January 17, 2002 - By: Jeremy Schwartz

        HUNTSVILLE - Jermarr Arnold asked for forgiveness and told
        Christina Marie Sanchez's family he was sorry for her murder, minutes
        before he was put to death Wednesday evening at the state death
        chamber in Huntsville.

        "I can't explain," Arnold said as he lay on the gurney in the small,
        green-bricked room. "There are no answers I can give you. There is
        one thing I can give you and I'm going to give it to you today, and
        that's my life."

        After he spoke, Arnold gave the signal to begin the flow of the lethal
        drugs into his veins and began singing "Amazing Grace."

        He sang "I once was blind, but now I see," when he gasped and fell
        silent. His left eye remained half open as he was pronounced dead at
        6:32 p.m.

                                Appeal rejected

        Arnold's death came minutes after Gov. Rick Perry rejected a last
        minute appeal for a 30-day reprieve requested by former prosecutor
        Bill May, who said he had evidence Arnold was not the real killer.
        May said that evidence was never given to defense lawyers.

        Arnold was sentenced to death after his 1990 conviction for robbing
        and killing 21-year-old jewelry store clerk Sanchez, who was shot in
        the top of the head during a 1983 robbery.

        Sanchez's mother, father and two brothers witnessed the execution.

        "It brings a little consolation that he asked for forgiveness," said her
        mother Mary Ann Sanchez. "I just feel justice was done for our
        daughter."

        Sanchez's brother, Steve Sanchez, criticized the suggestion that
        Arnold did not kill his sister.

        "It's just a tactic," he said. "They're grabbing at straws to see if they
        can get an appeal."

                            Conflicting statements

        Arnold has given conflicting statements over his role in the Sanchez
        murder. He told May he doesn't remember anything about the crime,
        and as recently as Wednesday afternoon, told local private
        investigator Catherine D'Unger he was not at the scene of the crime.

        On the gurney, he told Sanchez's family he takes responsibility for the
        killing.

        "I cannot explain," he said.

        D'Unger said she plans on proving the guilt of those she says are the
        real killers and called the execution of Arnold, who suffered from a
        series of mental problems, an injustice.

        "I think Jermarr Arnold is going to become the poster child for the
        abolition of the death penalty in Texas," she said.

        Arnold, 43, gained national attention in 1990 after he confessed to the
        unsolved murder of Sanchez from a California prison cell and
        demanded to be put to death.

                                    Late-hour fax

        In an 11th-hour fax, May told the governor Sanchez was killed as a
        result of an arranged robbery orchestrated to keep Sanchez, a police
        informant, from talking about a series of robberies. May alleged
        evidence was planted to make it seem Sanchez's death resulted from a
        struggle during the robbery.

        "Ms. Sanchez was shot in the head to silence her as a potential
        witness," May wrote to the governor.

        May, echoing a chorus of Arnold supporters, said Arnold's mental
        illness and desire to escape the California prison system caused him to
        confess to a crime he did not commit.

        Wednesday's execution was largely the result of a series of events
        controlled by Arnold, beginning with his 1988 confession.

        By that time, the investigation into Sanchez's murder had virtually
        ended and what little evidence police had pointed to a transient named
        Troy Alexander. That year Arnold wrote to the Nueces County
        District Attorney's Office saying he had information about the
        shooting. When investigators arrived in California to interview him,
        Arnold demanded $500. After he was paid half the amount, he told
        them he was the elusive Troy Alexander.

        Arnold had information - including the color of Sanchez's dress and
        the details of the shooting - that investigators and his attorneys agreed
        could have only come from someone at the scene of the crime.

        Arnold believed his confession would land him directly on death row
        and was unhappy to discover all death penalty cases in Texas require
        a trial.

        During his 1990 trial in Corpus Christi, he insisted on directing
        portions of his defense and the 6-foot-1-inch, 230-pound man, who
        required the escort of a riot squad on occasions, threatened
        courtroom outbursts if he didn't get his way. He did not allow
        cross-examination of key prosecution witnesses and during the penalty
        phase would not allow defense witnesses to be put on the stand.
        Instead, he read two poems and made a statement in which he told
        jurors to put him to death or he would kill again.

