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Thread: Richard Lee Tabler - Texas Death Row

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    Richard Lee Tabler - Texas Death Row




    Facts of the Crime:

    On November 26, 2004, in Bell County, Tabler and a co-defendant drove up next to a car driven by two men of foreign nationality, Mohamed Amine Rahmouni and Haitham Zayed. Tabler shot one of the men once in the head and the other twice in the neck with a .45 Ruger, fatally wounding one of the victims. Reports also indicate that Tabler had the co-defendant videotape the last shot fired.

    Tabler was sentenced to death in Bell County in April 2007.

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    December 2, 2008

    Death Row Inmate Pleads for Execution Date

    A convicted murderer sentenced to death says he doesn't want to wait to die.

    Death row inmate Richard Lee Tabler appeared before a Bell County judge Tuesday, asking to waive his appeals and volunteered for execution.

    Tabler, 30, of Killeen asked Judge Martha Trudo to drop his appeals as he requested his execution date.

    Tabler made the same request in a letter that he wrote to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in August.

    He begins the letter with, "Greetings and peace be unto you."

    The letter continues, "I'd like to waive my rights to habeus corpus proceeding and volunteer for execution...I wish to drop my appeals and get an execution date."

    Tabler was convicted of capital murder in March 2007.

    The inmate was found guilty in the shooting deaths of 4 people, 2 men and 2 teenage girls, during Thanksgiving weekend in 2004.

    (Source: KXXV News)

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    January 11, 2009

    Death row inmate seeks to expedite execution

    Richard Tabler is on death row for the murder of two men, and is accused to making threating cell phone calls from prison. A man who wants to be put to death won't have his way – just yet. Richard Tabler is on death row for killing four people in Bell County in 2004 and has repeatedly asked for his appeal to be waived so his execution could proceed.

    But Appeals Attorney Karl Krug says Tabler won’t get his way until 2 proceedings take place. One of those, a jury trial, is already over. But the Court of Criminal Appeals is currently deciding the case.

    "So whether he wants to get executed right now is irrelevant," Krug said.

    Tabler has used multiple tactics to help seal his own fate. One of the most widely publicized was when he used a smuggled cell phone from inside his prison cell to call a State Senator from Houston, John Whitmire, to make threats against Whitmire's family. The incident prompted Governor Rick Perry to order a lockdown of all state prisons.

    "The object of those calls is not to intimidate these people, the point is to get himself executed as quickly as possible," Krug said.

    He has also written multiple letters to the court system in order to waive his appeals processes, as well as threatened several lawyers.

    Krug says she is not expediting a death sentence for her client faster than what Constitutional Rights allow. "It's not my job to get people killed. It's my job to make sure their constitutional rights are observed," says Krug. "It's not about what he wants, it's about what society as a whole wants."

    The case has been briefed and argued, and now Tabler's fate is up to the Criminal Court of appeals to decide. Once a decision is made, a death warrant could be issued for Tabler, and an execution would take place soon after that.

    Attorney Karyl Krug expects that a decision will be made and the execution would proceed from there. Tabler will have the right to change his mind and proceed with the appeals process as normal.

    (Source: KEYE News)

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    January 23, 2009

    HOUSTON — A Texas death row inmate at the center of a monthslong investigation of cell phone smuggling within the prison system has been moved to a psychiatric unit after apparently trying to kill himself a second time, an official said Friday.

    Condemned murderer Richard Tabler was moved from death row earlier this week after cutting his arms, Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said.

    In an interview aired this week on Austin television station KEYE, Tabler accused an officer of smuggling the cell phone that was discovered in his prison cell in October after he made a threatening call to state Sen. John Whitmire. It was among some 2,800 calls records show were traced to the phone and prompted a lockdown of the nation's second-largest corrections system for weeks while officers combed 111 prisons for contraband.

    More than 100 phones, 100 phone chargers and nearly 200 weapons were confiscated in the sweep. Other phones and phone components have been discovered since.

    In the TV interview, Tabler complained officials were not trying to find officers he said were involved in smuggling operation.

    John Moriarty, the inspector general for the 155,000-inmate prison system, denied that accusation Friday.

    "In the cases we are investigating on death row there has been no evidence to indicate that an employee is involved," he said.

    Moriarty said investigators were focusing on the families of inmates and inmate trusties as the source of the phones and the phone deliveries. Trusties do jobs around prisons like garbage collection, maintenance and laundry work and have greater freedom to move within the units.

    The use of cell phones, prohibited in prisons, already had been under investigation in Texas and other corrections departments around the nation when Tabler's calls to Whitmire prompted Gov. Rick Perry to order the lockdown.

