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Thread: Stephen A. McCoy - Texas Execution - May 24, 1989

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    Stephen A. McCoy - Texas Execution - May 24, 1989






    Summary of Offense: Convicted for the 1981 New Year's Day slaying of a Houston teen-ager killed as a sign of loyalty among three murderers.

    Victim: Cynthia Darlene Johnson

    Time of Death: 12:25 a.m.

    Manner of execution: Lethal Injection

    Last Meal: Cheeseburger, french fries and strawberry milk shake

    Final Statement: This offender declined to make a last statement.

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    May 24, 1989

    McCoy put to death for teen's `81 slaying

    HUNTSVILLE - A Houston electrician was executed today for the 1981 New Year's Day slaying of a Houston teen-ager killed as a sign of loyalty among three murderers.

    Stephen A. McCoy, 40, was the second man put to death in Texas this year and the 31st since executions were resumed in 1982.

    McCoy nodded to his personal witnesses as they entered the death chamber and smiled faintly but made no final statement. He coughed five times, breathed a deep sigh and closed his eyes as the lethal injection began. He was pronounced dead at 12:25 a.m.

    McCoy was executed for the rape-strangulation of Cynthia Darlene Johnson, 18, a cafeteria worker whose family lived in Conroe. Johnson was abducted after her car broke down on a Houston freeway as she headed home from a New Year's Eve party.

    The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 Tuesday to reject McCoy's appeals, with Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Thurgood Marshall, William J. Brennan and John Paul Stevens dissenting.

    McCoy was notified of the court's decision about 4:30 p.m. and responded, "Thank you," said Texas Department of Corrections spokesman Charles Brown.

    McCoy's personal execution witnesses were his mother, Frankie McCoy; brother-in-law, Earl Hailey; a friend, Samuel Jarell; his attorney, Karen Zellars; and the Rev. Donald R. Webb.

    Johnson would have celebrated her 27th birthday Monday, but George Lambright, who prosecuted McCoy, said there was no significance to the execution date falling so close to his victim's birthday.

    Johnson's mother, Mevis Johnson, had declined to be interviewed but issued a statement through Lambright. "If he is executed, then justice will have been done."

    McCoy was being transported from the Ellis I Unit to a holding cell outside the execution chamber at the Huntsville "Walls" Unit when the high court issued its decision.

    He spent Tuesday pacing in his cell, watching television, exercising in the recreation yard and chatting with officers and James Paster, 43, one of two co-defendants, said TDC spokesman Dana Hudgins. He also met with his mother, sister, brother-in-law and a minister.

    Authorities said that on New Year's Eve, Johnson left her job at a cafeteria and headed home to change clothes for partying. She was seen later at a southeast Houston lounge but left about 10 p.m. in her 1979 Mustang and drove to the Copa Club at Richmond and Kirby.

    She left shortly after midnight and apparently wrecked her car in the 8600 block of the Gulf Freeway.

    Court records indicate McCoy, Paster and Gary LeBlanc, 42, were returning from Louisiana when they saw Johnson stranded.

    The men took their women companions home and returned to Johnson's car, offering to help her. She was taken, instead, to a warehouse where the three kept stolen goods.

    There, McCoy and Paster raped Johnson, then McCoy held her legs while the others strangled her with an electrical cord, LeBlanc testified. He said the other two laughed at him when he was unable to participate.

    To ensure her death, Paster then drove a nail up her nose with a hammer, so disfiguring her face that Johnson's mother could not identify pictures of her at the trial, court records indicate.

    McCoy's ex-wife, Gaynor, who provided information that led to the three arrests, testified that the day after the killing, she was in the car with the three men on an errand to buy groceries. She testified that Paster joked that the car was riding low because "a dead weight" was in the trunk, then drove to a field on Carsondale in southeast Houston and, with the help of the other men, dumped the body.

    She said she feared that if she reported the crime, her children would be killed, but she later called her brother, a Travis County sheriff's detective, with facts about the death.

    "This case should make your skin crawl," Lambright said when he asked jurors to convict McCoy and sentence him to die.

    Although it was 3 1/2 years before McCoy was tried for Johnson's murder, jurors returned a guilty verdict in a record 13 minutes in July 1984. McCoy was in TDC serving a five-year sentence for burglary when he was charged with capital murder in the case.

    "If we have the death penalty law, this certainly is one that fits within it, according to all the statutes and the facts," state District Judge Miron Love, who presided over McCoy's trial, said Tuesday.

    McCoy, however, had insisted he was in another room when Johnson was slain.

    Paster, awaiting death for another slaying, received a life sentence in the Johnson killing after pleading guilty. Last month, he was caught with another death row inmate in an escape attempt.

    LeBlanc, who testified for the state, received a 35-year term.

    The death pact among McCoy, Paster and LeBlanc stemmed from the 1980 murder-for-hire of Robert Edward Howard, 38, of Houston.

    McCoy and LeBlanc, court testimony indicates, saw Paster shoot Howard in the head outside a club in the 11560 block of the Gulf Freeway. To ensure their loyalty, Paster insisted that McCoy and LeBlanc also kill someone in his presence, according to testimony.

    McCoy and Paster also claimed to have killed Diane Trevino Oliver, 27, of Houston in November 1980, but neither was tried in that case.

    http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/ar...id=1989_625513

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