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Thread: Faryion Edward Wardrip - Texas Death Row

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    Faryion Edward Wardrip - Texas Death Row


    Tina Elizabeth Kimbrew, Debra Sue Taylor, Terry Lee Sims, Toni Lee Gibbs and Ellen Blau





    Facts of the Crime:

    On December 21, 1984, Wardrip broke down the door of a woman and killed her for no apparent reason. DNA linked him to the murder as well as the murder of three other women.

    Victims: Terry Sims, Toni Gibbs, Ellen Blau, Debra Taylor and Tina Kimbrew.

    Wardrip was sentenced to death in Wichita County in November 1999.

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    July 30, 2008

    Judge wants serial killer's death sentence out

    A federal judge has recommended a serial killer's death sentence be overturned.

    U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul D. Stickney of Dallas recommended a new sentencing hearing for Faryion Wardrip, sent to Texas' death row in 1999 and serving three life sentences in the murders of three other women.

    Stickney's recommendation will go to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas for a decision, but Wardrip's attorneys and the Texas Attorney General's Office have three months to file motions supporting or contesting it.

    Marsha Bridgens, the mother of murder victim Terry Sims, said Wardrip was "just playing the system" and said she could not believe a judge listened to his case.

    "I don't care if he lives in prison forever," she told the Wichita Falls Times Record News for a story in Thursday editions. "He will die, and that's when he gets punished."

    Wardrip, now 49, was convicted of fatally stabbing 20-year-old Sims in 1984, but the murder was unsolved for years. Then he killed Tina Kimbrew in 1986, confessed, pleaded guilty and served 11 years in prison before he was paroled.

    Then after DNA evidence linked him to other slayings, he pleaded guilty to Sims' murder and was sentenced to death in 1999.

    He also confessed to killing 23-year-old Toni Gibbs, 21-year-old Ellen Blau and 25-year-old Debra Taylor — all in 1985 — and received life sentences in each of those cases. All but one of his five victims was killed in the Wichita Falls area: Taylor, in Fort Worth.

    Wardrip's lawyers took his appeals to federal court after they were exhausted at the state level.

    In recommending July 25 that the death sentence be thrown out, Stickney cited a question jurors asked during deliberations about whether a danger to society meant the public or prison society, their lack of information about parole eligibility and the defense attorney's failure to present evidence about Wardrip's positive activities while in prison.

    "... (Wardrip) would not have been sentenced to death had his defense counsel presented any evidence about his nearly spotless (prison) record and his commendable behavior during his prior eleven-year incarceration," Stickney wrote.

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    July 31, 2008

    Victim’s mother reacts to news of Wardrip’s appeal

    The mother of one of Faryion Wardrip’s murder victims used rather colorful words to express her reaction to the serial killer’s latest attack — on her sense of justice.

    “It’s bulls---,” said Marsha Bridgens, mother of Terry Sims, whom Wardrip confessed to killing in 1984. “He’s just playing the system.”

    The system — rather, a U.S. magistrate judge — has recommended granting a writ of habeas corpus in the case of Wardrip, who confessed in 1999 to the murders of Sims and three other young women after DNA linked him to the heinous crimes.

    U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul D. Stickney also recommended doing away with Wardrip’s death sentence and, according to court papers filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, resentencing him.

    Death sentence or not, Bridgens said Wardrip will surely get death in the end.

    “I don’t care if he lives in prison forever,” she said, “he will die, and that’s when he gets punished.”

    That Wardrip’s attorneys could get the judge to listen to his appeal baffles Bridgens.

    “(Wardrip) is a con,” she said in a telephone interview. “I can’t believe the judges even listen to him. He’s a liar. He was in prison for 11 years and never told anyone he’d murdered anyone. He thought he’d get away with it.”

    Her daughter’s murder has taken its toll on Bridgens, who has sought therapy since Wardrip took Sims’ life. The judge’s recent recommendation, signed Friday, didn’t unearth the anger and grief she’d felt.

    Those emotions remain at the surface. She’s never stopped grieving.

    “How do you think I feel?” Bridgens asked. “I’m about to go out of my damn mind. And now I’m about to go through this crap again.

    “I just don’t understand the judicial system. I have friends in prison who haven’t hurt anybody, and they don’t get all these appeals. But this guy, he gets to play all these games.”

    And his reported turn to religion doesn’t soften Bridgens’ heart one bit.

    “I heard he’s done his Jesus thing. They all find Jesus in prison,” she said. “Well, he’ll find him.”

    Wardrip had already confessed to killing Tina Kimbrew in 1986, serving 11 years in prison before being paroled in 1997. And in all that time in prison, Bridgens said, he never once confessed — to anyone — that he’d killed other women.

    But Sims’ grieving mother knew; she could sense it, she said.

    “When I saw the story about Toni Gibbs being missing, I knew,” she said. “I would see articles about the other girls murdered, and I sensed it.

    “There’s a serial killer out there.”

    And a monster.

    “Terry had 38 stab wounds,” her mother said. “That’s a little overkill, don’t you think?”

    She became a fixture in the lives of detectives still working the Sims case, she said, demanding that they test for DNA links in the cases. Having been a hairdresser, Bridgens knew the tell-tale details that could be found in even one strand of hair.

    As it turned out, DNA would solve all four cases, of Sims, 23-year-old Gibbs, 21-year-old Ellen Blau and 25-year-old Debra Taylor.

