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"After careful review of the evidence
in the case I concur with the jury that Betty Lou Beets is guilty
of this murder."
"I am confident that the courts, both
state and federal, have thoroughly reviewed all the issues raised by the
defendant. The courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have rejected
all of her appeals."
"I concur with the recommendation of
the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and will not grant a 30-day delay."
Betty Lou Beets Executed in Texas
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - Betty Lou Beets, who sought mercy on grounds she was a battered wife, became the second woman executed in Texas since the 1860s when she was put to death by lethal injection on Thursday for killing her fifth husband.
Beets, a 62-year-old great grandmother
who drew support from anti-domestic violence advocates and human rights
groups, made no final statement, but
appeared to have a slight smile on
her face, witnesses said.
They said Beets, strapped to a gurney in the Texas death chamber, coughed twice, then gasped before lapsing into unconsciousness as the chemicals pumping into her arms took effect.
Beets was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. (7:18 p.m. EST), Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Larry Todd said.
``It was a very smooth execution. There were no glitches. It was handled very professionally by our people,'' Todd told reporters outside the Walls Unit in downtown Huntsville. About 100 protesters, some holding photographs of a bruised Beets, milled about nearby.
Attorneys for Beets mounted a
last-minute legal battle to spare her life, but her fate was sealed when
the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a final motion to stay the execution and
Texas Gov.
George W. Bush (news - web sites) refused
to grant a 30-day delay.
Beets was the 121st person executed since Bush, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, took office in January 1995. In only one case has he commuted a death sentence to life in prison.
Beets attorney Joe Margulies said Bush's failure to act showed that his campaign claim of being a ``compassionate conservative'' was false.
``There is nothing compassionate in what was done. It is an act of cowardice. Murder is cowardice,'' he said.
Beets was sentenced to die for the 1983 murder of fifth husband Jimmy Don Beets, but she was also charged, but never tried, in the killing of fourth husband Doyle Barker.
In 1985, police, acting on an anonymous tip, found the bodies of the two men buried in the yard of Beets' mobile home in Gun Barrel City, Texas. Both had been shot in the head execution-style.
She denied murdering the men,
but her children testified against her.
Prosecutors say she killed Beets to
collect his insurance and pension money.
Beets, whom prosecutors dubbed the ``Black Widow,'' also pleaded guilty in 1972 to a misdemeanor charge for shooting and wounding her second husband, Bill Lane.
Beets' supporters asked Bush to spare Beets' life because she reported being abused by her father and all five of her husbands and because she had received poor legal counsel in her trial.
The United Nations took up the cause on Thursday when two members of the U.N. Human Rights Commission appealed to Bush to exercise mercy.
But the children of her victims, who witnessed the execution, told reporters that Beets had lied about the abuse.
``My dad was a Dallas fireman for 26 years...he lived to help people, not hurt them. It was wrong of her to tarnish his name,'' James Beets said of his late father.
``The state of Texas did the right thing tonight by putting Betty Lou Beets to death,'' said Rodney Barker, who wore a black cowboy hat. ``I want the world to know there is always going to be a death penalty in the state of Texas and they need to use it.''
Texas last executed a woman on Feb. 3, 1998 when Karla Faye Tucker, 38, was to put to death for a 1983 pickax murder. She was the first woman executed in the state since 1863.
Texas, which leads the nation in capital punishment, has now executed nine people this year and 208 people since resuming capital punishment in 1982 after the Supreme Court lifted a national death penalty ban six years before.
Beets was the fourth woman put to death in the United States since the ban was scrapped.
Beets, who has five children, nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, was be the oldest person executed in Texas since the death penalty was reinstated. She was also the second person put to death here in two days.
On Wednesday, Cornelius Gross, 38, was executed at the Walls Unit for beating a man to death with a board during a 1987 burglary.
A 62-year-old great-grandmother who claimed she was a battered wife has
been executed at a prison in Texas.
Betty Lou Beets was killed by lethal
injection after being convicted of
murdering her fifth husband.
