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Thread: Marcus Ray Tyrone Druery - Texas Death Row

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    Marcus Ray Tyrone Druery - Texas Death Row




    Summary of Offense:

    On October 31, 2002, in Brazos County, Druery and two co-defendants drove Skyyler Brown, 20, to a pasture owned by Druery's family. Druery forced the man out of the car and shot him repeatedly at close range. Druery took the victim's cash, cell phone, pager and a bag of marijuana and set his body on fire.

    Druery was sentenced to death in December 2003.

  2. #2
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    On September 1, 2010, Druery filed an appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit over the denial of his habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cir.../ca5/10-70022/

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    MARCUS RAY TYRONE DRUERY v. RICK THALER

    In today's Fifth Circuit opinions, Druery's application for a COA was DENIED.

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    Condemned Waco college student loses court appeal

    HOUSTON — A Waco college student sent to death row for fatally shooting and robbing a fellow student nine years ago outside Bryan has lost an appeal at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, moving him a step closer to execution.

    Marcus Druery was condemned for killing 20-year-old Skyyler Browne on Halloween 2002. The now 31-year-old Druery and Browne both attended Texas State Technical College in Waco.

    They were among a group partying in Bryan and wound up at property belonging to Druery's family in rural Brazos County. Testimony at Druery's 2003 trial showed Browne was shot three times by Druery, who burned the victim's body and dumped it in a stock pond.

    Druery's attorneys argued unsuccessfully in his appeal that his trial lawyers were deficient and jury instructions were faulty.

    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...#ixzz1SlFW9Chj

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    In today's United States Supreme Court orders, Marcus Druery's petition for a writ of certiorari and motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis DENIED.

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    The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review appeals from two Texas death row inmates, including a man who suffocated a 2-year-old Utah girl on Christmas Day 1997 and buried her in a suitcase near Houston.

    Britt Ripkowski was condemned for the slaying of Dominque Frome. Evidence showed the child was murdered two days after her mother, Ripkowski’s ex-girlfriend, was killed and left in a field near the Utah-Colorado border. Riplowski also was charged with her death.

    In the second case, the high court refused the appeal of Marcus Druery. The Waco college student went to death row for fatally shooting and robbing a fellow student outside Bryan on Halloween 2002. Dreury and 20-year-old victim Skyyler Browne both were attending Texas State Technical College in Waco.

    Prosecutors oppose Jackson doctor’s bail bid.

    http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/...uery#post26201

  7. #7
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    As per the TDCJ an execution date of August 1, 2012 has been set for Marcus Druery.

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    Clayton mom to forgive son’s killer in Texas

    Although not a supporter of the death penalty, Sherrie Lackings is grateful to have found justice for her son, Skyyler Browne, pictured in a family collage.

    It was a crime so horrific that it would challenge the limits of any mother’s forgiveness.

    On Halloween 2002, Marcus Druery lured 20-year-old Skyyler Browne to a party at his family ranch in rural Brazos County, near College Station, Texas. Without warning Druery shot him point-blank in the head, throat and back, then poured gasoline on his body and set it on fire. Druery paid two stunned witnesses — his then-girlfriend, Joquisha Pitts, and a younger friend, Marcus Harris, $40 each to keep mum. Druery dumped the body in a stock pond on his family’s property.

    “But he couldn’t resist the urge to bring people to the pond where he buried Skyyler to show off his handiwork,” said Browne’s mother, Sherrie Lackings of Clayton. “It was like something out of a horror movie.”

    Browne was missing for two weeks before Pitts reported the crime. “He took so much,” Sherrie lamented. “There wasn’t even a body to bury, because it was too badly burned.”

    The past 10 years, for Sherrie, have been a journey from shock and overwhelming grief to healing and forgiveness. It is a journey that will culminate when the Lackings travel to Texas for Druery’s execution, slated for Aug. 1.

    “It’s the last thing I can do for Skyyler,” Sherrie said.

    Yet the couple’s journey is less about justice and more about the healing power of forgiveness and their Christian faith. In an unusual gesture, they hope to meet with Druery before his execution to offer him their forgiveness.

    “It’s important that he knows that before he dies,” Sherrie said.

    The couple has made the request through the victim/offender mediation dialogue program of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

    Spokesman Jason Clarkson said the process takes approximately six months if all parties choose to participate. “The intent is to facilitate the victims’ healing and recovery and to provide the offenders with the opportunity to take responsibility for their actions,” Clarkson explained.

    If Sherrie is not able to meet with Druery, she hopes to deliver a letter expressing her feelings.

    “There are questions I’ll always have — why take it that far, why kill him, and do you regret it?’” she said. “That’s what I’d like to ask him.”

