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Thread: Ronald Curtis Chambers - Texas

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    Ronald Curtis Chambers - Texas




    Summary of Offense:

    Chambers was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering Mike McMahon. Chambers and a companion abducted McMahon and his date, Deia Sutton, from a Dallas night club parking lot. The couple was robbed then shot and although they survived the initial attack, Chambers returned and beat McMahon to death when he heard him calling out for Deia.

    Sentenced to death in Dallas County in January 1976.

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    Killer of Kennewick college student eludes death penalty for 3rd time

    A Kennewick woman who has spent the past 33 years grieving her son's murder and praying for his killer's execution was devastated to learn...

    A Kennewick woman who has spent the past 33 years grieving her son's murder and praying for his killer's execution was devastated to learn Monday that the man who beat and shot her son has eluded the death penalty for the third time.

    Bennie McMahan, 84, said she is frustrated that the state of Texas has executed more than 400 people since Michael McMahan's April 1975 slaying, while his killer, Ronald Chambers, has become the longest-serving prisoner on Texas' death row.

    "It seems to me he's getting all the benefits and Mike didn't get any," McMahan said. "We have already been through three trials, we don't know how much more we can take."

    On Monday, the Texas Supreme Court declined without comment to review a federal appeals-court's decision to send the case back to a Dallas trial court because questions used by jurors to decide his death sentence were improper.

    "The next step is for Dallas County to decide what to do, whether they will retry him, have a reduced sentence or a plea bargain," said Michael McMahan's sister, Janna McMahan, 51, of West Richland.

    Chambers, 53, who arrived on Texas' death row on Jan. 8, 1976, 3 days before his 21st birthday, has now seen his conviction and death sentence overturned 3 times.

    "We're pretty disappointed, but we prepared for the worst," Janna McMahan said. "My mom is 84 years old and it's hard on her. We just lost my father in October and this compounded everything."

    The case wound up before the state Supreme Court after the Texas Attorney General's Office had appealed an appellate-court ruling involving jury instructions given to other condemned Texas prisoners. In April 2007, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that jurors in three cases were not allowed to give sufficient weight to factors that might cause them to impose a life sentence other than death.

    Chambers' first conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals because a state-appointed psychiatrist who questioned him failed to warn Chambers that his responses would be used against him.

    He was retried in 1985 and convicted and again sentenced to die. The Supreme Court threw out that conviction 4 years later, ruling prosecutors improperly excluded three black people from his jury. Chambers is black.

    In January 2007, Chambers was set to die for the punishment reached at his third trial. The lethal injection, however, was stopped until the justices ruled on the cases of the 3 other inmates who were challenging the jury instructions.

    "I hoped there would have been an execution back when it was scheduled," Janna McMahan said. "Not that I relish in somebody dying, but that's his punishment. My brother certainly didn't want to die."

    On the night of April 11, 1975, Michael McMahan, 22, a student at Texas Tech University, was leaving a Dallas nightclub with classmate Deia Sutton when they were kidnapped from the parking lot by Chambers and his friend, Clarence Williams.

    McMahan and Sutton were driven to a levee on the Trinity River and pushed down an embankment. Chambers fired five shots at them, then bludgeoned McMahan in the head with the barrel of the shotgun. Williams choked Sutton and tried to drown her; Chambers also beat her with the shotgun. Sutton survived the attack.

    Williams pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and murder and received two life sentences and remains in prison. Janna McMahan said that when Williams' case is reviewed by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles every few years her family fights to have him remain behind bars.

    "You put your trust in the justice system and put your faith in them to do what's right. It hasn't worked yet," Janna McMahan said.

    Michael McMahan was a Kennewick High School graduate who loved tennis and dreamed of following in his father's footsteps by earning a degree in mechanical engineering from Texas Tech, his sister said.

    (Source: The Seattle Times)

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    Ronald Curtis Chambers, who has been on death row longer than anyone in state history, will receive yet another sentencing trial – his fourth – under an order issued by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

    Ronald Curtis Chambers The U.S. Supreme Court had previously ordered the lower court to review the case because the jury in Mr. Chamber's third death penalty trial may have received faulty instructions before rendering the sentence.

    Defense attorneys hope to be able to negotiate a life sentence for the man who murdered 22-year-old Mike McMahan and left Deia Sutton to die in the Trinity River bottom in 1975.

    "The important thing to consider is Mr. Chambers' age, as well as the extraordinary expense of seeking another death verdict," said attorney Jordan Steiker, a law professor at the University of Texas.

    Mr. Chambers was 20 when he committed the crime and has spent almost 32 years on death row.

    "It's hard to imagine that the Dallas taxpayers would want to spend millions more," Mr. Steiker said.

    Another attorney for Mr. Chambers, James W. Volberding of Tyler, added, "It seems unfair to put the victim in this case through another trial."