Supporters say she was driven to kill
him by years of domestic abuse.
She gave no final statement as she
lay strapped in the death chamber,
but smiled at watching relatives.
Sons of both the dead husbands were
at the execution, saying they had
forgiven her, but that her execution
was "the right thing".
Witnesses said she
coughed twice,
then gasped before
lapsing into
unconsciousness
as the chemicals
took effect. Beets
was pronounced
dead at 6.18 pm
(00.18GMT).
Texas Department of Criminal Justice
spokesman Larry Todd said : "It was a very smooth execution. There were
no glitches." About 100 protesters, some holding
photographs of a bruised Beets, had
gathered outside the prison in Huntsville.
Appeals rejected
The last court to which Beets had the right to appeal, the US Supreme Court, rejected her case only about an hour before she died. Minutes later, her final avenue of reprieve failed when Texas Governor George W Bush declined to intervene.
He said in a statement that, having
reviewed the evidence, he agreed with the
jury that she was guilty.
Mr Bush, who is seeking the Republican Party's presidential nomination,
had the power as Texas governor to grant a 30-day stay of
execution and ask the Board of Pardons
and Paroles to re-examine the case. But he has approved 120 executions
as governor, including that of another woman, and has only intervened
once.
According to the governor's office,
Mr Bush had received more than 2,000
phone calls and letters opposing Beets'
execution by Thursday afternoon, compared with 57 calls and letters supporting
it. A jury convicted her in 1985 of killing Jimmy Don Beets, a captain
in the Dallas fire department, in order to collect his life insurance and
pension.
His body was found buried in the front
yard of their mobile home.
Beets was also convicted of shooting
and wounding her second husband,
Bill Lane, and was charged with - but
never tried for - shooting dead her
fourth husband, Doyle Barker.
Prosecutors dubbed
her the "Black Widow".
'Emotional torment' claim Beets'
claims of domestic abuse surfaced only recently. But her supporters maintained
that she had been suffering from battered woman's
syndrome, and that her case should
be reviewed.
Her lawyers said there was evidence
of emotional torment in all the
relationships. Beets had
five children, nine grandchildren and six
great-grandchildren.
She is only the second woman to be executed in Texas since 1863, and the
fourth in the US since the Supreme Court lifted a national ban
on the death penalty in 1976.
Beets' legal team, and a coalition
of supporters which includes anti-domestic violence groups and Amnesty
International USA, wanted her death sentence commuted to life in
prison.
They said Beets, who had been in jail
since 1985, was damaged psychologically and that she had poor legal counsel
because the jury that sentenced her was not told about the alleged history
of abuse.
'Black Widow'
In recent weeks, Ms. Beets, the so-called
Black Widow of Henderson
County, granted a series of media interviews
in which she spoke of
lifelong physical and emotional abuse
that lasted through 7 marriages
to 5 husbands.
Though expressing sorrow "for the problems
of my life that caused the
family pain," Ms. Beets never accepted
guilt. She also said she could not
remember details of the murder of her
last husband, retired Dallas Fire
Department Capt. Jimmy Don Beets. Shot
in the back of the head, he was
found buried under an ornamental wishing
well in the yard of the couple's
home near Gun Barrel City.
She was indicted but never tried in
the shooting death of her fourth
husband, Doyle Wayne Barker, whose
body was found buried under a tool
shed in the same yard. She also pleaded
guilty to shooting and wounding
her second husband.
Witnesses to Ms. Beets' execution included
the slain men's sons, who have
dismissed her claims of violence in
the home.
The sons, James Donald Beets and Rodney
and Jeff Barker, watched from an
observation room reserved for the murder
victims' families.
After the execution, Mr. Beets said
he was unsure whether it "brings any
closure."
"It ends it all, but it doesn't bring
back the dads we loved," he said.
"I forgive her, I asked God to forgive
her."
Victims' rights
Rodney Barker, wearing a black cowboy
hat, emerged outside after the
execution and threw both arms up in
a victory gesture.
