lived across the street from him in Dallas. The double
execution, the result of bureaucratic coincidence, was the 1st in Texas in 3 years.

For all the attention it got, Mr. Cruz's case was like all capital punishment cases in one respect. At the heart of it was a terrible deed that could not be undone. Whatever Mr. Cruz's mental condition, he
understood that much. "I know I was wrong," he said in the recent interview. "There's nothing I can do to change it, bring that person back."

Cruz becomes the 28th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 226th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on Dec. 7, 1982.

Cruz becomes the 58th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 656th overall since America resumed executions on Jan. 17, 1977.

And Cruz becomes the 140th condemned inmate to be put to death during thetenure of Governor George W. Bush, who took office in January 1995.

(sources:  New York Times & Rick Halperin)

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Texas, which leads the nation in capital punishment, was scheduled to execute two convicted murderers on Wednesday night, one of whom may be mentally retarded, officials said on Monday.

The executions could present another death penalty controversy for Texas Gov. George W. Bush the Republican presidential candidate in the Nov. 7 election who is running as a ``compassionate conservative'' but has faced repeated criticism for his home state's many executions.

Unless the courts or Bush himself intervene, Brian Roberson, 36, and Oliver Cruz, 33, are set to die by lethal injection in consecutive executions at the state prison in Huntsville, Texas.

``We think it's a go for both of them,'' said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Larry Todd. ``We're preparing as we do for any execution.''

Even in Texas, multiple executions are rare and the question of whether mentally retarded people should be put to death has been discussed in the Texas Legislature. Thirteen states prohibit executing the retarded.

Texas has executed 225 people since resuming capital punishment in 1982 after a national death penalty ban was lifted, but only twice in that time have two people been put to death on the same day. Two other U.S. states, Illinois and Arkansas, have performed multiple executions on one day during
the same period.

Roberson was sentenced to die for the 1986 murder of two people during a Dallas burglary and Cruz for the rape and murder of a woman in San Antonio in 1988.

Their execution dates were set by separate judges and are the same day only by happenstance, Todd said.

Both men have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop their executions and have requested clemency from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, said Heather Browne, spokeswoman for Texas Attorney General John Cornyn.

                                         Lawyer Says Killer Is Retarded

Cruz's attorney, Jeffrey Pokorak, told Reuters his client is mentally retarded because he scored less than 70 on an IQ test.

He said he hopes to delay Cruz's execution because he has been told by members of the Texas Legislature that they are likely to pass legislation next  year banning the execution of retarded people.

``That's the terrible tragedy of this case. The law is going to prevent the execution of people like Cruz in six to eight months, so he would be the last retarded person to die under the old law,'' Pokorak said.

Last year, the legislature turned down a similar proposal. Bush took no stand on the issue, but is satisfied that ``current Texas law already contains protections to make sure that a person who's mentally incompetent isn't executed,'' said Bush spokesman Mike Jones.

Bush could grant a 30-day reprieve in both cases, but Jones said he would not take action until all legal appeals had been exhausted. Bush has granted  only one temporary reprieve, which came on June 1 when he gave convicted murderer Ricky McGinn a stay so DNA tests could be performed.

Since Bush took office in 1995, 138 people have been executed in Texas, the most recent coming on July 26.

In June, Bush came under political fire for the execution of Gary Graham, who was put to death amid doubts by some critics of the death penalty about his guilt in a 1981 murder. Bush did not intervene in the case, saying he believed Graham was guilty.

Should both executions go forward on Wednesday, Todd said they would be performed one after another about an hour apart, with Roberson going into the death chamber first because prison officials received his execution order first.

     Texas double execution to expose capital justice flaws

International standards of justice and decency continue to be ignored in the US capital of judicial killing, Amnesty International warned today, as Texas prepares to kill the first two of six prisoners it has lined up for execution in August.

"The cases of Brian Roberson and Oliver Cruz, facing lethal injection within one hour of each other on the evening of 9 August, are textbook examples of the arbitrary and often discriminatory application of
capital punishment in the USA," Amnesty International said.

"As the world increasingly turns its back on this cruel, outdated and irrevocable punishment, the international community must now redouble its protests at the injustice inherent in the US capital justice
system."

