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Thread: Patrick Wade Bearup - Arizona Death Row

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    Patrick Wade Bearup - Arizona Death Row




    Facts of the Crime:

    On the evening of February 26, 2002, Bearup, Sean Gaines, Jessica Nelson and Jeremy Johnson beat and shot Mark Mathes, 41.

    Nelson was living at the Mathes residence when she realized she was missing about $600 and suspected Mathes had stolen it from her. Allegedly, Nelson informed Gaines of her suspicions about Mathes and Gaines instructed her to call him when Mathes returned home.

    When Mathes returned home, Nelson invited him to have a beer with her and hang out in the back patio. At this point she said she called Gaines and told him Mathes was home. Shortly after, reports say Gaines, along with Bearup and Johnson arrived at the Mathes residence armed with a baseball bat and a shotgun.

    They beat Mathes "unmercifully," and put him in the trunk of their car and drove to the Crown King area north of Phoenix. Mathes' finger was cut off, he was shot twice and thrown off a cliff. Gaines, Johnson and Nelson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and kidnapping charges. Gaines was sentenced to 25 years in prison, while both Johnson and Nelson got 14-year sentences.

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    No. 09-8673 *** CAPITAL CASE ***
    Title:
    Patrick Wade Bearup, Petitioner
    v.
    Arizona
    Docketed: January 21, 2010
    Linked with 09A538
    Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Arizona
    Case Nos.: (CR-07-0048)
    Decision Date: July 17, 2009
    Rehearing Denied: August 20, 2009

    ~~~Date~~~ ~~~~~~~Proceedings and Orders~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Nov 12 2009 Application (09A538) to extend the time to file a petition for a writ of certiorari from November 18, 2009 to January 17, 2010, submitted to Justice Kennedy.
    Dec 7 2009 Application (09A538) granted by Justice Kennedy extending the time to file until January 18, 2010.
    Jan 19 2010 Petition for a writ of certiorari and motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis filed. (Response due February 22, 2010)
    Feb 16 2010 Order extending time to file response to petition to and including March 24, 2010.
    Mar 24 2010 Brief of respondent Arizona in opposition filed.
    Apr 1 2010 Reply of petitioner Patrick Wade Bearup filed.
    Apr 8 2010 DISTRIBUTED for Conference of April 23, 2010.
    Apr 26 2010 Petition DENIED.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.a...es/09-8673.htm

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    Roberts: Arizona death row inmate prays for pardon

    By Laurie Roberts
    The Arizona Republic

    He sits there on death row, never having actually killed anybody.

    Meanwhile, the murderer – one of two men he was with that gruesome night – will someday go free. Maybe someday soon.

    Patrick Bearup says he has faith in the justice system, the one that has marked him for execution. He’s asked the state Board of Executive Clemency to recommend that he be pardoned in the 2002 murder of Mark Mathes.

    “I believe that people will see that this is an act of God versus anything else,” Bearup told me. “I know I am in a right-wing state. I’m a right-wing conservative myself. It’s an uphill battle but I believe in justice and I believe that Gov. (Doug) Ducey and the board will see that there is some merit to what I’m asking.”

    Bearup, 38, is the first death-row inmate in Arizona ever to seek a pardon. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for the guy, who insists he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But something's not right here.

    In February 2002, Bearup was one of three men who went to Mathes’ Phoenix home to confront him about $200 in missing money that belonged to Mathes’ roommate, Jessica Nelson.

    According to prosecutors’ theory of the case, the three men surrounded Mathes on the patio and Jeremy Johnson proceeded to beat him with an aluminum baseball bat, hitting him in the head and upper body as many as 25 times. Johnson and Bearup then dragged him to a car and stuffed him into the trunk.

    The men and Nelson drove to a remote spot near Crown King where testimony indicated Bearup cut off Mathes’ finger to retrieve a ring for Nelson. Mathes was thrown over the guardrail into a ravine, then shot twice by Gaines.

    It’s not known whether the beating or the shooting killed Mathes, whose body was found a year later by hunters.

    What is known: this case has a odor to it. Eau de payback, perhaps?

    All three men and Nelson were charged with first-degree murder and then-Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas announced his office would seek the death penalty.

    Then he doled out three plea bargains.

    Johnson along with Nelson, who instigated the confrontation, got deals to second-degree murder and kidnapping and were sentenced to 14 years. Gaines pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and got 25 years.

    Bearup, meanwhile, was never offered a plea deal.

    Put another way, prosecutors wanted death for the man who didn’t kill anyone while offering leniency to the men who did and to the woman who set up the attack.

    It’s worth noting that Bearup’s father, Tom, was a major thorn in the side of Thomas’ cohort, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Bearup was Arpaio’s top aide until 1997, when they had a falling out. Arpaio has said Bearup was incompetent. Bearup says he refused to help cover up the 1996 death of jail inmate Scott Norberg. Norberg died after being beaten and tied into a restraint chair -- a case that eventually cost the county $8.25 million.

    Bearup ran against Arpaio in 2000 and again in 2004, while his son was in jail awaiting trial.

    The elder Bearup believes there’s an easy explanation for why his son, who had a prior conviction for aggravated assault, wasn’t offered a deal.