        In an interview shortly before his execution, Arnold complained that he
        was given too much latitude in the courtroom, especially given his prior
        mental history. He had twice been found not guilty by reason of
        insanity - once in Colorado after two rape charges when he was 17,
        and again in California after he assaulted another inmate - but was still
        given the final say in jury selection. Over the objection of his lawyers,
        he was given the power to select two former law enforcement
        employees.

                                On death row

        Once he ended up on death row in Texas, he continued a pattern of
        extreme violence that had caused one psychiatrist in California to dub
        him the most dangerous inmate in the California system. In 1995 he
        drove a bolt through the skull of another death row inmate, which
        landed him in solitary confinement.

        Prison officials say Arnold did not have any incidents of violence after
        that killing and Arnold insisted he had undergone a healing process
        over the past five years.

        He decided to protest his death sentence and embarked on a lengthy
        appeals process. He blamed both the murder and his subsequent
        confession on his mental problems.

                        Schizophrenia diagnosis

        He claimed those problems began the day his grandmother died and
        he raped two Denver women. Before that, the St. Louis native, the
        son of a housewife and a trucker, had excelled in school, narrowly
        missing being named valedictorian, according to hospital records.

        He was committed to the Colorado State Hospital where he was
        diagnosed with acute schizophrenia. In 1983, he escaped from the
        hospital and embarked on a crime spree through Texas, Las Vegas
        and Southern California, culminating in his 1984 arrest in Los Angeles
        for armed robbery.

        Former District Attorney Grant Jones, who prosecuted Arnold, said
        he has no doubt Arnold is guilty of the Sanchez murder.

        Each part of his confession was backed up with evidence, he has said.
        Jones, who now has reservations about the use of the death penalty as
        a sentence, said he would step forward if there were doubt in his
        mind.

        Sanchez's father, Alfonso Sanchez, said his family would try to find
        closure in Arnold's death. "We've come to the end of one road," he
        said. "It was a long road, but we've come to the end of it."
                              By: Jeremy Schwartz at schwartzja@caller.com

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A convicted killer with a history
of violence in and out of prison was executed
Wednesday night for fatally shooting a jewelry store
clerk during a robbery nearly 19 years ago in Corpus
Christi.

Jermarr Arnold, 43, his confident voice booming into a
speaker into the witness room, took responsibility for
the killing, asked for forgiveness and thanked the
members of his victim's family for attending.

"I'm deeply sorry for the loss of your loved one. I
can't give you any answers. I can give you one thing.
I give you my life, a life for a life," he said.

The witnesses included his victim's parents and two
brothers, who stood silently and expressionless as
Arnold spoke directly to them and grinned broadly as
he entered the death house.

"The reason I'm smiling is I'm leaving this world. I'm
going to a better place," Arnold said.

He concluded his remarks by asking that God bless
everyone there and added "Thank you all for being
here."

He then began singing "Amazing Grace" loudly. When he
got to the last line of the first verse, "I was blind
and now I see," Arnold gasped on the word "see" and
slipped into unconsciousness.

He was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m., 10 minutes after
the flow of the lethal drugs began.

Arnold was the second Texas inmate put to death this year.

Two more are set for injection this month and at least
10 more are scheduled over the next 31/2 months.

Arnold acknowledged more than two dozen rapes, at
least two murders, including one while on death row,
and numerous robberies.  His prison record had repeated
instances of weapons possession and assaults.

"I'm not very good with people," he said in a recent
interview on death row.  "Sometimes I feel paranoid
and threatened and I strike out... I start hurting myself
or other people.

"I can accept I did bad things," he added. "I would
like to think all of that is behind me."

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to review his
case, and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
rejected a clemency petition. Gov. Rick Perry denied a
request Wednesday for a 30-day reprieve after
reviewing the case file and court records when a
former assistant district attorney who investigated the
slaying said he believed Arnold was not the killer.

Arnold acknowledged shooting Christina Marie Sanchez,
21, in the head during a July, 15, 1983, holdup of the
Corpus Christi jewelry store where she was working.
He fled with numerous pieces of jewelry and was
arrested later in California for a Los Angeles bank
robbery.

Five years after Sanchez's slaying and while serving
prison time in California, Arnold wrote to the Nueces
County district attorney's office that he had
information about her death.  He subsequently
confessed.

"I think he's mentally ill and I think he's not
rational when it comes to choices," Rick Rogers, an
attorney who handled his appeals, said. "But when
you're talking about legal competence, it's a very low
threshold.

