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Bush to decide fate of death row great-grandmother
Betty Lou Beets
Presidential hopeful George W. Bush should be a “compassionate conservative” and spare the life of a great-grandmother facing execution in Texas, supporters of Betty Lou Beets announced today.
Ms. Beets, a life-long survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault, was convicted in 1985 of the murder of her abusive husband, Jimmy Don Beets, after a trial lasting just four days. She is scheduled for execution on 24 February, two weeks before her sixty-third birthday--despite twice having her death sentence reversed on appeal.
“For the first time, Governor Bush will confront the imminent execution of a battered wife, and the American public should be watching his response carefully”, said John Blume, an attorney representing Ms. Beets. “This is a case that cries out for compassion”.
Defense attorneys have filed a comprehensive clemency petition with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, pointing to glaring deficiencies in the Beets case that make her death sentence both cruel and fundamentally unfair. Governor Bush will be asked to grant a reprieve in order to permit a full review by the pardons board. If her sentence is commuted, Betty Lou Beets would spend the rest of her life behind bars.
“Knowing what we now do about this syndrome, a fully-informed jury would never sentence a battered woman to death today,” Mr. Blume commented. “We doubt that the Beets jury would have either, except for her tragically incompetent legal representation,” he added.
Because her trial attorney failed to investigate Ms. Beets’ background and upbringing, the jury heard no evidence of her horrific life of domestic violence and sexual assault, beginning with her rape at age five and continuing at the hands of a succession of abusive husbands. Since her conviction, prominent psychologist Lenore Walker has diagnosed Ms. Beets as suffering from both Battered Women’s Syndrome and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Learning disabled and hearing impaired, Ms. Beets also suffers from organic brain damage stemming from head injuries that included repeated blows at the hands of abusive men.
Under Texas law at the time, Ms. Beets’ crime was eligible for death only because she allegedly murdered her husband in order to collect insurance benefits. But it was her own attorney, E. Ray Andrews, who first suggested she file an insurance claim on her husband more than a year after he disappeared, the suspected victim of a boating accident.
Rather than withdraw from the case and testify on her behalf at her trial, Andrews chose instead to continue representing Ms. Beets in exchange for the media rights to her story. Years later, Andrews admitted under oath what he had known all along: that his client had no prior knowledge of any benefits from her husband’s death and should never have been charged with a capital crime. He later became the local DA, but was imprisoned for soliciting a bribe to fix a capital murder case.
"The justice system failed to protect Betty Beets from a lifetime of abuse,” according to attorney Joe Margulies. “The system even failed to protect Betty from exploitation by her own lawyer, who chose financial gain over his ethical duty to save his client's life ".
Betty Lou Beets would become only the second woman put to death in Texas in more than a century. Karla Faye Tucker was executed in 1998 after Governor Bush refused to intervene despite worldwide appeals, including pleas for mercy from the Pope and evangelist Pat Robertson.
In 1990, Richard Celeste, then-governor
of Ohio, granted clemency to 28 battered women imprisoned for violent crimes,
including one woman on death row. In 1996, Illinois Governor Jim Edgar
commuted the death sentence of Guinevere Garcia, who was condemned for
the murder of her abusive husband. Governors in Maryland, Illinois, Florida,
and California, have also commuted the sentences of incarcerated battered
women. A clemency program for battered women imprisoned for murder was
created in Texas in 1991, while a similar program was recently endorsed
by Governor Jeb Bush in Florida.
For further information, please contact John Blume at 803-765-1044, jblume@usit.net, or Joe Margulies at 612-339-2673, jmargulies@uswest.net.
For additional information, please contact
Sue Osthoff, National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women,
1-800-903-0111 ext. 3, sueo@ncdbw.org.
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