    Observed Nelson, “It would be torture to have regrets that deep and not to be able to release them. He will never be able to talk to Skyyler and ask his forgiveness, so talking to his mother is the closest he’ll ever get to that.”

    Druery is one of 10 death row inmates scheduled to be executed in Texas this year; four have already taken place. Harris and Pitts were not charged in Skyyler’s murder because authorities said the pair was never involved with planning or committing the crime.

    Texas has put to death 481 inmates since capital punishment was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976 — vastly more than any other state and more than one-third of the 1,289 executed nationwide.

    Sherrie is not a proponent of the death penalty, but she observed, “He did it in Texas, and that’s the way they play in Texas. There’s no joy in it, but I’m grateful he was caught and punished. It could have haunted me the rest of my life that someone who did this was walking around and might do this to someone else’s child.”

    His mother recalled Browne as a “really fun, happy-go-lucky, quick-witted kid” who was studying fiber optic cable installation at Texas State Technical College in Waco, Texas, where Druery was a fellow student.

    “Skyyler made friends very easily,” Sherrie said. “His friends said the killer was watching him very closely and had seemed to befriend him.”

    Police said robbery was the motive; but Sherrie believes it went deeper: “I suspect this young man wanted attention, wanted to be popular, and snuffed Skyyler’s life out in an attempt to get what he had.”

    Her son was only 2 years old when Sherrie, a divorced young mother, dated Nelson for several years and became engaged to him. They broke up when Nelson decided to go into the ministry and Sherrie enlisted in the Army. She had been stationed in Korea for 45 days when word reached her of her son’s death.

    In 2007, Nelson — by then a divorced father of nine children — went looking for his former sweetheart only to learn of Browne’s murder. They bonded again instantly in their shared grief, and the blossoming relationship provided balm for Sherrie’s pain.

    “We talked on the phone for hours,” she recalled. “It was almost like we never lost touch.”

    They married in 2008, the same year that Sherrie retired from the Army. Yet it was only when she embraced her Christian faith more deeply that Sherrie’s burden began to be lifted.

    “Anything we are given is a gift from God, for any amount of time he deems proper, whether five seconds or 50 years,” she said. “I am grateful and thankful to have 20 years to enjoy this kid. After all, God gave his son for the whole world.”

    Nelson said, “The more she has grown in her walk in Christ, the more she has healed. She has grown so much, and I am so proud of her for that. By forgiving Marcus Druery, she has not allowed him to get away with two murders. You can’t live unless you forgive.”

    It is a lesson the couple cannot help ponder this Easter Sunday, as they prepare to perform one final task for their beloved Skyyler.

    “In the eyes of God, no acts of men preclude redemption,” Nelson said. “If God can redeem, then surely we can forgive.”

    http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/...s-1356633.html
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Judge warns lawyers that missed deadlines for Death Row inmate Marcus Druery

    With just a few weeks remaining until Marcus Druery’s execution date, Judge J.D. Langley last week gave a stern warning to lawyers of the death row inmate from Brazos County after they repeatedly missed deadlines the judge set for filing a motion arguing their client is incompetent.

    Druery, now 32, is scheduled to be executed on Aug. 1 for a capital murder conviction from 2003, when he was found guilty of killing 20-year-old Skkyler Browne on Oct. 30, 2002. He then robbed him of his cash, cellphone, pager and a plastic bag filled with what is thought to be marijuana before setting his body on fire to cover the crime.

    Inmates ruled to be incompetent at the time of their scheduled execution cannot receive the death penalty under federal law, but can be executed at a later date if they’re able to receive mental health treatment and assessed to be competent.

    During the hearing on Friday, Langley asked the two attorneys from the Texas Defender Services — Katherine Black and Greg Wiercioch — why they shouldn’t be removed from the case without compensation based on their inability to meet two deadlines that already had been extended.

    Druery’s attorneys argued that because they’d recently received more than 1,800 pages of documents they needed to review before filing the necessary motion, they hadn’t had enough time to prepare the document. But Langley questioned their reasons and asserted they were purposefully failing to meet his order to secure further delays in hopes of setting back the execution date.

    “Have you just totally ignored what I told you to do?” he asked the attorneys, adding that originally the state had argued for a May 1 execution date, but he extended it “for the defendant’s benefit to allow the court time to fairly and accurately review the competency issue.”

    Before deciding how to handle the situation — eventually, he extended the motion deadline again until July 11 — Langley gave Druery an opportunity to provide input on the matter.

    Despite advice from his lawyers, Druery did decide to go on record, but wasn’t addressing issues relevant to the day’s hearing and instead attempted to bring up matters from his 2003 trial.