"I've never had any doubts he's legally competent in
that sense but he's got something wrong with him, very
self destructive and bizarre in what he does and
because of that you really don't know when he says
something whether it's true or not true or where he's
going with it."

Grant Jones, the trial prosecutor, said he would not
have pursued the case unless there was evidence
besides the confession.

"We proved without a doubt he was in town; we proved
he was at the store the day of the robbery; we
connected to him, or had in his possession, some of
the jewelry," Jones said this week, adding that Arnold
also provided details only the killer could have
known.

"You had to ask yourself: How can a guy in California
come up with all the details of a robbery in Corpus
Christi?  How could he know about it unless he was
here?"

Arnold, from death row, said his confession was a way
to get away from "the pain, abuse and violence" in the
California prison system. Once back in Texas, he
insisted on putting pro-death penalty people on his
trial jury and from the witness stand urged them to
vote for his execution.

"If you miss this opportunity, there's a good chance
that I will kill again.  That's just the way I am," he told them.

He did.

In 1995, he used a sharpened piece of metal as a knife
to fatally stab another death row inmate in the head,
using his foot to force it through the prisoner's
temple, prison officials said.

Arnold was born in St. Louis and grew up in Liberal,
Kan.  He twice was a state mental patient in Pueblo,
Colo., and served his first prison term, for rape, in
Denver in 1977.  He said he committed as many as 30
rapes - the first while in junior high school.

He said he mellowed in recent years, describing
himself as "level, calm and peace-loving" and hoped to
dispel any impression that he had no remorse for the
Sanchez killing.

"I do care and I'm sorry and I wish none of this had
happened," he said.

"It's a laugh," Mary Sanchez, whose daughter was
killed in the shooting, told the Corpus Christi
Caller-Times.
"This is the very, very first time he's ever mentioned
it.  So we don't believe him."

HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- On Wednesday, Texas executed its second inmate of the
year, putting to death a convicted armed robber who wrestled a .357 Magnum
pistol away from a jewelry store clerk and killed her during a 1983 holdup.

Jermarr Arnold, 43, was executed by lethal injection at the state prison in
Huntsville, 75 miles north of  Houston, for shooting Christine Marie Sanchez
in the head during an armed robbery at a jewelry store in the Texas coastal
city of Corpus Christi.

 He was serving time in a California prison for armed robbery in 1988 when
he sent a letter to the district attorney in Corpus Christi offering that he
had information about the then-unsolved crime.  He later told investigators
that he had shot Christina Sanchez after she tried to aim a .357 Magnum as
he took several items of jewelry from her at gunpoint.

During his 1990 trial, Jermarr Arnold took the stand during the punishment
phase and told the jury that he deserved to have his life forfeited because
he had taken one.

``I'm no longer fit to live because I can't live in a moral, law-abiding
society,'' he said. ``I think it would be a moral decision for you to make
by sentencing me to die.''

 Strapped to the gurney in the death house, Jermarr Arnold apologized to
Christina Sanchez' parents and two brothers, who were present.

 ``I can give you one thing, and I am going to give it to you today.  I give
you my life.   I'm giving a life for a life.   You have a right to see this,
and I am glad you are here,'' Jermarr Arnold said.

After his statement was finished, he began singing the hymn ``Amazing
Grace.''   The flow of lethal drugs stopped him after he finished the line
``I once was blind but now I see.''

He made no final meal request.

Jermarr Arnold was the second of four inmates scheduled for execution this
month in Texas, the nation's death penalty leader since the U.S Supreme
Court lifted a capital punishment ban in 1976.   Texas resumed executions 6
years later, and has executed 257 people since then including Jermarr
Arnold.

On January 30th, former farmer Windell Broussard is scheduled to be executed
for stabbing to death a 28-year-old woman and her 10-year-old son in 1992.

A day later, former mechanic Randall Hafdahl is set to die for fatally
shooting an off-duty Amarillo police officer in 1985.

Ex-prosecutor calls for stay of Arnold's execution--Bill May says
evidence casting doubt on role in killing was not given to defense

With less than 24 hours before his scheduled execution, convicted killer
Jermarr Arnold's last hope lies with former prosecutor Bill May, who told
Gov. Rick Perry on Tuesday that he didn't believe Arnold committed the
1983 murder that landed him on death row.

