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Thread: James Edward Smith - Texas Execution - June 6, 1990

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    James Edward Smith - Texas Execution - June 6, 1990




    Summary of Offense: Convicted for the 1983 robbery-murder of Larry D. Rohus, 44, of Missouri City.

    Victim: Larry D. Rohus

    Time of Death: 12:31 a.m.

    Manner of execution: Lethal Injection

    Last Meal: Yogurt

    Final Statement: "I myself did not kill anyone," the 37-year-old former cab driver and tarot-card reader said during a lengthy final statement. "But I go to my death without begging for my life. I will not humiliate myself. I will let no man break me." He then smiled, winked and said, "Hare Krishna."

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    June 21, 1990

    Killer blasts mom's bid to block his execution

    HUNTSVILLE - The mother of a death row prisoner who insists on being executed asked a judge Wednesday to allow her to appeal her son's case.

    Alexine Hamilton, an Indiana schoolteacher, asked state District Judge Bill Harmon of Houston to allow her to file as a "next friend" on behalf of her son, James Smith. Claiming he is incompetent to waive his appeals, she asked to be allowed to appeal on his behalf despite the U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of a similar request two months ago.

    In a death row interview Wednesday, Smith insisted he be executed on schedule next week. The 37-year-old former voodoo priest, tarot card reader and Hare Krishna follower is under a death sentence for the 1983 robbery and murder of Larry Rohus, a Missouri City insurance agent. Smith was a cabdriver in Houston when he killed Rohus.

    After ruling earlier this year in an Arkansas case that there is no constitutional basis for petitions filed by third parties attempting to block another's execution, the Supreme Court refused to hear Hamilton's appeal on behalf of her son.

    Smith vowed there would be unspecified consequences if his mother or what he called "do-gooder" defense attorneys succeed in halting his execution a second time.

    He said he phoned his mother last month and told her he did not want her interfering on his behalf again.

    "I gave her a blast," he said. "I can't understand why, in seeking to save my life, she sought to destroy it in such a way.' Two years ago, living up to promises to reporters that he had "tales of horror" to tell if his mother blocked his execution, Smith claimed to have participated in six ritualistic killings around the country prior to his arrest in the Rohus slaying.

    Authorities in the communities where Smith had claimed the killings occurred said at the time they could not verify any such deaths, and Smith said Wednesday he had lied.

    He said when he protested his innocence in Rohus' death, he couldn't get "even a half paragraph" written about him, but when he made up stories, he made the front pages of newspapers all over the country.

    Smith said that because he does not think the way his mother and defense attorneys want him to, they think he's crazy.

    He called the legal system, which sometimes leaves inmates on death row more than a decade before their sentences are carried out, a "fallacy, sham, hypocrisy.' He said attorneys wasted his time and theirs when they succeed in blocking his May 1988 execution.

    "Time is all I have," he said. "I could already be 2 years old in another body, a 2-year-old prodigy.'

    http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/ar...id=1990_711231

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    June 23, 1990

    Plea for stay rejected

    HUNTSVILLE - The state's highest appeals court rejected a mother's request Friday that her son's execution be called off.

    With dissenting comment from only one judge, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the claim of Indianapolis schoolteacher Alexine Hamilton that her son, James Smith, is incompetent to waive further appeals of his case.

    Smith is scheduled to die early Tuesday for the 1983 murder of Missouri City resident Larry D. Rohus, who was shot to death during a robbery at his office.

    "Interlopers have no standing here, be it mothers or otherwise,"court administrator Rick Wetzel said.

    The court determined that Smith is competent to decide he wants his execution to be carried out as soon as possible.

    Judge Marvin O. Teague, however, said he thought the trial court should conduct a full hearing on the competency issue, although he acknowledged that the hearing probably would "only cause a slight delay.'

    http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/ar...id=1990_711679

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    June 25, 1990

    Mom has no legal stand

    HUNTSVILLE - A federal judge ruled Sunday that an Indiana schoolteacher has no legal footing to try to stop her son's execution, scheduled early Tuesday.

    U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt of Houston also said James Edward Smith, 37, condemned for the 1983 robbery-murder of insurance agent Larry D. Rohus, 44, of Missouri City, is competent to drop his appeals.