    Bridgens had called the Times Record News Wednesday to correct the reported age of Sims, listed as 24 at the time of her murder.

    “She was only 20,” her mother said, “not 24. I would have loved to have had those four extra years with her.”

    http://www.timesrecordnews.com/news/...om-speaks-out/

  4. #4
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Serial killer Wardrip gets break from federal judge

    With news late this week of a new judgment in the appeals process of convicted serial killer Faryion Wardrip, Wichita County District Attorney Barry Macha’s thoughts went to the families of Wardrip’s victims.

    A senior U.S. district judge’s ruling, filed Friday in the Northern District of Texas, ordered that habeas corpus relief be conditionally granted in Wardrip’s death penalty case. The judgment by Judge A. Joe Fish calls for Wardrip’s release from custody in this case within 180 days unless the state of Texas begins proceedings for a new punishment trial or decides not to seek a death sentence and instead agrees to life in prison for Wardrip, who is now 51.

    Wardrip was sentenced to death in 1999 for the death of 20-year-old Terry Sims. He pleaded guilty to her murder, and a Denton County jury decided on a death sentence in the capital case. DNA linked Wardrip to Sims’ murder as well as to the deaths of Toni Gibbs, Ellen Blau and Debra Taylor. He received three life sentences — to run one after another — for the murders of Gibbs, Blau and Taylor. Those sentences will keep Wardrip in prison, regardless what happens in the death sentence appeal.

    The deaths of several young women in North Texas in the mid-1980s terrorized the area, and the cases remained unsolved for years.

    When the investigation and DNA evidence finally led to Wardrip in those four cases, he already had served 11 years in prison and been paroled for the 1986 murder of Tina Kimbrew.

    The time he spent in prison for Kimbrew’s death is at the heart of the appellate issue going through the federal system. Wardrip’s request for relief on grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel during his trial included the assertion that his attorney — then-Public Defender John Curry, who has since died — should have presented evidence from his time in prison. Wardrip claimed the evidence should have shown he took classes, wrote for a prison newspaper and took part in a fundraiser for a young man with medical needs.

    In July 2008, a U.S. magistrate judge denied requests on several grounds for relief but recommended that request be granted. He recommended granting a writ of habeas corpus, doing away with the death sentence and resentencing Wardrip.

    The appeals process in the case took the issue to a U.S. district judge.

    The new judgment, which agrees with the July 2008 recommendation, is contrary to rulings by 30th District Judge Bob Brotherton and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Macha said.

    The district attorney’s office handled appeals on the state level, and the state attorney general’s office picked up the case when the proceedings reached the federal level.

    John Brasher, chief of the appellate division of the Wichita County DA’s office, said he was confident, based on past actions, the attorney general’s office would appeal. Brasher also touched on the issue Wardrip alleged of ineffective assistance of counsel by Curry.

    “I don’t buy it,” he said.

    Brotherton said it was clear to him that Curry did a good job considering the circumstances he was facing.

    “That’s a tactical decision that John made,” Brotherton said, expressing his assumption that if Curry had produced evidence of good conduct or good acts while Wardrip was in prison, the state would have had additional materials to present on the defendant’s conduct in prison, leaving the jury to weigh those pieces of evidence.

    “I don’t agree that the habeas corpus should have been granted,” Brotherton said. “I’m sure we haven’t heard the last from the state on this, either.”

    Macha expressed concern for the families of Wardrip’s victims, especially with the decades-long time frame that encompasses the loss of their loved ones, the solving of the crimes, the prosecution and the appeals process that is still going on.

    “He committed these horrific murders over a 16-month time,” Macha said. The issue in the courts now is not a question of guilt. He pleaded guilty; this is simply a punishment question.

    The case was solved and properly tried, Macha said. Wardrip was sentenced in 1999. The appeals process has been going on for the past seven years.

    Macha said his greatest concern is seeing some closure and finality for victims’ families. Many cases that take a heavy toll on loved ones lead to appeals and other new questions, opening old wounds for the families.

    The news of this judgment came during the same week the Wichita County DA’s office responded on another issue that dates back to the 1980s.

    July 25, 1989, Lt. Walter “Tommy” Collins with the Wichita Falls Police Department was killed and two officers were wounded when gunfire burst out as police responded to a disturbance call at the Ben Donnell Housing Project. Daniel Martin Fowler pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of murdering a police officer, as well as to two attempted capital murder charges, according to a previous Times Record News report. He received three life sentences, which are to run consecutively.

    Fowler has submitted a clemency application with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles requesting a conditional pardon, Macha said.

    The processes in criminal cases often require new responses, new letters and other new communications. It’s an ongoing, often brutal process.

    “I really feel for the victims and their families,” Macha said.

    http://www.timesrecordnews.com/news/...er=yahoo_feeds

  5. #5
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On May 10, 2010, Texas filed an appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit over the granting of Wardrip's habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cir.../ca5/10-70017/

  6. #6
    Oral argument in the case of Faryion Wardip is scheduled for Thursday, June 9th, 2011 in the 5th Circuit. The state is appealing a grant of Wardip's death sentence.

  7. #7
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    I cannot see the Fifth Circuit agreeing with the district court on this one

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    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    How close is he to being executed?

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    Well at the moment, he has been reversed for a new penalty phase. However, if the Fifth Circuit reverses the District Court's decision then Wardrip will be eligible for a date with the executioner.

  10. #10
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    Does Texas now allow inmates to get a final meal from an outside place when their execution is upon them? I know quite a few death rows allow that.

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