Arnold has given conflicting accounts of his role in the slaying of
Greenberg Jewelers clerk Christina Marie Sanchez, who was shot in the
head during a robbery.

He has told some close to him that he did not kill Sanchez, but in a
recent interview insisted that he takes responsibility for her murder,
despite the fact that lawyers have said he stands no chance of clemency
unless he loudly proclaims his innocence.

In a letter dated Jan. 1 to Bill May, who investigated Sanchez's murder
in his role as 1st assistant district attorney, Arnold said he believes
others might have been involved in the robbery and murder.

"Aside from the disturbing fact that I do not remember anything about
this crime also troubling are some other things about the way this whole
case has been handled," Arnold wrote.

May told the governor that evidence from the investigation, which cast
doubt on Arnold's role in the killing, was not disclosed to Arnold's
attorneys and so were not pursued in court.

"The evidence is so exculpatory that I refused even to file charges
against Mr. Arnold after he confessed," May wrote.

Perry and his legal counsel will consider the issues brought up by May as
they review the request for a 30-day reprieve for Arnold, a spokesman
said.

Greg Wiercioch, deputy director of the Austin-based Texas Defender
Service, said May's letter signaled the need for more time to review
Arnold's case.

"This is a bombshell," said Wiercioch, who is also working on Arnold's
case.

"It has to be followed up in some way, there is not enough time at this
point."

Before May's letter, Arnold's last chances seemed to have been
extinguished on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final
appeal and the state clemency board voted 18-0 to deny Arnold a stay of
execution.

Arnold gained national notoriety in 1990 when he confessed to the murder
from a California prison and demanded the death penalty.

He confessed in detail to the Caller-Times and "60 Minutes" and
threatened a courtroom outburst to keep his lawyers from putting on a
strong defense.

Drug informant

May served as one of Arnold's primary witnesses in his 1990 capital
murder trial and testified that he believed Sanchez might have been
killed as a result of her role as an informer in drug investigations.

In an affidavit sent to the governor, May wrote that the robbery was
faked to cover the real motive behind the murder.

May said one of Arnold's original attorneys, Carl Lewis, now
County-Court-at-Law judge, was not aware of May's evidence against
others, including grand jury testimony that suggested the plot, and so
was unable to question him about his theory on the stand.

Lewis said he and co-counsel Constance Luedicke were aware of the theory
and Luedicke touched on it in her closing argument.

But Lewis could not recall how much of the theory the defense team was
made aware of. "He's a good guy to issue an affidavit like that," Lewis
said of May. "He's trying to save a guy's life."

May ends his affidavit by addressing Arnold: "I was a close friend of
Christene(sic) Sanchez and I have no reason to help you. I do so now to
serve justice. I hope this helps."

Execution scheduled today

Arnold's appeals attorney Rick Rogers said it's doubtful May's last
minute attempt will keep Arnold from his 6 p.m. scheduled lethal
injection.

Rogers said that after he received a copy of May's affidavit last week,
he pored over transcripts, but did not see anything new in May's
affidavit except his claim of "exculpatory evidence."

Unless May was able to provide specific evidence that was not presented
at trial, Arnold's chances are slim, he said.

"I told May he was (Arnold's) only hope," Rogers said. "Unfortunately it
might have come too late."

May told the governor he waited so long because wasn't aware of Arnold's
execution date until he received a letter from Arnold asking for help.

Preparations for Arnold's execution were proceeding normally Tuesday and
the Texas Department of Criminal Justice officially placed Arnold on a
death watch.

Arnold, who did not request a last meal, will be allowed to see visitors
until this afternoon when he is taken from the Polunsky Unit in
Livingston to the death chamber in Huntsville.

(source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times)

Condemned inmate Jermarr Arnold insists he's no longer the volatile
killer and rapist scheduled to be executed Wednesday night for fatally
shooting a Corpus Christi jewelry store clerk in a robbery nearly 19
years ago.

"I can accept I did bad things," Arnold said in a recent interview on
death row. "That's a fact. But to say I was an evil monster is very
unfair and very incorrect. The only times I've ever acted that way was at
the times when I was suffering with mental illness problems that I've had."

Arnold, 43, would be the 2nd Texas inmate to be put to death this year. 2
more convicted killers are set for injection this month and at least 10
more are scheduled over the next 3 1/2 months.