    Smith's mother, Alexine Hamilton, has asked the Supreme Court to allow her to intervene as a "next friend," claiming her son is incompetent to decide he wants to be executed.

    http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/ar...id=1990_711940

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    June 26, 1990

    Convicted killer's legal battle for right to die nears an end


    HUNTSVILLE - James Edward Smith, who has waged as strong a battle to die as others have fought to live, appeared headed for success Monday night.

    With his lethal injection set to be administered just after midnight, the 37-year-old convict was waiting to see whether he would clear one more hurdle in the U.S. Supreme Court.

    The prisoner's mother, Indianapolis schoolteacher Alexine Hamilton, has taken her plea for her son's life to the high court after lower courts found she had no legal basis for trying to block his death. The Supreme Court has already refused a previous request by Hamilton to intervene.

    Earlier Monday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans turned her away. Harris County prosecutors, in an effort to stave off a flurry of last-minute maneuvers aimed at getting Smith declared incompetent, brought him to Houston for a competency hearing.

    There, a psychiatrist re-examined him and found him competent to waive his appeals. He was then returned to Huntsville, where, prison officials said, he spent most of the day sleeping.

    Smith was sentenced to die for the 1983 robbery and shooting death of Houston insurance executive Larry D. Rohus, 44, a Missouri City resident.

    Smith, who says he views death "as an open door to someplace else," has been insisting for years that he be executed. "For me, the best avenue is not to prolong my involvement," he said last week.

    Prison officials said Smith ordered yogurt for his last meal. Before his previous scheduled execution date two years ago, he gained notoriety by ordering a lump of dirt.

    Prison officials denied that request, saying it wasn't on the prison menu, but Smith said later that he had meant to sprinkle the dirt on his body to keep evil spirits from trapping his soul in Huntsville.

    He is a former voodoo priest, tarot card reader and Hare Krishna devotee.

    Smith came within six hours of being executed in May 1988, but death penalty foes convinced his mother to try to block the execution.

    The Supreme Court stayed his execution then while it considered the case of an Arkansas prisoner, R. Gene Simmons, who also wanted to be executed. The court ruled earlier this year that prisoners may volunteer to be put to death.

    An unconventional and irreverent convict, Smith seemed to delight in shocking news reporters. Death might be an open door in one interview, and another time would be "like a prune - a natural function of life.' Death penalty foes, he said, are "a fallacy, sham, hypocrisy"who have "perpetrated a greater crime on inmates on death row.' He has described himself as "very standoffish, brutal and plain-spoken." And when a reporter recently asked him if he was too smart for his own good, Smith replied, "No. But I'm probably too smart for your good.' A strong believer in the metaphysical, Smith scoffed at those who could not understand his philosophy or at least acknowledge his right to think differently.

    In an affidavit he filed in 1988 to try to explain why he wanted to die, Smith quoted the decision of a judge in a 1979 case, in which a Nevada prisoner also was seeking to die: "To deny him that (freedom to choose) would be to incarcerate his spirit, the one thing that remains free and which the state need not and should not imprison.' The prosecutor who tried Smith has described him as the most evil man he ever prosecuted.

    Witnesses at his trial said he walked into Rohus' second-floor insurance office, pulled a .38-caliber pistol and demanded money.

    After the victim had handed him money from a cash drawer, Smith shot him in the chest. After Rohus fell to the floor, Smith shot him again.

    When Smith fled the building, employees and several construction workers chased him until he was cornered and subdued. During his trial, Smith bolted from the courtroom and several court employees chased him across downtown Houston before a police officer caught him.

    Rohus' widow, Deborah Rego of Charlotte, N.C., said she's ready to put the nightmare behind her.

    "I knew today was coming," she said. "You prepare yourself as best you can, but it is a time of stirring up old memories. The memories won't be put away until this is over.

    "Killing him won't solve everything, but he gave up his right to live when he pulled the trigger.' Rego, who has remarried, said if she could face Smith, she would ask him why he had to shoot her husband.

    "It's obvious it was not just for the robbery," she said. "He had his money and he probably could have just turned and ran and never been caught.' She acknowledged being bitter, not only toward Smith but toward defense attorneys who are trying to block his execution. She said if those attorneys ever stood in her shoes, they probably would think differently.

    "He had no right to come in and do what he did and change my life forever," she said. "My son was 1 year old, and he robbed him of the chance to ever know his dad.' Smith would be the third prisoner to be executed in Texas this year and the 36th since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983.

    http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/ar...id=1990_712064

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    June 26, 1990

    James Smith is put to death for `83 killing of Houston exec

    HUNTSVILLE - James Edward Smith got his wish today - he was executed for gunning down a Houston insurance agent he robbed in 1983.

