Summary of Offense:
On June 21, 2000, in Montgomery County, Texas, Green kidnapped Christina LeAnn Neal, 12, from a private residence. Green took the child to his home where he killed her by strangling her to death. The child had also been sexually assaulted. Green buried the victim in his backyard, then dug up the body and placed it inside his home behind a chair.
Green was sentenced to death in July 2002.
Christina Neal
Picture stolen from urbangrounds.com
Thanks Robby!
Green was denied a COA in the 2/27/09 5th Circuit orders/opinions.
Opinion is here:
http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions...0006.0.wpd.pdf
Article 6/17/10
Girl's Family Looks to Execution for Justice
HOUSTON - A Montgomery County family is as close as they've ever come to seeing their daughter's killer put to death, but the end may be further than they hope.
Dobbin is a place where some memories are so haunting it seems a community would rather forget them. A small, hidden cross off Highway 105 bears the name Christina Neal, and behind the name is a still grieving mom and dad waiting for justice ten years later.
"Christina didn't have any rights. When he murdered her, raped her and kidnapped her, she had no rights. She was only 12-years-old. She never hurt anybody," said Laura Neal, Christina's mother. Christina's brief life plays out in three scrapbooks. "She always liked to play basketball and football," said Laura Neal.
But the written record has a dark side, one that makes Christina's family reluctant to turn the page. There are newspaper clippings from the day she went missing on June 21, 2000 until the day she was found dead. "It was like somebody done ripped your heart plum out of you. That was the hardest news I ever got," said Victor Neal, Christina's father.
On a summer night in 2000, Christina stormed out of a friend's house after getting into a fight with her sister. "She never showed back up. It's hard because I could have walked home with her, and maybe she still would have been here. I think about that everyday," said Victoria Neal, Christina's sister.
"Our office received a call about a girl missing from her home, and that girl was Christina Neal," said Lt. Dan Norris, Montgomery County Sheriff's Office. The search dragged on for 30 days. At first, investigators believed Christina was a runaway. Then, searchers found the little girl's glasses, underwear and jewelry on the side of the road. A tip led investigators to a squalid shack a quarter mile away.
"Somebody had called in a tip that Jonathan Green had been over there burning trash. He had a burn pile over there burning trash everyday since the little girl came up missing," said Laura Neal. Turns out their neighbor, Jonathan Green, had buried Christina's body then dug up her remains and stored them inside the shack. An autopsy revealed Christina had been raped and strangled to death. She was 12. "I often wonder, 'Was she screaming? Was she hollering for her mom and dad? Was she even able to?'" said Laura Neal.
In 2002 a jury convicted Green of capital murder and sentenced him to die. His execution date has been set for June 30th, but the Neal family worries his life might be spared.
"I think he's seriously mentally ill," said James Rytting, Green's appellate attorney. "I don't think he understands the connection between what he did and why he's in prison. He's in complete denial," adds Rytting. Rytting doesn't dispute Green killed Christina, but in a last ditch effort he's trying to stop the execution. Rytting plans to ask the court for a psychiatric evaluation. "It's very hard to get stays. It's hard to convince the court. You have to do your work and you're obliged to do it," said Rytting. Green has already lived 30 years longer than Christina.
"They'll be a lot of times throughout the year I'll think I can't do this, but I have to. I have to see her murderer die," said Laura Neal.
(Source: AP)
Article 6/23/10
Media Advisory: Jonathan Green scheduled for execution
AUSTIN – Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott offers the following information about Jonathan Marcus Green, who is scheduled to be executed after 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 30, 2010. Green was sentenced to death for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl in Montgomery County.
FACTS OF THE CRIME
On the evening of June 21, 2000, 12-year-old Christina Neal disappeared after leaving a friend’s home in the small community of Dobbin, TX.
The girl’s family began looking for her the next day, after determining that she had not stayed overnight at a friend’s house. Christina’s glasses were found along a road near the Neal home. The glasses were “smashed and broken.”
On June 23, the girl’s father, Victor Neal, asked his sister to look for Christina while he was at work. Christina had run away before, so Victor told his sister to report her as a runaway if she could not find her. Later that day, having failed to locate Christina, the sister reported her missing to a Montgomery County Sheriff's deputy. Officers then joined the family in searching for Christina.