Arnold has acknowledged more than 2 dozen rapes, at least 2 murders,
including one while on death row, and numerous robberies. His prison
record has repeated instances of weapons possession and assaults,
including one where he sliced a man's genitals and cut out his eyelids.

"I'm not very good with people," he acknowledged from death row.
"Sometimes I feel paranoid and threatened and I strike out... I start
hurting myself or other people.

"I've had my share of negative things, negative attitudes, negative
behavior," he continued. "I would like to think all of that is behind me
and that each day I can count it as a blessing and I can show someone
else who I am now and show them some kind of respect and understanding
and share with them the grace that God's given me."

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to review his case, and the Texas
Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected a clemency petition. Gov. Rick
Perry was considering a request from an attorney that Arnold deserved a
reprieve because of what the lawyer said were questions about Arnold's
guilt.

Prison officials described the 6-1, 230-pound Arnold, an imposing man
with the build of a football lineman, as not being cooperative Tuesday.
He refused to complete paperwork like filling out a final meal request.

Arnold has acknowledged shooting Christina Marie Sanchez, 21, in the head
during a July, 15, 1983, holdup of a Corpus Christi jewelry store where
she was working. He fled with numerous pieces of jewelry and was arrested
later in California for a Los Angeles bank robbery.

It was 5 years after Sanchez 's slaying and while serving prison time
in California when Arnold wrote to the Nueces County district attorney's
office that he had information about her death. He subsequently confessed.

Grant Jones, the prosecutor in the case, said he would not have pursued
it unless there was evidence besides the confession.

"We proved without a doubt he was in town; we proved he was at the store
the day of the robbery; we connected to him, or had in his possession,
some of the jewelry," Jones said this week, adding that Arnold also
provided details only the killer could have known.

"You had to ask yourself: How can a guy in California come up with all
the details of a robbery in Corpus Christi? How could he know about it
unless he was here?"

Arnold, from death row, said his confession was a way to get away from
"the pain, abuse and violence" in the California prison system. Once back
in Texas, he insisted on putting pro-death penalty people on his trial
jury and from the witness stand urged them to vote for his execution.

"If you miss this opportunity, there's a good chance that I will kill
again. That's just the way I am," he told them.

He did.

In 1995, he used a sharpened piece of metal as a knife to fatally stab
another death row inmate in the head, stomping on the weapon to ensure it
was imbedded in the prisoner's temple, prison officials said.

"I've had a great deal of violence while incarcerated," he said a few
weeks ago. "But it's never reported accurately that 9 times out of 10
I was trying to defend myself."

Arnold was born in St. Louis and grew up in Liberal, Kan. He twice was a
state mental patient in Pueblo, Colo., and served his 1st prison term,
for rape, in Denver in 1977. He said he committed as many as 30 rapes -
the 1st while in junior high school.

He said he's mellowed in recent years, describing himself as "level, calm
and peace-loving."

"I've gotten more in touch with myself and better in control," he said.
"I've changed."

He also said he wanted to dispel any impression that he had no remorse
for the Sanchez killing.

"I do care and I'm sorry and I wish none of this had happened," he said.

"It's a laugh," Mary Sanchez, whose daughter was killed in the shooting,
told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. "This is the very, very 1st time
he's ever mentioned it. So we don't believe him."

(source: Associated Press)

Dear Friends,

Jermarr C. Arnold is scheduled to be killed at 6 PM by the state of
Texas. I have written Jermarr in the past few years and he has even sent
me a picture of himself.

I received my last letter from him on Christmas Day. He wrote that
"I have a history of mental illness back to high school and have twice
been declared legally insane and committed to state hospitals."

He further states in regard to his crime that "I don't remember anything
one way or another."

In a previous letter, he talks about being released from the super-max
or control unit in Pelican Bay, California. His mental illness was
substantially aggravated by the abuse at this prison.

Hope you will call Texas Gov. Rick Perry at 512-463-2000 or fax him at
512-463-1849. Also, you might point out that mentally ill prisoners are
increasingly being executed. When I spoke to the reporter for the
newspaper located where the death chamber is,  he told me that a
prisoner executed last week was so mentally ill that he thought he was a
person in medieval times and did not understand that he would be killed.

(source:  Charlie Sullivan, CURE)
 

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