    “I’m not guilty and I would like to take a lie detector test,” he said. “Medical records, a lie detector test, all that could’ve helped me before we got to this point.”

    Langley — who was patient with Druery as he tried to interrupt the judge several times to ask about trial evidence — explained to the shackled defendant that the appeals court had already upheld the guilty and death penalty ruling in his trial and Friday’s hearing was Druery’s chance to comment about the way his lawyers currently were handling the case.

    Langley also conferred with Druery’s father before making a decision to continue.

    “I just want to see two lawyers working on it,” the man said.

    He was sitting a few rows behind his son alongside six other family members and friends, including a man dressed in pastor’s clothing.

    After Langley’s scolding, Black assured the judge they’d be able to file the necessary documents by July 11.

    “Is that just another promise that’s going to be broken?” Langley asked Druery’s lawyers. “Because I really hate the idea of having to wonder if attorneys are telling me the truth.”

    Shortly after, Langley adjourned and Druery was transported back to Livingston’s Polunsky Unit, where he’s remained on death row for more than eight years.

    Monday, Stanley Lamar Griffin, 47, who was sentenced to the death penalty on the same day as Druery’s hearing last week, was processed and assigned his own cell on death row.

    Griffin and Druery are among four from Brazos County currently assigned to the Polunsky Unit.

    There, they spend 22 hours a day in a 60-square-foot cell with a small window, leaving only to shower and have about an hour of individual recreation time.

    http://www.theeagle.com/article/2012...9833/1003/BC01
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Lawyers argue Druery unfit for execution

    With 20 days remaining until his execution date, attorneys representing Marcus Druery, a 32-year-old Texas death row inmate from Bryan, filed a motion arguing their client is incompetent to be executed based on his inability to rationally understand his punishment.

    Druery was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2003 for the killing of 20-year-old Skyyler Browne on Halloween 2002.

    Jurors found Druery guilty of shooting Browne — who he’d met while attending Texas State Technical College in Waco — in the head and then taking his cellphone, cash, pager and a bag of marijuana. He then set Browne’s body on fire and dumped it in a lake on his family’s Brazos County ranch.

    Along with the incompetency motion, Druery’s lawyers — Kate Black and Greg Wiercioch with the Texas Defender Service — filed several other documents last week, including a motion to withdraw the execution date and a request for a competency hearing.

    The motions are set to be reviewed on July 24 by Judge J.D. Langley of the 85th District Court.

    In the 36-page document Black and Wiercioch submitted outlining why Druery is incompetent and therefore unfit for execution under federal law, the attorneys provided a timeline describing the deterioration of his mental health, which they argue started within a year of his arrival on Death Row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston.

    By January 2006, Druery was starting to hear things and in March 2009 he had a “psychotic break” that required him to be transferred to the psychiatric unit, according to the document.

    In November 2009, he was sent back to the psychiatric unit against his will where doctors determined he was suffering from “auditory hallucinations” and diagnosed him as schizophrenic.

    In reviewing prison staff records, Druery’s attorneys found examples of comments the inmate made that indicated he didn’t understand why he was on Death Row.

    For example, in December 2009, he told staff members he had refused to leave the visitation area because he “just wanted to go home for Christmas,” and a clinician determined that his comments “did not support the reality of his situation ... apparently he did not comprehend the reasons why he was restricted.”

    Other records revealed that at different points during his time on Death Row, Druery had reported that he believed his cell had been wired, his food was being contaminated, someone was trying to assassinate him and that his case had been reviewed and he had been found innocent.

    In January 2011, he was once again transferred to the psychiatric unit, where a medical staff member noted that when “asked if he was on Death Row, he said he was not sure,” according to the incompetency motion.

    Black and Wiercioch wrote that in May, Dr. Diane Mosnik, a neurospychologist who specializes in schizophrenia, interviewed Druery, administered a series of mental health tests and reviewed extensive records before diagnosing him with schizophrenia.

    “Because of his inflexible, psychotic and delusional interpretation of his circumstances, Mr. Druery does not have the capacity to rationally understand the connection between his crime and his punishment,” Mosnik wrote in her assessment of Druery. “Although [Druery] has a factual awareness that an execution date has been scheduled … he does not believe that he will be executed because of his illogical, fixed and firmly held delusional belief system.”

    If Judge Langley finds that Druery’s attorneys provided enough evidence to move forward with a competency hearing, two independent mental health experts will be hired to perform assessments that will be used to make a final determination on the competency issue.

    Doug Howell, first chair assistant district attorney, is handling the case for the state.

    http://www.theeagle.com/article/2012...9793/1003/BC01
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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