John B. Nixon, a 77-year-old white man, is scheduled to be executed in Mississippi on Dec. 14, 2005 for the murder-for-hire of Virginia Tucker in Rankin County. The man convicted of hiring Nixon received a life sentence while Nixon received a death sentence -- possibly because of the incompetence of his trial attorneys.
One major reason that Nixon’s lawyers were ineffective is that they were overburdened. They were beginning another death penalty case after Nixon’s; while attempting to represent Nixon they were investigating their next case. One way of handling both cases at the same time involved counsel assuming that Nixon would not be convicted of capital murder. In any murder case this is a dangerous assumption for the defense counsel to make. Representing two death penalty clients so close together also caused Nixon’s trial counsel to rush into his penalty phase of trial unnecessarily. Because they had another trial to begin they did not accept the court’s offer of time to prepare for Nixon’s penalty phase. Clearly, the fact that Nixon’s counsel was working on two death penalty cases had an affect on Nixon’s level of representation. In fact a different panel of federal judges found that the other man that Nixon’s counsel was representing had suffered constitutionally ineffective counsel.
Trial counsel also failed to present a lot of important mitigating evidence. They failed to tell the jury about certain heroic acts that Nixon performed during his life. For example, Nixon once rescued a boy from drowning in a flooded irrigation ditch. He also pulled a woman from the burning wreckage of a plane crash (this was the one compelling piece of evidence counsel did have, but Nixon -- having lost all trust in counsel after being assured he would not be convicted of a capital crime -- instructed counsel not to present it, and counsel foolishly acquiesced without taking the necessary time to convince Nixon otherwise). Furthermore, Nixon volunteered to serve in the United States’ military during the Second World War, receiving an honorable Navy discharge and, after a second enlistment, an Army discharge under honorable conditions. Nixon secured a hardship discharge from the Army at his mother’s request because his sharecropper father abandoned his mother and left the family isolated and destitute.
Nixon’s lawyers also did not inform the jury that Nixon had become a skilled and reliable auto mechanic. In fact, he earned a GED in prison and trained others as mechanics. Additionally, Nixon’s parents were alcoholics, and he witnessed and suffered repeated physical abuse at the hands of his father. Nixon himself suffers from chronic alcoholism, with frequent blackouts and uncontrolled behavior, but he has attempted to overcome his addiction. Finally, Nixon has a severe passive-aggressive personality disorder, an impairment exacerbated by his alcoholism. Unfortunately the jury never heard this mitigating evidence at either phase of trial.
Moreover, the aggravating evidence presented by the prosecution in the case was not entirely accurate and was not presented to the jury appropriately. Nixon had in the past plead guilty to statutory rape; he did not plead guilty, nor was he convicted of violent or forceful rape. The state, at the federal level of Nixon’s appeals, conceded that it could not ethically use the statutory rape charge as evidence of a prior violent felony. However, the federal court found the error harmless. It is interesting to note that, had the state made such a concession in the Mississippi Supreme Court, that court would have been obliged, under the state law at the time, to reverse the death sentence and remand for a resentencing trial. Clearly this is a serious problem. The jury heard evidence of a prior violent felony that had not actually been a violent felony. It is irresponsible to suggest, as the court did in this case, that such an error was harmless to Nixon’s case and sentence.
Additionally, defense counsel in Nixon’s case mentioned other “heinous, cruel, atrocious crimes” during closing arguments. Clearly such language used by defense counsel was harmful to the defendant’s case. First, such evidence seems to admit to the jury that the crime in question was heinous. More importantly, the defense counsel, with this statement, suggested past acts of violence. Clearly the defense was not only inadequate, but in this instance directly harmful to Nixon’s case.
Finally Nixon is a 77-year-old man. A life sentence in prison is almost guaranteed to assure that Nixon will spend the remainder of his natural life in prison.
Please write to Governor Haley Barbour to commute John B. Nixon’s sentence to life imprisonment.