Brian Roberson, black, was sentenced to death for the 1986 killing of an elderly white couple in Dallas County. The prosecutor at his trial systematically removed African Americans from the jury pool, indicating that they were not educated enough to sit on a jury. The prosecutor had been trained at a time when such training in Dallas County routinely used a manual encouraging new prosecutors to remove "minority races", "Jews", and people with "physical afflictions" during jury selection because they "almost always empathize with the defendant". A 1986 study found that in the 15 capital murder cases tried in the county between 1980 and 1986, 91 per cent of African American jurors were removed.

At the trial of Oliver Cruz, a Latino accused of the rape and murder of Kelly Donovan, white, the prosecutor argued for execution on the grounds that Cruz's learning disability made him more of a threat to society. International standards oppose the death penalty for the mentally impaired. In yet another blatant example of the lottery of US capital justice, Cruz's white co-defendant, charged with the same murder, received a prison term in exchange for testimony against Cruz.

"Studies have repeatedly shown that the US capital justice system places a higher value on white life," Amnesty International said, pointing out that over 80 per cent of the more than 650 people executed in the USA since 1977 were convicted of crimes involving white victims.

"It is time for the US leadership to reflect on their country's history of racist state-sanctioned killing and on the evidence of continuing discrimination, and to recognize that whether a defendant lives or dies depends as much on where the crime was committed, who the victim was, and who the defence lawyer was, as it does on the crime itself," the organization added.

"In 1972 the US Supreme Court temporarily halted the death penalty because of its arbitrary application," Amnesty International said.  "State and federal politicians must find the courage to overcome the politics of this brutalizing punishment and offer human rights leadership. The US conveyor belt of death must be halted."

                                                  Background

John Satterwhite, who has been diagnosed as learning disabled and suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and Richard Jones, about whose guilt there remain troubling doubts, are set to die in Texas in the next two weeks. David Gibbs and Jeffery Caldwell are also due to be killed in the Huntsville lethal injection chamber before the end of the month.

Texas accounts for a third of US executions since they resumed in 1977, and almost half of those carried out so far this year -- 26 out of 56.

Among those executed in Texas in 2000 have been two child offenders, in violation of international law (Glen McGinnis, Gary Graham), a 62-year-old great-grandmother diagnosed with Battered Woman Syndrome whose jury never knew of her history of abuse (Betty Beets), a man whose severe mental illness had been left untreated before his crime (Larry Robison), and a man whose possible wrongful conviction led the President and Prime Minister of France to intervene on his behalf (Odell Barnes).

In a 1990 report, the General Accounting Office (an independent agency of the US Government) concluded that 82 per cent of the 28 major studies into racial discrimination and the US death penalty it had reviewed, had found a correlation between the race of the victim and the likelihood of a death sentence. That is, that after all other factors had been taken into account, a defendant was several times more likely to be sentenced to death if the murder victim was white. No action was taken to address
these findings.

In 1998, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions concluded that "race, ethnic origin and economic status appear to be key determinants of who will, and who will not,
receive a death sentence in the United States."

The US Department of Justice is currently reviewing evidence of racial and geographic disparities in relation to the federal death penalty. Earlier this month, President Clinton stopped the first federal
execution since 1963 from going ahead. The execution has been rescheduled for 12 December.

The US death penalty has come under intense scrutiny since the Illinois Governor suspended executions in his state because of its "shameful" record of wrongful convictions. The Chicago Tribune, which had
investigated the Illinois death penalty prior to the January moratorium and found it to be riddled with injustice, recently concluded that the same problems were plaguing Texas capital justice.

The executions could present another death penalty controversy for Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican presidential candidate who is running as a "compassionate conservative" but has faced repeated criticism for his home state's many executions.

Unless the courts or Bush himself intervene, Brian Roberson, 36, and Oliver Cruz, 33, are set to die by lethal injection in consecutive executions at the state prison in Huntsville.

"We think it's a go for both of them," said Larry Todd, spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. "We're preparing as we do for any execution."

Even in Texas, multiple executions are rare, and the question of whether mentally retarded people should be put to death has been discussed in the Texas legislature. 13 states prohibit executing mentally retarded people.

Texas has executed 225 people since resuming capital punishment in 1982 after a national death penalty ban was lifted, but only twice in that time have 2 people been put to death on the same day. 2 other states, Illinois and Arkansas, have performed multiple executions during the same period.

Roberson was sentenced to die for the 1986 murder of 2 people during a Dallas burglary and Cruz for the rape and murder of a woman in San Antonio in 1988. Their execution dates were set by separate judges and are the same day only by happenstance, Todd said.