    By the prisoner's way of describing it, he jumped ship and returned to the spiritual world. He wanted to make the leap two years ago, but his mother intervened in his case.

    The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Smith's execution by injection when it ruled late Monday night that his mother, Alexine Hamilton of Indianapolis, had no legal basis for trying to save his life.

    In the past five days, all levels of state and federal courts had said the same.

    Smith, 37, was the third Texas killer put to death this year and the 36th since Texas resumed capital punishment in 1983.

    Smith denied, later admitted and then again denied committing the robbery-murder of Larry D. Rohus, 44, of Missouri City. Yet he had insisted for years he be executed rather than linger on death row only to face the inevitable.

    Smith was pronounced dead at 12:31 a.m., about 12 minutes after the lethal injection was started.

    He repeated his assertion he had not killed Rohus. "I myself did not kill anyone, but I go to my death without begging for my life. I will not humiliate myself. I will let no man break me.' When the general populace wakes up to the realities of executions," he said, "they will realize that the price to pay is a dear one.' Then he smiled, winked and said, "Hare Krishna.' Smith labeled death penalty foes as "vultures waiting until the last minute to peck around the body" and said they had wasted his time by getting his execution stayed in 1988.

    Smith, who worked as a cabdriver in Houston, had also been a tarot-card dealer in New Orleans, a voodoo priest and Hare Krishna follower. A native of Jefferson, Ky., he was the third of 10 children and left home at age 17.

    He came within hours of being executed in May 1988, but death penalty foes convinced Hamilton to try to block the execution. The U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay while it considered a similar case in Arkansas.

    But two months ago, when it ruled in the Arkansas case that condemned prisoners may waive appeals and ask to be put to death, it refused to hear arguments in her case.

    Then late last week, Hamilton again asked the U.S. Supreme Court to find her son incompetent, although she acknowledged he had told her not to intervene.

    Assistant Attorney General Bill Zapalac said he thinks attorneys with the federally funded Texas Resource Center, which helps locate lawyers to represent death row prisoners on appeal and helped Hamilton, took an unusually strong interest in Smith's case.

    "I think they're a little bit afraid there will be more volunteers in the future, and unless they can get some law" that allows for third-party intervention, those executions will move through the appellate process rapidly, Zapalac said.

    An unconventional and irreverent convict, Smith seemed to delight in shocking news reporters. Death might be an open door in one interview, and another time would be "like a prune - a natural function of life.' Death penalty foes, he said, are "a fallacy, sham, hypocrisy"who have "perpetrated a greater crime on inmates on death row.' A strong believer in the metaphysical, Smith scoffed at those who could not understand his philosophy or at least acknowledge his right to think differently.

    In an affidavit he filed in 1988 to try to explain why he wanted to die, Smith quoted the decision of a judge in a 1979 case, in which a Nevada prisoner also was seeking to die: "To deny him that (freedom to choose) would be to incarcerate his spirit, the one thing that remains free and which the state need not and should not imprison.' The prosecutor who tried Smith has described him as the most evil man he ever prosecuted.

    Witnesses at his trial said Smith walked into Rohus' second-floor insurance office, pulled a .38-caliber pistol and demanded money.

    After the victim had handed him money from a cash drawer, Smith shot him in the chest. After Rohus fell to the floor, Smith shot him again.

    When Smith fled the building, employees and several construction workers chased him until he was cornered and subdued. During his trial, Smith bolted from the courtroom and several court employees chased him across downtown Houston before a police officer caught him.

    Rohus' widow, Deborah Rego of Charlotte, N.C., said she was ready to put the nightmare behind her.

    "I knew today was coming," she said. "You prepare yourself as best you can, but it is a time of stirring up old memories. The memories won't be put away until this is over.

    "Killing him won't solve everything, but he gave up his right to live when he pulled the trigger.' Rego, who has remarried, said that if she could face Smith, she would ask him why he had to shoot her husband.

    "It's obvious it was not just for the robbery," she said. "He had his money and he probably could have just turned and ran and never been caught.' She acknowledged being bitter, not only toward Smith but toward defense attorneys who tried to block his execution.