On June 26, the FBI joined in the search. Christina's panties were found at the edge of the woods across from the Neal home, and Christina's bracelet and necklace were found along a pathway in the woods.
On June 28, investigators spoke with Jonathan Green, who also lived in Dobbin, because his wallet was discovered in the vicinity of Christina’s disappearance. Green said he had no information concerning Christina's disappearance, and that he was either at home or at his neighbor's house on the night she disappeared. He gave investigators permission to search his home and property, with the condition that he be present. Investigators performed a cursory search of the house and property, but they noticed nothing significant.
On July 19, a man who lived on the property behind Green's, told investigators that Green had an unusually large fire in his burn pile the day after Christina disappeared. A few days later, investigators went to Green's home and asked if they could search his property again, including his burn pile. Green again consented, but insisted that he be present during the search. An FBI agent smelled a distinct odor emanating from a disturbed section of ground which he identified as “some sort of decaying body.” The investigation team then began to dig up the disturbed area. Green, who had been cooperative up to that point, became angry and told the officers to get off his property.
The investigative team returned to Green's property later that night with a search warrant. They discovered that part of the burn pile had been excavated, leaving what appeared to be a shallow grave. They also smelled the “extremely foul, fetid odor” of a “dead body in a decaying state.”
An officer then arrived with a “cadaver dog,” trained to detect human remains. The dog repeatedly went to the side of a recliner in the house. An FBI agent looked behind the recliner and found human remains in a bag that were identified as Christina’s. An autopsy concluded that Christina was sexually assaulted and then strangled.
During the course of the autopsy, various materials were recovered from Christina's body.
DNA testing on black hairs found on Christina’s body indicated a higher probability the hairs came from Green.
A Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab criminalist testified that many of the fibers recovered from Christina's body matched fiber samples seized from Green's property and residence. On the panties that were recovered near the Neal home five days after Christina had disappeared and nearly a month before her body was found, investigators found a fiber that had characteristics identical to carpet in Green's residence.
PROCEDURAL HISTORY
• The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Green’s conviction on Dec. 17, 2004.
• On March 6, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari review.
• On March 23, 2005, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals adopted the findings and conclusions of the trial court and denied Green’s application for state habeas relief.
• On Feb, 15, 2008, a U.S. district court denied Green’s federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
• On February 27, 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied a certificate of appealability.
• On October 5, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari review of this decision.
• No litigation is currently pending.
PRIOR CRIMINAL HISTORY
Green had a misdemeanor conviction for unlawfully carrying a weapon.
The State also presented evidence of Green's history of violent behavior:
• A woman testified that Green raped her about four years before he was tried for the capital murder of the 12-year-old girl.
•
• Another woman testified that in July 1999, Green entered her home without permission, jumped on top of her, and demanded that she have sex with him. The woman said she tried to defend herself, but Green forced himself on her. The woman also testified about another time when Green tried to rape her. However, on that occasion, she was armed with a pocket knife and was able to fend him off.
• Green was linked to the stabbing death of a pony that was stolen in January 2000 from a pasture in Dobbin. The pony was tied to a tree and stabbed to death. A bloody pair of shears and a bloody broken butcher knife were laying near the pony's carcass. Green admitted that the shears were his but claimed that they had been stolen a few weeks earlier. However, the only print recovered from the shears matched Green's left middle finger.
Green also displayed increasingly violent behavior while he was incarcerated in the Montgomery County Jail:
• On the morning of September 9, 2000, Green threatened to assault an officer for taking a toothbrush and a bowl of food from him.
• On February 5, 2001, Green threatened a fellow inmate asserting that he “would make his heart stop.”
• On another occasion, Green threatened a deputy because he would not give him a second glass of juice.
• On July 26, 2001, Green assaulted and robbed another inmate.
• On March 13, 2002, Green assaulted an officer in the jail.
http://www.oag.state.tx.us/oagNews/release.php?id=3364
Article 6/27/10
Texas is set to send two men to the execution chamber on consecutive nights this week for murders committed in Montgomery County a decade ago.
Barring successful last-minute appeals, Jonathan Green will be executed on Wednesday and Michael Perry will be executed on Thursday.
Perry, 28, claims the confession he gave authorities was beaten out of him or otherwise coerced while he was in a drugged-out stupor. He said he could not have had a role in the death of a woman he was accused of shooting in October 2001 for a simple reason: He was in jail at the time.