    Moriarty said Friday that over the past 12 months, investigators have asked for 1,000 subpoenas for phone records to track the use of the phones in prison. He told the Temple Daily Telegram the investigation of Tabler's phone indicates Tabler borrowed the phone from another inmate.

    Tabler was not available for interviews this week on death row at the Polunsky Unit outside Livingston because prison officials considered him a security threat, then he was moved to the Jester psychiatric unit. Last October, after his phone was confiscated, he was taken to the same psychiatric hospital outside Houston after officers found he'd ripped a 3-foot piece of bedsheet, attached it to a light fixture in his death row cell and had red marks around his neck in an apparent attempt to hang himself.

    Tabler, 29, from Killeen, was convicted in 2007 of fatally shooting Mohamed-Amine Rahmouni, 25, and Haitham Zayed, 28. He also confessed to killing Tiffany Dotson, 18, and Amber Benefield, 16. All four had ties to a Killeen strip club.

    He recently told his trial judge he wanted appeals waived so he could be put to death.

    District Judge Martha Trudo told the Temple newspaper she received a letter from Tabler two weeks ago asking for an execution date and indicating he would continue to seek an execution date even though the mandatory appeal of his conviction before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has not yet been completed.

    The judge said she's forwarded the letter to the appeals court.

    "Until the appellate court speaks, I don't set an execution date," she said.

    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6226929.html

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    On December 16, 2009, Tabler's direct appeal was denied by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

    Opinion is here:

    http://www.cca.courts.state.tx.us/OP...PINIONID=19083

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    December 16, 2009

    Texas inmate who used smuggled phone loses appeal

    A Texas death row inmate whose threatening calls to a state senator a year ago prompted a lockdown of state prisons and crackdown on contraband throughout the nation's second-largest corrections system lost an appeal of his conviction and death sentence for the slayings of two men in 2004.

    The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Wednesday rejected six claims from Richard Lee Tabler that he was improperly convicted and sentenced to die for gunning down Mohammed-Amine Rahmouni, 28, and Haitham Zayed, 25, at a remote area in Killeen, not far from Fort Hood, on Thanksgiving weekend five years ago.

    Evidence showed Rahmouni was manager of a strip club who had banned Tabler from his place. Zayed was a friend of Rahmouni.

    Tabler, 40, also has acknowledged killing two dancers from the club.

    In his mandatory appeal to the state's highest criminal appeals court, Tabler raised six claims from his April 2007 trial in Killeen. The challenges, all rejected by the court, including claims that his death sentence was unconstitutional because he is mentally ill, that the prosecutor's closing argument at the trial's punishment phase were improper and his lawyer was deficient in not objecting to the arguments and that the trial judge mistakenly refused to allow the jury to consider the shootings were in self-defense. The appeals court also rejected a claim that Tabler's statements to police about details of the slayings were the result of an illegal arrest and the trial judge should have barred them.

    Evidence showed Tabler lured Rahmouni, a native of Morocco, and Zayed to a dead-end street near an entrance to Fort Hood under the guise of buying stolen property and killed them. The men were found dead in their cars.

    According to testimony, Tabler shot both men while an accomplice, former Fort Hood soldier Timothy Payne, held a camera and videotaped the shootings. Tabler told them Payne helped him look for money and other valuables on the bodies. Payne gave a similar statement, police said.

    Tabler then lured two dancers — Tiffany Loraine Dotson, 18, and Amanda Benefield, 16 — to a rural area with the promise of crack cocaine, then killed both with multiple gunshots to the head and body, police said.

    He has not been tried for their slayings.

    Payne, from Neosho, Mo., was tried separately after Tabler and received a life prison term. Bell County prosecutors did not seek death in his case.

    At his trial, Payne's attorneys described Tabler as a criminal mastermind who planned every element of the murders and tried to pin them on Payne.

    Last October, Tabler was caught in his death row cell at a prison near Livingston using a smuggled phone. Records showed he and nine other inmates used the phone to make 2,800 calls over 30 days. Among the calls from Tabler were some to Texas Sen. John Whitmire, telling him he knew the names and ages of Whitmire's daughters and where they lived. Whitmire is chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.

    The subsequent lockdown of the state's 111 prisons and search of the cells of some 155,000 prisoners turned up dozens of contraband phones, tobacco products, weapons and money.

    Tabler also has been the focus of an investigation after an Internet posting from him on a Web site dedicated to death row inmates and their cases again threatened Whitmire and his family.