"I want people to know victims have
rights, too," he said. "I want the
world to know there will always be
a death penalty in the state of Texas.
The state of Texas did the right thing
tonight by putting Betty Lou Beets
to death."
Mr. Barker expressed frustration that
it took the state more than 14
years after conviction to carry out
the execution. He likened her prison
time to a hotel stay with room service.
"I felt that the state of Texas has
finally done something for me," he
said.
Though Ms. Beets' children visited
her in the weeks before her death and
pleaded for mercy on her behalf, none
of them witnessed her execution, at
her request.
Instead, her attorney Joe Margulies
and her pastor, Paul Carlin, who runs
a prison ministry in Crockett, were
Ms. Beets' witnesses.
Afterward, an agitated Mr. Margulies
decried the spectacle he witnessed.
"What happened is not ennobling and
is nothing about which we should be
proud," he said. "It is an act of which
we should be deeply ashamed."
Through the day on Thursday, Ms. Beets
was solemn, and she declined a
last meal, said Larry Todd, spokesman
for the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice.
She spent the morning visiting with
friends and family and the afternoon
with the prison chaplain.
Smaller crowd
While the execution attracted protesters
to the Walls prison, which
houses the death chamber in downtown
Huntsville, it did not generate the
of the 1998 execution of Karla Faye
Tucker. Ms. Tucker, who used a pickax
in a double murder, expressed remorse
and wanted to live to lead others
toward Christianity.
An estimated 1,200 people thronged
the prison at the Tucker execution,
along with a few hundred journalists.
Officials said about 50 media
representatives covered the Beets execution.
The protesters in Huntsville on Thursday
included Ronald Carlson, brother
of one of Ms. Tucker's victims.
"I don't think we as human beings have
the right to destroy what God has
created," he said, attributing his
position to a belief in Jesus Christ.
Also in the crowd was David Good, grandson
of the murdered Mr. Beets. He
carried a sign that read: "God Bless
Gov. Bush, by-bye Betty."
Pattern of abuse
The Beets case attracted attention
because of her recent claim to have
been a victim of abuse since childhood.
The issue of domestic violence
was not raised to a large extent in
her trial, where prosecutors said she
killed Mr. Beets for about $100,000
in insurance benefits.
Ms. Beets said recently that she did
not realize she suffered from
battered woman's syndrome until after
she arrived in prison.
"I didn't know about the pattern,"
she said.
The syndrome describes the condition
where self-esteem is so low after
years of abuse that a woman cannot
break out of the cycle or leave an
abusive relationship.
Mr. Margulies, Ms. Beets' attorney,
has said there was no evidence that
Mr. Beets abused Ms. Beets physically
but their relationship did include
"severe emotional torment."
Groups opposed to the death penalty
and domestic violence had taken up
Ms. Beets' cause.
"If the jury had the opportunity to
hear during the punishment phase the
long history of abuse, it's quite possible
it would have been a different
result," said Bree Buchanan, public
policy director for the Texas
Coalition on Family Violence.
Seeking clemency
More than 1,100 letter writers asked
Mr. Bush to grant clemency, while
only two letters favored execution,
the governor's office reported.
Almost 1,000 phone calls were made
on Ms. Beets' behalf, with 55 callers
wanting her death sentence carried
out.
Mr. Bush could not have commuted her
death sentence, because the state's
parole board did not make such a recommendation.
The governor's only
option was a 30-day stay, something
he has never granted in his five
years as governor.
Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and
U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson,
D-Dallas, were among those voicing
their belief that Ms. Beets should be
spared.
Though Ms. Beets only recently raised
the domestic violence issue, her
case has had a long, roller-coaster
history in the criminal justice
system. The conviction was overturned
once in state and once in federal
appeals court, but the verdict was
reinstated in each instance.
The last of Ms. Beets' appeals was
exhausted Thursday when the U.S.
Supreme Court and the 5th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals rejected appeals
that accused the state of failing to
follow its own rules in reviewing
Ms. Beets' case.
