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Thread: Barney Ronald Fuller, Jr. - Texas Execution - October 5, 2016

  1. #11
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    MEDIA ADVISORY

    Wednesday, October 5

    Barney Ronald Fuller, Jr. Scheduled for Execution

    AUSTIN – Pursuant to an order of the 349th Judicial District Court of Houston County, Fuller is scheduled for execution after 6:00 p.m. on October 5, 2016.

    On July 21, 2004, the 349th Judicial District Court of Houston County, Texas entered a judgment of conviction against him for capital murder and sentenced him to death.

    FACTS OF THE CASE

    Fuller was known to fire weapons on his rural property. A dispute arose with the Copelands over Fuller’s alleged shooting of their electric transformer. The dispute escalated when Fuller called Annette and told her over the telephone, “Happy New Year, I’m going to kill you.” Fuller was then charged with making a terroristic threat. Fuller was notified of the charge by letter on May 13, 2003. At approximately 1:30 the next morning, he went on a shooting rampage at the Copelands’ home, killing Nathan and Annette, wounding their fifteen-year-old son Cody in the shoulder, and unsuccessfully searching for their eleven-year-old daughter Courtney. Later that morning, Fuller called 9-1-1, confessed to the crime, and told the operator that he would turn himself over to police, which he did.

    PROCEDURAL HISTORY

    In July of 2004, Fuller pleaded guilty to capital murder. Following a hearing on punishment, the 349th Judicial District Court of Houston County sentenced him to death based on the jury’s answers to the special issue.

    The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence on direct appeal in a published opinion on April 30, 2008.

    On January 12, 2009, the Supreme Court denied his petition for a writ of certiorari.

    The Court of Criminal Appeals denied his initial state application for writ of habeas corpus on January 14, 2015.

    Fuller initiated federal habeas proceedings on January 28, 2015.

    Despite his last filing, Fuller filed a motion seeking to waive his proceeding in federal district court on December 1, 2015.

    The court held a hearing to determine Fuller’s competency to waive on May 24, 2016 and, based on testimony from an independently appointed psychologist and Fuller himself, the court granted Fuller’s motion to waive his federal habeas proceedings and dismissed his petition. Fuller elected not to appeal this final order and judgment.

    The 349th Judicial District Court of Houston County, Texas entered an Execution Order and issued a Death Warrant setting Fuller’s execution for October 5, 2016 after 6:00 p.m.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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  2. #12
    Member Member SoonerSaint's Avatar
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    The court held a hearing to determine Fuller’s competency to waive on May 24, 2016 and, based on testimony from an independently appointed psychologist and Fuller himself, the court granted Fuller’s motion to waive his federal habeas proceedings and dismissed his petition. Fuller elected not to appeal this final order and judgment.

    This one should actually happen tonight.
    "It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them".--Alfred Adler

  3. #13
    Senior Member Member nmiller855's Avatar
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    I hope so. I am tired of the stays.

  4. #14
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Execution of Man Who Killed Neighbors First in Months

    Six months after the Texas death chamber held its last execution, Barney Ronald Fuller Jr. was put to death by lethal injection Wednesday for the 2003 shooting deaths of his neighbors in rural East Texas.

    Fuller's execution broke the longest gap between executions in Texas since 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court was considering the constitutionality of lethal injection. It also marks the first time Houston County hasput someone to death since the penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976.

    Laid out in the Texas death chamber with an IV in his arm, Fuller declined to give a last statement. At 6:23 p.m., a lethal dose of pentobarbital started running through his veins, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He was pronounced dead at 7:01 p.m.

    Fuller, 58, was sentenced to death for killing Annette and Nathan Copeland, his neighbors on the outskirts of Lovelady, a small town with around 600 residents at the time about 100 miles north of Houston. In the early morning of May 14, 2003, he fired into their home with an assault rifle before breaking in and killing them both with a pistol, according to court documents.

    “We got a call in the middle of the night that our family had been murdered,” said Ona Presto, Annette's older sister who became guardian of the Copelands’ two children.

    The tension between the neighbors began several years earlier. In 2001, Fuller was charged with making terroristic threats against the Copelands after he allegedly shot and damaged their electric transformer, then threatened them when they called the sheriff’s office, according to testimony from the sentencing trial. The Copelands called deputies to their home several other times claiming Fuller was firing weapons, but no action was ever taken.

    On May 13, 2003, more than two years after charges were filed, Fuller received a letter from the Houston County courthouse about his upcoming trial, sending him into a rage, according to testimony from Fuller’s wife, Linda. He drank through the day and night and eventually sent Linda and their children from the house.

    At around 1:30 a.m., he walked the 200 yards to the Copeland’s home and fired 60 rounds into the house with an assault rifle, according to court documents. He then broke down the back door, and first went into the bedroom of the Copeland’s 10-year-old daughter, but left when he couldn’t turn on her light. He went into the master bedroom and fatally shot both Nathan, 43, and Annette, 39, with a pistol before heading to their son’s room. Cody, 14, was shot twice in the shoulder, but survived.

    During the initial gunfire, Annette managed to crawl into the bathroom to call 911. During the call, the operator heard a man say, “Party’s over, bitch” before hearing pops, then silence, according to court testimony.

    “It’s just a heinous crime,” said Randy Hargrove, an investigator for the Houston County District Attorney’s Office and former sheriff deputy who worked the crime scene in 2003. “The man doesn’t need to be on this earth.”

    Fuller was arrested at his home several hours later, and pleaded guilty to the murders in court. After a sentencing trial, the jury handed down the death penalty.

    Hargrove said he couldn’t remember another case in Houston County where the death penalty was pursued. Fuller’s was the first execution from the county on record, and no other current death row inmates were sentenced by the county. Hargrove said he believes the death penalty was right for Fuller but hopes there will be no future cases.

