Texas
April 20, 2005
6:00 PM CST
The state of Texas is scheduled to execute Douglas Alan Roberts, a white man, April 20 for the 1996 murder of Jerry Velez in Kendall County. Roberts stabbed Velez during a confrontation after he had stolen Velez’s car.
Roberts committed the crime while using crack cocaine. After the effects of the cocaine wore off, he dialed 911 from a pay phone reporting what he had done and disclosing his location. He waited to be arrested by a responding officer.
Roberts told his attorney that he wanted to be executed, rather than spend the rest of his life in prison. The trial that followed was one of the shortest death penalty trials in the modern era lasting two to three days including jury selection. He has a strong ineffective assistance of counsel claim. His trial attorney presented no mitigating arguments and no competency hearing was held. Roberts and his attorney deliberately sought out pro-death penalty jurors in an effort to assure his death sentence.
When the jury came back deadlocked, the judge, instead of ordering a sentence of life imprisonment, instructed the jury to continue deliberating in accord with Roberts’ wishes.
The problem of ineffective assistance of counsel highlights one of the most common and difficult flaws with the death penalty system. More than 90 percent of persons on death row were not able to hire their own attorney. Frequently when attorneys are appointed to defendants they are ill-equipped to give their client quality or even competent legal representation. Roberts’ trial attorney assisting in seeking out a death sentence and the judge’s behavior make a mockery of the justice system.
Please write Governor Perry and the Board of Pardons and Paroles protesting a death penalty system which would allow such a blatant miscarriage of justice to take place.
