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Federal death row inmate wants to drop appeals
A U.S. appeals court has granted a federal
inmate from Oklahoma his wish
- to be executed as soon as possible.
David Paul Hammer, who pleaded guilty
to strangling his cellmate 2 years
ago, could be put to death this fall
after the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals ruled last week that he is
not required to appeal his capital
sentence.
Barring any unexpected delays, Mr. Hammer
would become the 1st federal
inmate in 35 years to be executed.
"After almost 23 years in here and all
I've been through, I see this not
as an end, but as a new beginning,"
Mr. Hammer said late last week in a
telephone interview from the federal
death-row prison near Terre Haute,
Ind.
"I don't live in here. I exist."
Mr. Hammer, 41, was well-known by authorities
in the Oklahoma prison
system for his mischief behind bars,
where he masterminded credit-card
scams and insisted he contracted the
murders of 2 men - 1 in Oklahoma,
the other in Tennessee.
He used prison telephones to make bomb
threats, including one that shut
down the state Capitol, and claimed
he had information about the
celebrated 1974 murder of anti-nuclear
activist Karen Silkwood.
He so tormented corrections officials
that they specially built for him a
9-by-16 foot isolation cell with steel
doors and shatterproof glass that
cost the state $5,000.
Finally, the state shipped Mr. Hammer
to the federal system to serve the
rest of his 1,232 years of punishment
for 11 convictions ranging from
bogus checks to larceny to shooting
with intent to kill to kidnapping.
In April 1996, at the federal prison
in Allenwood, Pa., Mr. Hammer killed
his cellmate, Andrew Marti, a convicted
bank robber.
According to a court document, Mr. Hammer
proposed a scheme to help Mr.
Marti gain a transfer to another prison:
Mr. Hammer would tie up and
"slightly injure" Mr. Marti.
"Mr. Hammer, after rendering Mr. Marti
helpless, put Mr. Marti in a
sleeper hold," the court reported.
"Testimony from a pathologist
established that Mr. Marti struggled
in the restraints. Once Mr. Marti
was rendered unconscious by the sleeper
hold, Mr. Hammer strangled him
with a homemade cord."
At trial, Mr. Hammer first pleaded insanity.
Later, he admitted guilt. It
took a 7-woman, 5-man jury about 5
hours to unanimously impose the death
penalty.
Afterwards, Mr. Hammer wavered on appealing the sentence.
In November 1998, he filed his own motion
to dismiss his appeal. 3 weeks
later, he asked that the appeal be
reinstated. He reversed himself again
3 months later, seeking to dismiss
the appeal. Later, when one of his
lawyers filed an appeal, Mr. Hammer
said it was done without his
approval.
Even so, 2 court-appointed psychiatrists
who examined Mr. Hammer
concluding he was fully competent to
decide against appealing his death
sentence, the 3rd Circuit ruling noted.
The appeals court said Mr. Hammer "made
an extraordinary plea for the
imposition of the death penalty" when
he appeared via teleconference at
a July hearing.
"He spoke with great intelligence, logic
and force, addressed the legal
issues with considerable skill, demonstrated
a total command of the
record and was calm and in total control
of himself," the judges wrote
in their 15-page decision.
The judges returned the case to the
trial court, ordering that it "fix
an early new date for the implementation
of the sentence of death."
Mr. Hammer said Friday that he expects
to be executed in October or
perhaps as late as November, ahead
of Juan Raul Garza, the Brownsville
drug boss sentenced to death in 1993
for 3 murders.
Mr. Garza, 43, originally was scheduled
to die Aug. 5, but President
Clinton granted a 4-month reprieve
so that he could plead for his life
under new clemency rules drafted by
the Justice Department for capital
cases.
In court and in his telephone interview,
Mr. Hammer described himself as
a "politically correct execution candidate"
because it was a white-on-
white crime, committed in prison by
an inmate with a long sentence.
Mr. Hammer, a soft-spoken native of
Holdenville in east-central Oklahoma,
dropped out of school at age 14 and
became involved in a series of crimes
that led to his imprisonment.
For years, he said, he enjoyed outfoxing
state corrections officials. But
now, he said, he is ready to die, strong
in his faith that a better life
is to come.
"I do not believe in the death penalty,"
he said in his interview. "I
know it does not serve as a deterrent.
I know it is racially
discriminatory, and not only racially
but also poor people and what part
of the country you're from.
"This is just what I believe is in my
own best interest. I hope what I'm
doing doesn't disadvantage other people
of death row who are fighting
this, because I believe there are innocent
people on death row."
(source: Dallas Morning News)
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