"The whole case is a joke and I'm about to be murdered because of it," Perry said in a recent death row interview. "I did not cause the death of anyone. I know that I'm innocent. If the people helping me can see it, why can't the DA and courts see it?"
Green, who did not agree to an interview, was found guilty of abducting, raping and strangling a 12-year-old girl in June 2000. Those working to save him insist he is borderline mentally retarded and also suffers from schizophrenia. They claim his mental illness has become so severe that he is not competent to be executed.
"There have been signs of mental illness since he's been on death row," said appellate attorney James Rytting, who will present evidence to halt the execution at a court hearing today in Conroe. "He hears voices, and he has shoved wads of toilet paper in his ear to stop them."
Mental health experts for the defense and prosecution have differing opinions on Green's competence. Prosecutors also point to a recent letter Green sent to Mongomery DA Brett Ligon outlining his complaints about his trial and the case against him as evidence of his rational state. The law requires that an inmate have a rational understanding of why he is being executed in order for it to take place. The question of whether Green does is the lone remaining legal issue, Rytting said. Mental illness per se is not a bar to execution.
Mother: 'He needs to die'
Green was convicted in the death of Christina LeAnn Neal, who disappeared while walking home in the rural community of Dobbin on June 21, 2000. A onetime star running back for Montgomery High School, Green was accused of grabbing the girl shortly after she left a friend's house that was about 100 yards away from his residence.
Authorities looking into the disappearance learned that Green had burned a pile of trash on his property after the girl's abduction. When investigators began to probe the area around the burned trash, Green ordered them off his property.
They returned shortly with a search warrant, saw a freshly dug hole near the old trash pile and began a thorough search of the premises. Neal's body was found in a gray blanket stuffed into a laundry bag behind a chair in his home.
"Justice needs to be served and he needs to die," said Laurie Neal, Christina's mother. "He knew what he was doing. He went across the highway and grabbed Christina. She wasn't more than 200 yards from home. For somebody to do all that — to grab her, bury her behind his house, then burn trash on top of it and almost get away with the perfect murder - that's not a crazy person."
Neal described her slain daughter as a typical 12-year-old, a "sweet child" who would never hurt anyone.
"She liked the simple things," her mother said. "She liked playing basketball, she liked horses and animals, she liked cooking with me on holidays. We just had a memorial service for her. It's been 10 long years since she died. It was just like somebody ripped our heart out. Our family is not complete. It will never be complete."
Perry confessed to authorities that he killed 50-year-old Sandra Stotler in her home in the Bentwater subdivision near Conroe on Oct. 24, 2001, then later recanted. He claims he was in jail on an unrelated traffic charge at the time that the state's medical examiner pinpointed the time of death - Oct. 26 - and thus could not be the killer. He blames his former friend and co-defendant, Jason Aaron Burkett, for the shotgun shooting of Stotler and later Stotler's son, Adam, and Adam's friend, Jeremy Richardson.
'Slip of the tongue'
The issue is a red herring, said Bill Delmore, an appellate specialist with the Montgomery County District Attorney's office. He said the forensic evidence did not place an upper limit on how long Sandra Stotler, whose body was found in a nearby lake on Oct. 27, had been dead.
"He started off testifying she had been dead at least 24-36 hours," Delmore said. "He dropped the 'at least.' It was an inadvertent slip of the tongue. They took that and ran with it, but their argument was completely rejected by the courts. There is a ton of evidence corrorborating the timeline set out in Perry's confession."
Delmore said neither Perry nor his lawyers have a credible explanation for why he was seen driving her car on Oct. 24, why she did not show up for work the next day or was ever heard from again, or why he bonded out of jail on the traffic charges by using Adam Stotler's identity.
"I remain absolutely convinced of Perry's guilt," Delmore said. "He was seen driving her car that night, Wednesday the 24th. The following day he showed the car to a fellow that ran a tattoo shop and said that he had killed somebody."
Perry's lawyers claim Burkett, convicted of capital murder in the boys' deaths and sentenced to life in prison, was also behind the woman's murder and brought the car to Perry. They produced an affidavit from a jail inmate who claimed Burkett had bragged to him that he had killed all three. Perry and Burkett were arrested following a car chase and shootout on Oct. 30.
