April 15: TEXAS----stay of execution
Convicted killer in Houston home burglary gets late reprieve.
Condemned killer Kenneth Wayne Morris won a reprieve from a federal
appeals court that spared him from a trip to the Texas death chamber about
two hours before he could have been executed today for the fatal shooting
of a Houston man during a burglary 12 years ago.
The execution of Morris, 32, a 9th-grade dropout with a history of theft
and burglary, was stopped with an order from 5th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in New Orleans.
In its order, the appeals court gave Morris' lawyers permission to file
additional legal actions in a lower federal court based on a U.S. Supreme
Court ruling last year that barred execution of mentally retarded people.
Morris' attorneys had argued in their last-ditch appeals that the inmate
was mentally retarded and should not be put to death.
Morris was identified as the gunman in a 3-man gang that broke into the
home of a 63-year-old man because they thought he had a gun collection.
James Moody Adams, however, had no weapons and was shot 4 times after he
surrendered the money in his wallet. His terrified wife hid in a closet
behind some clothes.
Morris, whose record included convictions for burglary, theft and
marijuana possession while on parole, would have been the 13th Texas
prisoner executed this year and 1st of 3 set to die over the next 8 days.
more are scheduled for lethal injection next week.
Morris was 20 and on probation at the time of the May 1, 1991, attack. He
was arrested 12 days later and after he pulled another robbery at a gas
station. Two companions received long prison terms for their participation
in the slaying of Adams, who built a successful paint company and later
founded a private Houston school.
"We think (Morris) has made a sufficient showing of likelihood of success
on the merits that the public interest would be served by granting the
stay," a 3-judge panel of the court said in a 5-page ruling.
In a concurring opinion, Judge Patrick Higinbotham noted there was no IQ
test in evidence to determine whether Morris was mentally retarded.
"It is difficult to make informed judgments without the development of the
facts in some form of hearing," he said.
Prosecutors had argued Morris' defense experts at his trial did not think
he was retarded but Morris never was tested. And he said although school
records did use the term retarded, "that is not worth much, given the wide
practice of social promotions and the reluctance of school officials' use
of the stigmatizing term 'retarded.'"
"I never thought I was retarded," Morris, whose tattoos on his arms
included pictures of marijuana and the word "Gangsta" in large Gothic
letters down the back of his right arm, said last week on death row.
"People have said I was. When I went to court, they said I was mentally
slow.
"I'm not a bad person," he added. "I accept responsibility. But I was on
drugs. It's unfortunate it had to happen this way."
Roe Wilson, who handles capital appeals for the Harris County district
attorney's office, said she was surprised by the reprieve "based on lack
of evidence presented that he was mentally retarded."
"Basically, the court is just giving them more time to try to look for
something," she said.
Morris already been moved from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Polunsky Unit outside Livingston, where death row inmates are housed, to
the Huntsville Unit, about 45 miles to the west, where executions are
carried out. When word of the reprieve reached the prison, he immediately
was returned to death row.
Prosecutors said Morris and his cohorts had became disoriented in the
middle of the night and selected Adams' house in error.
"Nobody was supposed to be there," said Morris, an unmarried father of two
who used the cash from the Adams robbery to buy drugs and new clothes.
At his trial, Marcene Adams testified how she could hear the conversation,
how her husband moved to the closet to get his billfold and turn over the
money. Then she heard the click of the hammer of a gun being pulled back,
listened as her husband exclaimed "Oh, no!" and then heard the weapon
discharge twice.
Shot in the head and neck, Adams fell into the closet, then was shot twice
more in the back. As the robbers fled, his wife had to step over his body
to run outside and call for help.
She and 2 sons were scheduled to watch Morris die Tuesday.
Morris did not testify, but his version of what happened differed.
As he held a gun on Adams standing half in the closet and half in the
hallway, one of his partners came running down the hallway and bumped him,
Morris said last week.
"The gun went off," he said. "As (Adams) fell, I turned to run and fired
two more times in the closet. I didn't aim at him or anything. It all
happened so quick. I had no intentions of killing nobody."
The trio left behind garbage bags they intended to use to carry off loot.
Police found a fingerprint on one of the bags and arrested Christopher
Montez, then 18, who identified Morris as an accomplice. The third man,
Montez's cousin Orlena Ayers, then 20, turned himself in. Montez and Ayers
each received long prison terms. Morris got a death sentence.
(source: Associated Press)
HUNTSVILLE, Texas, April 15 (UPI) -- A federal appeals court Tuesday halted the execution of a Texas killer two hours before he was to receive a lethal injection for killing a Houston businessman 12 years ago. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ordered a district court to hear arguments that Kenneth Wayne Morris, 32, is mentally retarded. He was scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 6 p.m. Tuesday. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last summer that the execution of the mentally retarded is unconstitutional. In a concurring opinion, Judge Patrick E. Higinbotham said there was conflicting evidence in the record about Morris's mental state. He said a district court could determine if a hearing was justified. Roe Wilson, a Harris County prosecutor, told the Houston Chronicle that defense experts at Morris' trial testified he had learning problems and an attention deficit disorder that caused him difficulty in school, but he was not retarded...
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