    “It’s really sad for both families,” Hargrove said, adding that he feels for Fuller's mother as well as the Copelands. “But you reap what you sow. If you plant corn, you don’t harvest peas ... That’s just the way it is.”

    Presto has always believed the death penalty was the right punishment for her sister’s killer, she said.

    “I do believe that God made this determination, and that he is getting justice done for what he did to two innocent people,” she said.

    Fuller’s direct appeal was denied by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and U.S. Supreme Court, and the one other appeal he filed was also denied. Among the appellate claims was his incompetence to stand trial or enter a guilty plea because he acted irrationally and removed himself from the courtroom for most of the jury selection process and trial.

    Fuller waived all further review of his case in May, according to his lawyer, Jason Cassel. The execution on Wednesday evening was the seventh of the year. Two other executions are scheduled for 2016.

    Presto, along with her sister and the Copelands' two children, planned to witness the execution in Huntsville, though she said beforehand she didn’t know what to expect.

    “I don’t know if this is our answer or not,” Presto said of the execution. “We’re hoping to see a closure once this has all happened.”

    https://www.texastribune.org/2016/10...man-who-kille/
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

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  6. #16
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    I love you!!
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  7. #17
    Awwwww, thanks Heidi!

  8. #18
    Senior Member CnCP Legend FFM's Avatar
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    One less thug on our death row.

    NEXT IN LINE PLEASE!

  9. #19
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Texas killer Barney Fuller Jr., who asked to be executed, is put to death

    HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- An East Texas man who pleaded guilty to killing a neighbor couple during a shooting rampage 13 years ago and said he wanted to be put to death for the crime was executed Wednesday evening.

    Barney Fuller Jr., 58, had asked that all his appeals be dropped to expedite his death sentence.

    Fuller never made eye contact in the death chamber with witnesses, who included the two children of the slain couple.

    Asked by Warden James Jones if he had any final statement, Fuller responded: “I don’t have anything to say. You can proceed on, Warden Jones.”

    Fuller took a deep breath as Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials injected a lethal dose of pentobarbital into each arm, then blurted out: “Hey, you fixin’ to put me to sleep.”

    He took a couple of breaths, then began snoring. Within 30 seconds, all movement stopped.

    Fuller was pronounced dead 38 minutes later, at 7:01 p.m. CDT. The time between when the drug was injected and when he was pronounced dead was somewhat longer than normal.

    “Each person is unique in how his body shuts down,” prison agency spokesman Jason Clark said, explaining the extended time.

    Fuller became the seventh convicted killer executed this year in Texas and the first in six months in the nation’s most active capital punishment state.

    Fuller surrendered peacefully at his home outside Lovelady, about 100 miles north of Houston, after a middle-of-the-night shooting frenzy in May 2003 that left his neighbors, Nathan Copeland, 43, and Copeland’s wife, Annette, 39, dead inside their rural home. The couple’s 14-year-old son survived two gunshot wounds, and their 10-year-old daughter escaped injury because Fuller couldn’t turn the light on in her bedroom.

    Court records show Fuller, armed with a shotgun, a semi-automatic carbine and a pistol, fired 59 shots before barging into the Copeland home and opening fire again. He had been charged with making a threatening phone call to Annette Copeland, and the neighbors had been engaged in a 2-year dispute over that.

    The Reuters news agency reports the gun was an AR-15 assault weapon and that the Copelands had also complained to police that Fuller had shot their dog, according to court documents.

    Fuller pleaded guilty to capital murder. He declined to appear in court at his July 2004 trial and asked that the trial’s punishment phase go on without his presence. He only entered the courtroom when jurors returned with his sentence.

    Last year, Fuller asked that nothing be done to prolong his time on death row.

    “I do not want to go on living in this hellhole,” he wrote to attorney Jason Cassel.

    A federal judge in June ruled Fuller competent to drop his appeals after he testified at a hearing that he was “ready to move on.”

    Fuller had irritated neighbors with his frequent gunfire and was summoned to court in 2003 to address a charge that he made a threatening phone call two years earlier after complaints he shot out an electrical transformer providing power to the Copelands’ home.

    “Happy New Year,” he told Annette Copeland in the Jan. 1, 2001, call. “I’m going to kill you.”

    William House, one of Fuller’s trial lawyers, said Fuller thought when he got a court notice “that they were stirring up some more stuff and he just kind of twisted off.”

    Court records showed he seethed over the court appearance and began drinking. Two nights later, he grabbed his guns and extra ammunition clips and went to the Copelands’ home about 200 yards away.

    House described Fuller as “just a strange bird” who was “very adamant” about not attending his own murder trial.

    “I think we did everything we were supposed to and did the best we could but didn’t have a whole lot to work with,” House said.

    A sheriff’s department dispatcher who took Annette Copeland’s 911 call about 1:30 a.m. on May 14, 2003, heard a man say: “Party’s over, bitch,” followed by a popping sound. Annette Copeland was found with three bullet wounds to her head.

    On Wednesday evening, one of her sisters who watched Fuller die said as she left the death chamber: “Party’s over, bastard.”

    Cindy Garner, the former Houston County district attorney who prosecuted Fuller, described him as mean and without remorse.

    “It’s not a cheerful situation,” she said of the execution. “I just regret that this little, plain, country, nice, sweet family - bless their heart - moved in next door.”

    Fuller’s execution was only the 16th in the U.S. this year, a downturn fueled by fewer death sentences overall, courts halting scheduled executions for additional reviews, and some death penalty states encountering difficulties obtaining drugs for lethal injections.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-ki...-put-to-death/

  10. #20
    Senior Member Frequent Poster joe_con's Avatar
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    Death Sentence Order and Crime Info

    Fuller.pdf

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