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Thread: Leon Rutherford King - Texas Execution - March 22, 1989

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    Leon Rutherford King - Texas Execution - March 22, 1989




    Summary of Offense: Convicted for beating to death a Baytown man he had robbed of $11.50 in 1978.

    Victim: Michael Underwood

    Time of Death: 12:27 a.m.

    Manner of execution: Lethal Injection

    Last Meal: Declined last meal

    Final Statement: "I would like to tell Mr. Richard that I appreciate all he has done for me. I love you all. God bless. Goodbye, David."

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    March 22, 1989

    Murderer executed in Huntsville

    HUNTSVILLE - Leon Rutherford King, a 44-year-old former brickmason, was executed early today for beating to death a Baytown man he had robbed of $11.50 in 1978.

    Despite last-minute appeals filed by attorneys on King's behalf, the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday night refused to block King's death by lethal injection.

    King was pronounced dead at 12:27 a.m., 12 minutes after the injection began. There were no technical problems during the procedure.

    "I appreciate what you have done for me," King told a witness, Richard Wall, just before the execution.

    King was twice convicted of murdering Michael Clayton Underwood, 26, a telephone company lineman whose skull was smashed with a shotgun butt after he and a young woman were abducted outside a Montrose-area nightclub on April 10, 1978.

    The high court's 5-4 denial of King's request for a stay came about 10 p.m.

    Justices Thurgood Marshall, William J. Brennan Jr., John Paul Stevens and Harry Blackmun voted to stay the execution. Marshall and Brennan said it was "unconscionable" not to do so when the executions of four other Texas inmates were blocked on similar grounds pending the court's decision on the constitutionality of the Texas death penalty law.

    Earlier Tuesday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. District Judge Simeon "Sim" Lake also rejected King's appeal.

    King, a high school dropout, is the first person to be executed in Texas this year and the 30th since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. The last execution in Texas was in December, when Raymond Landry was put to death for the 1982 robbery and murder of a Houston restaurant owner.

    Robert McGlasson, director of the Texas Resource Center, a legal aid clinic for death row inmates, had asked the high court to block King's execution because defense attorneys had never presented mitigating evidence at either of King's trials.

    On the night of the killing, Underwood and his 19-year-old date had left Theodore's club in the 300 block of Avondale. King and his accomplice, Allen Ray Carter, then 16, abducted the couple at gunpoint.

    The couple was driven to a remote area near Hermann Park where King, angered because Underwood and his companion had only $11.50 between them, struck Underwood with the butt of a shotgun until the victim's head split open.

    King and Carter spent the next five hours raping and sodomizing Underwood's girlfriend, a former Baytown waitress who became the state's key witness at their trials.

    The woman testified at King's trial that Carter had forced Underwood to lie on his stomach on the ground, handed the shotgun to King and said, "He's ready."

    She also testified that King "lifted the shotgun over his head and hit Michael. It sounded like chopping wood. Allen Carter was smiling. I started crying, and he kept laughing."

    A medical examiner who testified at King's trial said Underwood's injuries were the worst she had ever seen.

    King's first conviction was overturned after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the girlfriend's name should have been in King's indictment.

    During the sentencing phase of his second trial in 1980, King told jurors, "You've found me guilty of one of the brutalest murders in Houston. If a man is found guilty of that kind of murder, he deserves the death penalty. That's what I'm asking you to give me."

    King had prior convictions for burglary, forgery and drug possession. His attorneys contended he had brain damage.

    Carter, King's accomplice, was also convicted of capital murder in Underwood's death, but because he was a juvenile at the time, he could not be sentenced to death. Carter, now 27, is serving a life sentence in prison.

    After King's second trial, prosecutors said Underwood's girlfriend collapsed from the strain of having to relive the details of her ordeal at the trials. She required therapy for at least two years and was hospitalized at the conclusion of the trial, prosecutors said.

    King, who refused to be interviewed by reporters during the weeks preceding his death date, was described as a well-liked convict.

    "He's just one of the guys," said fellow inmate James Beathard. "He's got a lot of friends on death row and if he goes, it's going to make a lot of people feel bad."

    Beathard, 32, was convicted of capital murder in connection with the 1984 slaying of a Trinity County couple and their son.

    http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/ar...id=1989_611300

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