    "It’s retaliation against me and that’s the most difficult thing that I’ve had to deal with,” Tom Bearup told me. “He’s there (on death row) because of me. I had the audacity to stand up against these people in the beginning. Everything I said at that time is coming out with Judge (Murray) Snow now: the cover ups and going after people. Laurie, this is ludicrous in America. But it happened.”

    As a condition of their plea deals, both Johnson and Nelson testified against Bearup. After being found guilty of first-degree murder and kidnapping in 2007, Bearup opted not to offer any defense to counter prosecutors’ push for a death sentence.

    Given that, jurors had little choice but to decree that Bearup should die.

    Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Warren Granville, in sentencing Bearup to 12 years for the kidnapping conviction, was disturbed enough to rebuke Thomas. A death sentence, Granville wrote, was “not justified in the context of the relative responsibility of the co-defendants”. But there was nothing he could do.

    “It is County Attorney’s motto that ‘let justice be done.’ This, of course coincides with a prosecutor’s unique ethical responsibility,” Granville wrote. “This Court finds that justice was not done for Mr. Bearup.”

    The Supreme Court let Bearup’s death sentence stand, noting that although he didn’t kill Mathes, he was a “major participant” in the crime.

    Bearup, who was ordained as a minister last year, is appealing to the Board of Executive Clemency for a pardon on the murder conviction. The board has scheduled a Tuesday hearing. If the board agrees, it would be up to Ducey to make the call.

    “I just pray that God opens that door,” Bearup told me. “One way or another it’s in his hands. Even if he calls me to stay in here, I know that I’m going to walk out faithfully what he has for me.”

    It’s hard to envision a pardon. Yet I wonder …

    Gaines, the man who shot Mathes, could be out by 2025.

    Nelson and Johnson, the man who beat Mathes to death or nearly so with a baseball bat, will be out in September 2017.

    … Are we really willing to execute the man who didn’t kill anybody while the actual killer walks free?

    http://www.azcentral.com/story/opini...rdon/75252040/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    On October 3, 2016, Bearup filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ar...v03357/1001982

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    Lawyer: 4 Arizona death row inmates test positive for virus

    Four death row prisoners have tested positive for the coronavirus and another five are showing symptoms at the Arizona prison with the most confirmed cases, a defense attorney told The Associated Press. One of the ill inmates says he and the others are being isolated in a dirty, cockroach-infested building.

    The first case on death row surfaced last week at the prison complex in Florence, which accounts for 22 of the 34 infections in Arizona prisons. Three other condemned prisoners have since tested positive, said Dale Baich, who leads death penalty appeals in the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Arizona.

    It’s unknown whether the five death row prisoners with symptoms have been tested. The Florence prison houses nearly 3,600 people, including the 114 men in Arizona who have been sentenced to die.

    “We are very concerned about their health and welfare — and that people who may have symptoms are not being tested,” Baich said.

    Corrections officials didn’t answer questions from the AP about how many death row prisoners have tested positive for COVID-19 and whether the five with symptoms had been tested. They also have declined to say whether any prisoners who tested positive for the virus have died.

    Many prisons, jails and detention centers across the United States are experiencing outbreaks of the virus, including nearly 4,000 prisoners who fell ill in Ohio. Those facilities are believed to be vulnerable spots for the spread of the coronavirus because inmates with compromised health live in close quarters.

    In Arizona, the first death row prisoner to test positive was Patrick Bearup. Baich declined to reveal the identities of the three others.

    In a brief phone interview Monday with the AP, Bearup said he and several other prisoners with confirmed cases were quarantined in a filthy, roach-infested building at the complex in Florence.

    Bearup, who has been sick for two weeks, said he was achy, nauseous and so physically weak that he was unable to get out of bed that day.

    “This is the sickest I have been in my life,” he said, noting that his hands shook as he held the phone.

    Bearup, who was convicted of killing 40-year-old Mark Mathes in 2002, said corrections officials weren't prepared to deal with the sick prisoners.

    He said they weren’t being given adequate supplies to clean cells and the quality of the water in the quarantine area where he is housed made him want to vomit. Bearup, who has asthma, was being treated with a nebulizer device, which administers medication to the lungs.

    Previously, corrections officials said they were separating prisoners with flu-like symptoms from the general prison population, providing soap for cleaning housing areas and good hygiene, and waiving a $4 medical copayment that prisoners must pay for receiving treatment for cold and flu symptoms.

    Lawyers who represent prisoners in a lawsuit over the quality of health care have described in court records what they said were unsanitary conditions during a March 11-12 visit at the Florence complex, saying medically fragile prisoners were crowded in dirty and unventilated dorms and tents. The attorneys asserted that corrections officials didn’t have an adequate plan for confronting the virus.

    The Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry disputed the characterizations of the conditions at the Florence prison and its preparedness for the pandemic.

    Of the state’s nearly 42,000 prisoners, the state has said 6,600 are considered medically vulnerable because of their health and being at least 60.

    Bearup, who is 43, got choked up when considering the fate of older prisoners in poor health.

    “Prisoners’ lives still matter,” Bearup said. “There are a lot of men in here in my community — I get what we are in here for. I get there’s crime and punishment, but this is not the punishment that was assigned to them.”

    Overall, Arizona has more than 5,700 confirmed cases of the virus, with 249 deaths.

    For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness and death. The vast majority of people recover.

    https://kvoa.com/ap-arizona-news/202...ive-for-virus/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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