Chron eye for the death row killer guy - cont'd
It's time for another installment of Chron Eye for the Death Row Killer Guy.
For a while now, we've been noticing that the anti-death-penalty Chronicle has a tendency sympathetically to cover death row killers about to be executed.
The usual formula is along the lines of pointing out some nice quality of the killer (for example, keeping poetry in prison), some bad quality of his childhood (perceived or real), and the problems at HPD and its crime lab (whether relevant or not to the killer being discussed).
Today, Allan Turner follows that formula well. There's the nice quality of the killer:
Like his victim, McWilliams, the oldest of five children, was reared in a family of modest means. In his youth, he showed artistic promise and did well in school, his sister, Misty Jones, said.
He was a talented writer, too, and his prison-penned poetry, bearing titles such as Hard Brick and Steel and Too Young To Die, has been posted on the Internet by death penalty opponents.
How charming.
Next, there's the childhood:
But by his midteens, McWilliams was selling drugs on the street. He dropped out of high school in his junior year, and his first robbery conviction, stemming from the shotgun stickup of a pizza delivery man, came in 1993 at age 19.
During the next few years, court records indicate, McWilliams was involved in robberies of a supermarket, convenience store and tavern.
McWilliams' sister said his family was unaware of his illegal activities.
"He was well-mannered," she said. "We trusted his word. We'd ask him where he was going, and he'd say, 'Oh, I'm just hanging with my friends.' "
Behind the Plexiglas window of the death row visiting cubicle, McWilliams' body told the story of his legal ups and downs. Fluorescent lights glinted from his gold-capped teeth. Crude prison tattoos snaked across his muscled arms.
"Everybody always had big plans for me," said McWilliams, the father of two grade-school-age children.
"It seems, though, that life was always against me. The forces of life were against me."
And finally, the obligatory reference to HPD and/or the crime lab:
Maselli said the temporary postponement of the execution of robber-murderer Dominique Green last week so that 280 boxes of recently discovered police evidence could be cataloged offered a "little glimmer of hope" for McWilliams. But when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overruled the delay and Green was executed, that hope faded.
"I don't know if there's anything in those boxes" pertaining to McWilliams, Maselli said. "One thing I don't do is offer false hope. If someone like Dominique Green didn't get relief, it's not going to happen for Freddie."
Maybe Turner should have interviewed a prosecutor involved in the case? Or someone who actually suggested any potential outstanding evidence might make a difference?
It might be hard to find such a person, because of this:
McWilliams' case is further undermined, she said, by his confession to police.
Yes, that would seem to undermine his "case." So does this:
In an interview Wednesday, the killer told of his desperate attempt early on the morning of Sept. 28, 1996, to force Rodriguez into the trunk of his Chevrolet sedan. As accomplices Kenneth Adams and Richard Hawkins, both now serving sentences for the crime, watched, McWilliams and Rodriguez struggled over a pistol.
"We were struggling," McWilliams said, "and the gun went off and took his life. I can't truthfully tell whether he pulled the trigger or I did. My hand was on top of his hand and his hand was on top of mine. It was a two- or three-second dance of death, but it seemed to go on forever."
Nobody has suggested that the victim regularly danced around pointing a gun at himself and pulling the trigger just for kicks, so it's hard to have much sympathy for this cold-blooded killer.
Unless you're Jeff Cohen, and then it's just another episode of the Chron Eye for the Death Row Killer Guy.
How funny that despite all the money spent on revamping the typeface and layout, the anti-death-penalty advocacy journalism practiced at the Chron remains so 70s retro.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/07/04 09:55 PM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (0)
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