    But Ms. Sutton, who now goes by her married name of Roberts, remains resolute about her desire for the death penalty. She has testified against Mr. Chambers in each of his three previous trials.

    "I never will be done," she said. "I'm still holding out for the death penalty."

    Last year, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins indicated he would pursue the death penalty again if another sentencing trial were ordered. But on Wednesday, spokeswoman Jamille Bradfield said it was "premature for us to comment at this point."

    Mr. Chambers was first convicted and sentenced to death in 1975, after he and two accomplices abducted the couple at gunpoint as they were leaving a Dallas nightclub. Ms. Sutton was shot, beaten and choked but managed to survive.

    Mr. Chambers was tried a second time 10 years later, after courts determined he was not warned that information from a psychiatric interview could be used against him. Mr. Chambers received a third trial in 1992 after courts determined that jury selection had been racially tainted.

    Each time, he was sentenced to death.

    Mr. Chambers was scheduled to die last year but received a reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court a few days before the date. Several months later, the case was sent back to the 5th Circuit for review because jury instructions in his 1992 trial did not allow jurors to properly consider mitigating factors that might have made the death penalty inappropriate.

    The factors include "his exposure to violence and drugs, his lack of role models, and his lack of economic opportunity while being raised in the projects of west Dallas," according to the 5th Circuit ruling.

    The faulty jury instructions have since been changed, but some inmates sentenced at that time remain on death row.

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    Watkins announced Chambers will face the DP again in an August 2010 trial. That will give him approximately 35 years on Death row for this horrific murder at that point.

    http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...1022e8020.html

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    Death-row inmate dies in Dallas awaiting new hearing

    Ronald Curtis Chambers, who held the record for the longest stay on Texas' death row at 35 years, died Friday in Dallas.

    Chambers, 55, was in the Dallas County jail to prepare for a new sentencing hearing when guards found him on the floor of his cell. He was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he died, said sheriff's spokeswoman Kim Leach.

    Jurors convicted Chambers of capital murder in the slaying of a college student and sentenced him to death in 1975, 1985 and 1992. Those convictions were all overturned on appeal.

    "There was never any material doubt about Chambers' guilt," said James Volberding of Tyler, who worked on his appeals from 1996 to 2008. "The only question was whether or not he should be executed."

    Volberding said Chambers' case illustrates flaws in the state's death penalty system. He said court and prosecution errors caused the long delay, which he argues amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

    "We need more experienced defense attorneys, prosecutors and judges," Volberding said.

    Chambers was 20 and Clarence Williams was 24 in March 1975, when they kidnapped two college students from a Dallas nightclub parking lot, robbed them, drove them to a Trinity River levee near downtown and shot them.

    Thinking the two men had left, one victim, Mike McMahon, 22, called out to the other, 20-year-old Deia Sutton.

    Chambers and Williams heard him and came back. They beat and choked them both. McMahon died, but Sutton survived.

    Sutton had a gunshot wound to her head but staggered to a hotel to call for help.

    Deia Sutton Roberts still lives with the slug inside her and with nightmares, she said in 2007. She declined comment Monday evening.

    The Dallas County medical examiner's office has yet to determine Chambers' cause of death, and toxicology test results are pending. Leach said Chambers came to the jail with "a series of health complications."

    In a 2007 reversal of Chambers' conviction, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that jurors should have had the option of a life sentence because of mitigating circumstances.

    Defense attorneys cited Chambers' upbringing in West Dallas as mitigating, although he grew up in a church-going family and had no serious criminal record, according to Volberding.

    Williams pleaded guilty and received two life terms. He's been denied parole and remains in prison.

    Volberding said Williams was offered a plea deal because he was thought to have had cancer and was not expected to live long. Prosecutors never offered Chambers a plea bargain.

    Although guilt wasn't at issue in Chambers' case, Volberding points to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals as the key to a flawed system.

    He said that court has created rules that "favor upholding convictions even in the face of evidence otherwise."

    The Dallas County district attorney's office was "actively preparing to retry Mr. Chambers on punishment at the time of his death," spokeswoman Jamille Bradfield said in a prepared statement Monday.

    Volberding said that he met a changed man when he met Chambers in prison in 1996. He was "by any measure, a different man than he was in 1975," Volberding said.

    Chambers had been foreman of a prison garment factory until the work program was canceled after an escape attempt by other inmates.

    In January 2007, Chambers, who was confined to his cell for 23 hours a day, told a reporter he spent time reading, listening to sports on a radio and corresponding with European pen pals.

    He said he hadn't thought much about the legal system in 1975 but noted that the state hadn't been executing people.

    The state stopped executions because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1972, revamped the system and resumed executions in 1974, months before the murder.

    Chambers was convicted only of the McMahon murder. He was never tried for Roberts' attempted murder or the robberies.

    "He was limited in what he could say" because of pending legal issues, Volberding said. "But Chambers always conveyed incredible remorse."

    http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...1.4b34ed3.html

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