Both men have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop their executions and have requested clemency from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, said Heather Browne, spokeswoman for Texas Atty. Gen. John Cornyn.

Cruz's attorney, Jeffrey Pokorak, said his client is mentally retarded because he scored less than 70 on an IQ test.

Pokorak said he hopes to delay Cruz's execution because he has been told by members of the Texas legislature that they are likely to pass legislation next year banning the execution of retarded people.

"That's the terrible tragedy of this case. The law is going to prevent the execution of people like Cruz in 6 to 8 months, so he would be the last retarded person to die under the old law," he said.

Last year, the legislature turned down a similar proposal. Bush took no stand on the issue, but is satisfied that "current Texas law already contains protections to make sure that a person who's mentally
incompetent isn't executed," Bush spokesman Mike Jones said.

In June, Bush came under political fire for the execution of Gary Graham, who was put to death amid doubts by some critics of the death penalty about his guilt in a 1981 murder. Bush did not intervene in the case,saying he believed Graham was guilty.

 HOUSTON (AP) - Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites), campaign unaffected by arguments over the death penalty, faces decisions on allowing the execution of two more men Wednesday night, including one considered mentally retarded.

Bush, the Republican presidential candidate, holds a sizable lead over Al Gore despite the brighter light shone on the subject this year. Gore also supports the death penalty, but he is not identified as closely with the issue as Bush, the governor of the state with the most executions.

Brian Henninger, program coordinator of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said Monday, ``Events have happened this year that have changed the politics of the death penalty in a significant way.'' He said from his Washington office, ``More legislation has been put forward ... that is positive from our standpoint.''

But change is not obvious in Texas.

Of the 225 convicted killers executed there since capital punishment resumed in 1982, 138 have died on Bush's watch, 26 so far this year.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a Gore supporter, and other death-penalty abolitionists now are focusing on the case of Oliver David Cruz, 33. Cruz is scheduled to die Wednesday for raping and killing a 24-year-old Air Force linguist as she was taking a walk in San Antonio. He cites alcohol and LSD abuse, not retardation, for the attack.

``I'm not using drugs as an excuse, but I wasn't in my right mind,'' Cruz said in an interview with The Associated Press last week.

Cruz's IQ has tested as low as 63, his attorney Jeff Pokorak said. Anything under 70 is considered at least mildly retarded, but prosecutors note Cruz has scored above 70 before.

Pokorak contends in his pending appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court that a jury was not given enough
information about his client's lifelong mental impairment. The lawyer believes there is a ''1-in-5 chance'' either the high court will rule in his favor or Bush will grant a temporary stay.

``I think he would gain tremendously. If he's a so-called compassionate person, this is the case for proving compassion,'' Pokorak said, playing off of Bush's ``compassionate conservative'' slogan.

Bush can grant a one-time stay of at least 30 days. Bush spokeswoman Linda Edwards said the governor does not publicly discuss such decisions until after other options have been exhausted.

Henninger noted that among the 25 states that allow the execution of retarded killers, some are considering laws prohibiting the practice. The Texas Legislature, which killed a bill last session outlawing the execution of someone whose IQ is below 65, will revisit the issue in 2001.

In Florida, Bush's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, has refused to sign death warrants for anyone with ``severe
 retardation.'' The federal government also prohibits executing retarded killers.

Death-penalty heat this year prompted Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, to suspend all executions in the wake of several questionable cases. A governor's veto was all that prevented New Hampshire lawmakers from abolishing capital punishment.

In Oregon, however, a petition to force a referendum on the state's death penalty onto the November ballot fizzled last week.

Most Americans favor the death penalty, but a Gallup Poll this year showed that support had declined to 66 percent, the lowest since 1981.

Rice University political science professor Bob Stein said the death penalty never was going to be a major issue in the presidential campaign.

``To the extent that Bush could be made to seem indiscriminate and insensitive, that's about the only mileage they could get,'' Stein said. ``It's a dead issue because Gore himself favors the death penalty.''

The June execution of Gary Graham, whose claims of innocence were supported by celebrities such as
Jackson, seemed to do nothing to blunt Bush's political momentum. Neither did the near-execution of Ricky McGinn, whose death was forestalled by Bush so DNA evidence could be reviewed.

BRIAN KEITH ROBERSON

OLIVER CRUZ