    (Source: The Houston Chronicle)

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    Execution date set for May 20, 2010 per TDCJ website, but stay issued to resume appeals.

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    New Tabler letter: An apology from death row

    Richard Tabler, the Texas death row convict whose antics with a smuggled cell phone 2 years ago threatened to kill a state senator and spurred a statewide security crackdown on contraband, now says he's sorry.

    Reason: The condemned killer of 2 men says he's gotten religion.

    In a new letter to the Austin American-Statesman, Tabler admits he "did something pretty stupid" in using a smuggled cell phone to call state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, and then sending a written threat to have Whitmire murdered after the lawmaker got Tabler busted for calling him on a smuggled cell phone in Octover 2008.

    Tabler, 31, is facing execution for the November 2004 deaths of 2 men who were shot execution-style outside Killeen, in what police characterized as a hate-motivated crime against foreign-born victims. Authorities said Tabler confessed to killing 2 other people, as well.

    "I'd like to say sorry, sorry for the problems I've caused and the terror I put in your state senator," the handwritten, 2-page letter states. "It was all just plain dumb and I ask your forgiveness, please.

    "As I think back on that that October day of 2008, it makes me sick! But, since then, I've gotten my life on the right track with God. I'm currently waiting for an execution date and felt strongly that an apology was in order before I was taken from this time.

    "So, if you're reading this, Senator Whitmire, Mike Ward and the people of Texas, I ask that you please accept my sincere apology. Thank you and God bless."

    The letter was arrived Thursday in the mail to American-Statesman Editor Fred Zipp. Tabler also had also talked on the smuggled cell phone and threatened to kill this reporter.

    Reached in Houston, Whitmire said this morning he had no response to the new letter. "But I wonder how his letter got out, about our (prison) security, since his correspondence was supposed to be cut off after the earlier threats," he said.

    (Source: The Austin American-Statesman)

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    Umm OK......

    Central Texas Death Row Inmate Tells Judge He Wants To Die Now

    Texas death row inmate Richard Tabler, who’s awaiting execution for the shooting deaths of a Killeen nightclub owner and another man, told U.S. District Judge Walter Smith during a competency hearing Wednesday in Waco he wants to die now.

    Smith granted Tabler a stay of execution in February 2010, two weeks after a May 2010 execution date was set.

    Tabler said in a May 2010 letter to the judge that he didn’t want the stay.

    “I was very angry was given a stay of execution,” Tabler wrote in the letter.

    “This is not something I wanted nor did I ask for it.”

    Read Richard Tabler’s Letter To The Judge

    Tabler’s use of a smuggled cell phone to make a threatening call to State Sen. Jon Whitmire in October 2008 prompted a lockdown of the entire Texas prison system and led to a sweep of prisons that uncovered hundreds of illegal phones, phone equipment and weapons.

    Tabler said Wednesday that since that incident, he’s been mistreated.

    “If I’m going to be treated like an animal you might as well execute me,” he told the judge Wednesday.

    Smith said he would review the appeal and said the process wouldn’t be lengthy.

    Tabler apologized for the letter, but appeared unhappy with Smith’s decision.

    Tabler was sentenced to death in 2007 for the 2004 shooting deaths of Teazers Gentlemen’s Club owner Mohamed-Amine Rahmouni, 25, and his friend Haitham Zayed, 28.

    The bodies of the two men were found dumped outside of Killeen.

    Tabler and an accomplice used a video camera to record tape of Tabler shooting Rahmouni and Zayed, witnesses said, but the tape was later destroyed.

    Tabler was also charged in the murders of Teazer’s dancer Tiffany Dotson, 18, and Amber Benefield, 16, whose bodies were found just south of Highway 190.

    The shootings were part of what Bell County authorities described as a bizarre plot that targeted the four victims and eight or nine more people.

    In December, in a letter sent to the Austin American-Statesman, Tabler said he’s found religion and is now sorry for the killings, saying he "did something pretty stupid."

    In the two-page handwritten letter to the newspaper, Tabler said he's "gotten my life on the right track with God" and asked state Sen. John Whitmire, a Statesman reporter he also threatened and "the people of Texas" to "please accept my sincere apology."

    http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/C...127970023.html

  10. #10
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    I think Tabler may be the most hated among Texas DR inmates...not public hate, but hate from his fellow convicts. I would also bet that he has lost all financial support from his family and penpals due to the trouble that he put them through. I imagine he has it very, very rough right now. That said, he is an attention whore. He loves getting his name in the paper and speaking with journalists and judges. One thing is for sure though, I do not believe ANYTHING that he says.

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