Ms. Beets' execution was the 9th in
Texas this year and the 208th since
executions resumed in Texas in 1982.
(source: Dallas Morning News)
************************
It seems the novelty of executing women
has worn off in Texas.
When the state executed pickax killer
Karla Faye Tucker just over two
years ago, Huntsville was the epicenter
where advocates on both sides of
the death penalty collided under the
bright glare of the world's media.
Thursday, when Texas executed Betty
Lou Beets, the media again came in
force. The protesters did not.
Reporters, photographers and cameramen
outnumbered death penalty
activists at the state's 2nd execution
of woman since the Civil War.
Even so, the media horde was half the
size of the one that descended when
Tucker, 38, was put to death on Feb.
3, 1998.
Perhaps it was because Beets was less
media-savvy, granting only a few
interviews and only in her final weeks.
Perhaps it was because Tucker was
more photogenic and more youthful than
Beets, a great-grandmother at 62.
The head of the Texas Coalition to
Abolish the Death Penalty, Dave
Atwood, said Beets' execution may not
have drawn the attention Tucker's
did because there was less evidence
of rehabilitation in this case.
"I think Betty Beets has become a Christian
woman while in jail, but
it's still not as dramatic as what
we had with Karla Faye Tucker,"
Atwood said.
Many of Tucker's supporters claimed
her religious conversion was proof
the prison could make a person a valuable
attribute to society once
again.
Protesters and onlookers were only
a few dozen strong, but the bully
pulpit was there and some took advantage
of the convergence of cameras
and tape recorders.
One woman wore a sign which read "Depression
kills," and proclaimed
that poor mental health put Beets on
death row.
"I think it led to a lot of Betty Lou
Beets' problems," said Patricia
Killeen Vazquez. "Her life would have
been a lot different if she had
been treated."
When asked what evidence she had that
Beets was clinically depressed,
Killeen Vazquez said the look on Beets'
face in pictures was proof
enough.
Others carried a sign that showed a
picture of Beets' bruised face -
proof, they said, that Beets was battered
by the 2 husbands she was
accused of killing.
The signs accused Texas Gov. George
W. Bush, whose presidential run has
made him a more frequent target of
death penalty opponents, of finishing
what Beets' husbands started.
"She gets beaten by her husbands, and
then she's prosecuted for
self-defense?" protester Lester Kemp
asked.
Beets' domestic-abuse claim emerged
recently, and even with the undated
photograph, her lawyers were unable
to prove that her husbands assaulted
her.
Rodney Barker, the son of victim Doyle
Barker, said Beets' supporters
ignored the fact that she left behind
victims.
"I say they need to find a real job,"
Barker said of the protesters.
``The death penalty needs to be used.
Not every case needs it, but when
you take a life from a family and they
have no choice ... it's not fair
to them.
"So there has to be something we can
do besides send them down here and
let our tax dollars pay for them to
stay in a hotel."
(source: Associated Press)
(source: Associated Press)
(sources: Washington Post & Reuters)
Gov. Bush should follow the lead of others and re-examine the death penalty
Thursday is execution day in Texas.
Again.
The condemned, Betty Lou Beets, 62,
has taken to begging Gov. George W.
Bush to spare her life. Predictably,
she's gotten nowhere.
Mr. Bush has done what he always does
-- defer any decision until he
hears from the Texas Board of Parole
and Pardons. Only the parole board
is nothing more than a rubber stamp
for the Texas execution mill. Mrs.
Beets is as good as doomed.
She'll be the 207th person, and the
2nd woman, to be put to death
since Texas reinstated that ghastly
tradition in 1982. She'll be the
120th person to be executed since Mr.
Bush became governor in 1995.
Mrs. Beets' date with death is most
significant, however, because it
comes as the rest of the country is
having pronounced second thoughts
about capital punishment. In Illinois,
Gov. George Ryan has ordered a
moratorium on executions. Mr. Ryan
remains an advocate of capital
punishment, but he acted as he did
after it became clear that 13 people
sentenced to death in Illinois were
not guilty.