"There's no doubt he was making bad decisions at the time," said appeals lawyer Jessica Mederson. "It does not mean he was guilty of murdering someone."
Mederson and her co-counsel, David Woodcock, said Perry's confession, which they claim is false, has colored his trial and appeals to the point that none of the evidence or conflicts they have raised have been taken seriously.
For his part, Perry acknowledges that his life was "out of control" at the time. He admits years of erratic behavior and rampant substance abuse that inflicted misery on his parents, and claims that an undiagnosed bipolar disorder may have been behind it. Prison was the best thing that happened to him, he said, except that it will end with what he insists is an unjustified execution.
(Source: Houston Chronicle)
Article 6/30/10
Execution of Texan on death row is halted
Jonathan Marcus Green received a stay of execution from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals today, hours before he was to be put to death for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old Montgomery County girl.
The state’s highest court for criminal appeals stopped the execution after a telephone conference about four hours before Green was to enter the execution chamber. The court ordered the stay so that his mental competency can be further explored. Green’s attorney claims that he suffers from schizophrenia and no longer meets the criteria set forth by law to be eligible for execution.
The law requires that a condemned person have a rational understanding of the reason he is being put to death. A 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Texas inmate Scott Panetti declared that an inmate’s literal understanding that he is being put to death following his conviction for a particular crime may not be protection enough to halt the killing of clearly delusional individuals.
Green, 42, was convicted in the death of Christina LeAnn Neal, who disappeared while walking home in the rural community of Dobbin, near Lake Conroe, on June 21, 2000. He raped and strangled her, then buried her body in his back yard. Investigators struggled to solve Neal’s disappearance until a tip led them to Green’s property, where he had been seen burning trash shortly after she was reported missing. While authorities left to get a search warrant, Green dug up the body and placed it in his home, where it was found inside a laundry bag.
(Source: Houston Chronicle)
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Article 7/1/10
Just hours away from lethal injection, Jonathan Marcus Green received a stay from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Wednesday so that it can further consider the question of his competence to be executed.
The state's highest court for criminal matters stopped the execution following a telephone conference about four hours before Green was to enter the execution chamber. It then issued orders suggesting it was uncertain over the review of his mental competency.
Two sets of orders
One order was procedural, asking attorneys for Green and the state to file briefs within 15 days addressing whether his claim can be properly pursued in the habeas corpus petition filed this week on his behalf. A second order asks the district court judge who denied his incompetency claim at a hearing Monday in Conroe to clarify the standards she applied in doing so.
The court gave no indication it was inclined to rule that Green was incompetent. If it does, he would remain in limbo on death row. Should it find him eligible for execution, a new date would have to be set by the trial court judge.
Condemned for the June 2000 rape and murder of a 12-year-old Montgomery County girl, the 42-year-old Green suffers from schizophrenia for which he receives no medication. His attorney claims his mental state has deteriorated to the point where he no longer meets the legal criteria for execution.
Convicted in girl's death
The law requires that a condemned person have a rational understanding of the reason he is being put to death. A 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Texas inmate Scott Panetti declared that an inmate's literal understanding that he is being put to death following his conviction for a particular crime may not be protection enough to halt the killing of clearly delusional individuals. Both sides have produced reports from medical experts supporting their positions.
Green was convicted in the death of Christina LeAnn Neal, who disappeared while walking home in the rural community of Dobbin, near Lake Conroe, on June 21, 2000. He raped and strangled her, then buried her body in his back yard.
For a month, investigators struggled to solve Neal's disappearance. Then a tip led them to Green's property, where he had been seen burning trash shortly after she was reported missing. While authorities left to get a search warrant, Green dug up the body and placed it in his home, where it was found inside a laundry bag behind a sofa.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...n/7088189.html
Here is the TCCA order concerning Green:
http://www.cca.courts.state.tx.us/OP...PINIONID=19880
JONATHAN MARCUS GREEN v THE STATE OF TEXAS
In today's orders, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals lifted Johnson's June 30, 2010 stay of execution.
A uniformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.
I see the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals lifted the stay of execution for Jonathan Marcus Green. Almost as baffling as the crime itself (the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl), is the fact that it took her family 2 days to report her missing...
All criminals turn preachers under the gallows.
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