    "He had no right to come in and do what he did and change my life forever," she said.

    http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/ar...id=1990_712065

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    June 27, 1990

    Killer executed despite OK to review case

    HUNTSVILLE - James Edward Smith was executed early Tuesday after an unusual U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found enough support to review the inmate's case but not enough to halt the execution.

    "For the first time in recent memory, a man will be executed after the court has decided to hear his claim," wrote Justice William J. Brennan Jr. in his five-page dissent.

    Court rules allowed the execution to proceed, despite the justice's belief there was sufficient doubt about Smith's mental competency to waive his appeals.

    It takes four votes to have a case reviewed by the court but five votes to grant a stay. Thus, when the court voted 5-4 just before midnight to deny a stay, Justices Thurgood Marshall, Harry A. Blackmun, John Paul Stevens and Brennan were one vote shy of halting the proceedings.

    While Marshall concurred with Brennan in his dissent, Blackmun and Stevens agreed only to the extent that the court should outline procedures to determine whether an inmate is competent to decide against appeals.

    Smith was pronounced dead at 12:31 a.m., about 12 minutes after he began receiving a lethal injection for the 1983 robbery-murder of Larry D. Rohus, 44, of Missouri City.

    Rohus, who was married and had a 1-year-old son, was at work at Union National Life Insurance Co. in Houston when Smith walked into the office March 7, 1983, with a gun and demanded money.

    Rohus handed over several thousand dollars in cash and checks in a plastic bag. Witnesses said after he pleaded for his life, he was ordered to step forward and was shot once in the chest. He fell to the floor and was shot again.

    Smith insisted for years that he wanted to be executed. He has specifically criticized his mother's attempt to appeal on his behalf and called anti-death penalty lawyers "vultures" and "do-gooders.' Though the inmate claimed to be innocent of the murder, an office clerk testified that she saw Smith kill Rohus. Several construction workers also testified that they chased Smith from Rohus' office to a nearby apartment complex, where they held him until police arrived.

    "I myself did not kill anyone," the 37-year-old former cab driver and tarot-card reader said during a lengthy final statement. "But I go to my death without begging for my life. I will not humiliate myself. I will let no man break me.' He then smiled, winked and said, "Hare Krishna.' Smith claimed to have been a former follower of the Hare Krishna belief, as well as a former voodoo priest.

    Smith was the third Texas prisoner to be executed this year, the sixth to volunteer to be put to death and the 36th since Texas resumed capital punishment in 1983.

    His mother, Alexine Hamilton of Indianapolis, had asked the Supreme Court to stay the execution and review her claims that her son was incompetent.

    Ray Donely of Austin, an attorney representing Smith's mother, said Tuesday the state's original claims that psychiatrists had found Smith competent were based on a 15-minute jail cell interview and that the psychiatrist said the prison was so noisy it was difficult even to hear what Smith was saying.

    When the court vacated Smith's stay in April, Donely said, the state rushed the prisoner into court for another hastily called competency hearing. Had the state wanted to conduct a fair hearing, he said, it would have acknowledged the mother's concerns and notified her of the hearing.

    In his dissent, Brennan criticized what he termed "dubious procedures" that the state followed in getting the inmate declared competent and said the court needed to establish procedures for lower courts to follow when a prisoner asks to be put to death.

    He said the state's hearing into Smith's competency "seems to have been little more than a non-adversarial, "ex parte" chat among the trial judge, the prosecutor and Smith.' Smith was brought to Harris County for a short competency hearing Monday after his mother questioned the adequacy of previous psychiatric exams.

    A review of the transcript would show that state District Judge William C. Harmon was very concerned with Smith's rights, said Assistant Attorney General Bob Walt, who represented Attorney General Jim Mattox at the execution.

    In the May competency hearing Harmon told Smith, "If it's left up to me, I intend to find the most qualified lawyer I can to represent you on appeal.' Citing Smith's 1972 hospitalization in a Naval hospital for psychiatric evaluation and a decision that found him innocent by reason of insanity in a 1978 Florida robbery, Brennan said, "Whether Smith is competent to waive his right to appeal may be a complex, fact-intensive question.' Walt acknowledged that "a lot of what Brennan states are matters of the record," but he said the justice was acting as any advocate would, picking those portions of the case that support his beliefs.

    Brennan also wrote that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals erred by adopting state court findings because the state's hearing was "procedurally inadequate." Smith's mother should have been notified of the hearing, and attorneys should have been available for cross-examination, he said.

    http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/ar...id=1990_712066

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