President Clinton is considering a
similar moratorium at the federal
level as he ponders the awful possibility
that someone could die for
crimes he or she never committed.
But Mr. Bush shows no such hesitation.
At a political debate in South
Carolina last week, he made it clear
that he sees no problem at all with
the way executions are carried out
in Texas.
A wrongful execution, or a wrongful
death sentence? Not in my state, Mr.
Bush was saying in essence.
He should think again.
Mrs. Beets, who was sentenced to death
for killing her fifth husband,
Jimmy Don Beets, says she got bad legal
representation along the way. Her
appeals lawyers have argued that she
was sold out by a trial attorney who
demanded book rights to her story in
payment for representing her. That
travesty of jurisprudence was enough
to have a federal court throw out
her conviction, only to be overruled
by an appellate court, which
reimposed the death penalty.
A Chicago Tribune investigation has
found that many of the
since-overturned capital convictions
in Illinois were the result of
inadequate legal defense. Couldn't
this have happened in Texas, too?
Couldn't it have happened in Mrs. Beets'
case, or else in one of the 206
others?
And if it didn't? Perhaps Mrs. Beets
is indeed guilty of killing her
husband, and beyond any reasonable
doubt. But will Texas be a safer place
if she's executed? Wouldn't life --
or what's left of the life of someone
who's as old as anyone ever executed
in Texas -- in prison without even
the possibility of parole suffice as
adequate, indeed proper, punishment?
Questions, all, for Mr. Bush.
As much as he resents such comparison,
the Texas governor is acting the
way Mr. Clinton did when he was governor
of Arkansas. Not long before he
was elected president, the office Mr.
Bush now covets, Mr. Clinton
allowed the execution of a mentally
retarded man who went to his death
saying that he was planning to vote
for him.
But the President has progressed somewhat.
Why can't Mr. Bush do the
same?
(source: Editorial, Florida Times-Union)
The battle to save a great-grandmother
and battered woman from the Texas executioner has shifted into the courts,
following a surprise announcement on Friday by the attorneys representing
Betty Lou Beets.
“We are suing the Texas
Board of Pardons and Paroles for their failure to provide the thorough
review required in such cases by the Texas Legislature,” attorney John
Blume said today.
“The Board’s refusal
to follow clear Texas law deprived Betty Beets of due process.”
The suit was filed today
in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas before Judge John Hannah
and is brought under the provisions of federal civil rights legislation.
“Previous attempts to sue the Board of Pardons and Paroles have focussed
on constitutional or administrative issues,” attorney Joe Margulies noted.
“In this case, we believe that the Board clearly violated its own binding
regulations and a legislative order by discriminating
against Betty Beets.”
In 1991, the Texas Legislature
passed a resolution requiring the Board of Pardons and Paroles to review
the cases of all battered women imprisoned for killing a family member.
The pardons board was required to thoroughly investigate each case and
to give special clemency consideration where domestic violence was a direct
factor in the offense.
The Texas Council on
Family Violence, the largest domestic violence organization in
the state, was required
to assist the pardons board in its review.
Although more than 400
cases of women imprisoned for homicide were eventually assessed under the
program, the Beets case was never considered. In a recent letter to the
Board of
Pardons, the Director
of the Texas Council recognized that Ms. Beets "is precisely the sort of
defendant whose case was contemplated" by the legislative order and supported
her request for a reprieve.
Defense investigations
have discovered at least 3 cases of women who were approved
for clemency under the
program. One woman received a unanimous recommendation for the
commutation of her prison
sentence from the Board of Pardons, but Governor George Bush
refused to follow the
board's recommendation.
In a supplemental clemency
application filed two weeks ago with the Board of Pardons,
Ms. Beets’ attorneys
requested a 180-day reprieve, to permit the full investigation and
assessment of her case
required under the Board’s guidelines. To date, there has been no
official response from
the board. Betty Lou Beets is scheduled for execution on Thursday.
“We are asking the court
to prevent the state of Texas from carrying out the sentence and to require
the Board of Pardons to follow the clear mandate of the law,”
Mr. Blume said. “Given Betty’s tragic life history and her deeply flawed
trial, it is a perfectly reasonable request.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Joe Margulies, Counsel
to Betty Lou Beets
(612) 747-1991
John Blume,
Counsel to Betty Lou Beets
(803) 765-1044 jblume@usit.net
Texas Woman Faces Execution
By MICHAEL GRACZYK Associated Press Writer
GATESVILLE, Texas
(AP) - A 62-year-old woman who prosecutors say killed two of her husbands
and buried them in her yard claims she is a victim of years of domestic
abuse and
pleaded with Gov.
George W. Bush (news - web sites) on Friday to spare her from execution
next week.
``I'm asking you
to let me live,'' Betty Lou Beets said, her voice cracking in a plea broadcast
on ABC's ``Good Morning America.'' ``I'm asking for mercy. And I'm asking
for that compassion and I'm praying you will allow it for me.''
Beets, set for
death by injection Feb. 24, would be only the second woman executed in
Texas since the Civil War and the fourth in the nation since the Supreme
Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. There are nine women
on death row in Texas and 50 nationwide.
Foes of the death
penalty have said cases like Beets' are a test of Bush's ``compassionate
conservatism.'' The issue has also received renewed attention since Gov.
George Ryan of Illinois - a Bush supporter - suspended all executions this
month after the release of 13 inmates from that state's death row over
the past two decades.
Bush, campaigning
in South Carolina for the Republican presidential nomination, said he will
make no decision in her case until he receives a recommendation from the
Texas Board of
Pardons and Paroles.
He cannot grant clemency unless the board recommends it.
``The thing I consider
is whether or not a jury has heard all the facts and whether or not the
person is guilty of the crime committed and whether or not the person has
had full access to
the courts,'' Bush
said.
A total of 119
inmates have been executed in Texas since Bush took office in 1995. He
has spared only one prisoner, citing flimsy evidence.
The last woman
executed in Texas was Karla Faye Tucker, on Feb. 3, 1998. Tucker was condemned
for a 1983 pickax slaying. The governor was criticized for mocking Tucker
in a magazine interview last year.
Beets was convicted
in 1985 of murder for the 1983 shooting death of Jimmy Don Beets, a Dallas
fire captain and her fifth husband, at the couple's trailer home near Gun
Barrel City. She
was charged with
but never tried in the 1981 shooting death of her fourth husband, Doyle
Barker. She was also convicted of shooting and wounding husband No. 2.
Acting on a tip,
authorities found Jimmy Don Beets' body in a shallow grave under a wishing-well
flower garden outside her trailer. She had reported him missing two years
earlier, saying he never returned from a fishing trip.
``She was watering
flowers over my daddy every day for 23 months,'' James Beets, the victim's
son, said this week. ``It's not right.''
Investigators a
short time later found Barker's remains under a shed. He had been missing
for four years; Beets had claimed he left one day and never came back.
Both men had been
shot in the back of the head and stuffed inside blue sleeping bags.
Her lawyers are
asking the parole board to consider what they say is a decades-long history
of abuse by her husbands and recommend her sentence be commuted to life.
``This is not a
capital case,'' Beets told the Athens Daily Review. ``It's about domestic
violence. ... You don't kill the one that survives it.''
At her trial, she
blamed a son from her first marriage for the Beets murder. She said
she only helped to dispose the body to protect her son. She blamed husband
No. 2, now dead, for the Barker slaying.
Prosecutors contended
she killed her fifth husband to collect an $86,000 life insurance policy
and a $760 monthly pension. There was little focus at her trial on abuse.
``I have carried
a heavy burden for battered women and children and domestic violence,''
she told The Dallas Morning News. ``I'm going to be the one to put a face
on that, as a real human
person.''
James Beets doesn't
buy her story.
``Why is she saying
these things about my daddy?'' he said. ``She had told her friends that
he was the best thing that ever happened to her.''
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