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I remember when this happened. Didn't know her or anything, but she was only a year younger than I was.
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Supreme Court denies appeal in 1994 slaying of Arlington teen
12:00 AM CST on Tuesday, December 7, 2010
By SCOTT GOLDSTEIN / The Dallas Morning News
sgoldstein@dallasnews.com The Associated Press contributed to this report.
To execute Bruce Carneil Webster for the 1994 kidnapping, rape and murder of an Arlington teen would be to violate the Supreme Court's ruling that capital punishment of the mentally retarded should be barred, he contends.
But on Monday, the same court that banned such executions in 2002 turned away Webster's appeal. The Supreme Court gave no reason for its rejection of the case despite new evidence that indicates three federal doctors thought Webster may be mentally retarded when he applied for disability benefits in 1993, a year before 16-year-old Lisa Rene was killed.
A federal appeals court judge previously acknowledged that the new evidence appears to show Webster is mentally retarded. The judge and his two colleagues on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said, however, that Webster's execution could not be halted because he exhausted his appeals to the point that new evidence cannot be considered unless it is likely to prove his innocence.
Steven Wells, Webster's attorney, said that he was disappointed but that the fight is not over.
"The government in their briefs suggested that there were some alternative avenues for relief, and I expect that we'll be pursuing one or more of those," Wells said.
Among the possible avenues, he said, is an appeal through the federal courts in Indiana, where Webster is being held.
"It is not over and we will not give up until ... we're allowed to have a court review of this new evidence of mental retardation on its merits, which no court has done yet," Wells said.
One thing that does appear to be indisputable is that the crime that earned Webster a death sentence more than 14 years ago was heinous.
On Sept. 24, 1994, Webster and three other men from Pine Bluff, Ark., were in search of two drug dealers who had ripped them off. They didn't find the dealers at their Arlington apartment, but they kidnapped the dealers' sister, Lisa, a high school honor student.
They drove her to Arkansas and, over the next two days, repeatedly raped her. They led her to a nearby park and hit her on the head with a shovel until she lost consciousness. Webster gagged, stripped and doused her with gasoline before burying her alive.
Orlando Hall was also sentenced to death in the case. Three other men were convicted in the murder and sent to prison.
Richard Roper, who prosecuted the Webster case in Fort Worth in 1996, said whether Webster was mentally retarded "was a hotly contested issue at trial."
"They had several well-renowned experts that testified to say he was mentally retarded," said Roper, now in private practice. "We had experts that testified he wasn't."
In appeals, Webster's attorneys cited the Supreme Court's 2002 ruling in Atkins vs. Virginia that executing the mentally retarded constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. But the 5th Circuit upheld the death sentence based on the same arguments and evidence from his trial.
In February 2009, Webster's attorneys obtained the new records in question, which are from when Webster applied for Social Security benefits to treat health problems and show that three doctors who examined him thought he was mentally retarded.
Roper disputes the contention that the new evidence is conclusive.
But the quality of that evidence is not the reason the 5th Circuit said it can't stop the execution. Instead, the barrier was a 1996 federal criminal law that puts severe limits on the number of times an inmate can challenge their sentence.
To file more than one appeal, the inmate has to have new information "sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable fact finder would have found the [defendant] guilty of the offense," according to the law.
Such technicalities often come into play in cases like this, said Steve Hall of the StandDown Texas Project, which advocates a moratorium on the death penalty.
"Unfortunately, the situation when many death penalty cases and issues go to the Supreme Court is it's not a simple question that's being asked," Hall said. "It is often a highly technical, very convoluted question of procedure in law ... so the fact that you've got a situation that appears to be straightforward with a straightforward answer isn't always the case."
To Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., the Webster case could be a missed opportunity for the Supreme Court.
"I think the feeling has grown that the Supreme Court in 2002 decided this mental retardation issue but then has abandoned it, has left it to the states and even the federal government to put up barriers or to make it difficult to prove by setting case standards or burdens," Dieter said. "The Supreme Court hasn't revisited it to sharpen this ruling to make sure it works the way it's intended."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Supreme Court denies appeal in 1994 slaying of Arlington teen
12:00 AM CST on Tuesday, December 7, 2010
By SCOTT GOLDSTEIN / The Dallas Morning News
sgoldstein@dallasnews.com The Associated Press contributed to this report.
To execute Bruce Carneil Webster for the 1994 kidnapping, rape and murder of an Arlington teen would be to violate the Supreme Court's ruling that capital punishment of the mentally retarded should be barred, he contends.
But on Monday, the same court that banned such executions in 2002 turned away Webster's appeal. The Supreme Court gave no reason for its rejection of the case despite new evidence that indicates three federal doctors thought Webster may be mentally retarded when he applied for disability benefits in 1993, a year before 16-year-old Lisa Rene was killed.
A federal appeals court judge previously acknowledged that the new evidence appears to show Webster is mentally retarded. The judge and his two colleagues on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said, however, that Webster's execution could not be halted because he exhausted his appeals to the point that new evidence cannot be considered unless it is likely to prove his innocence.
Steven Wells, Webster's attorney, said that he was disappointed but that the fight is not over.
"The government in their briefs suggested that there were some alternative avenues for relief, and I expect that we'll be pursuing one or more of those," Wells said.
Among the possible avenues, he said, is an appeal through the federal courts in Indiana, where Webster is being held.
"It is not over and we will not give up until ... we're allowed to have a court review of this new evidence of mental retardation on its merits, which no court has done yet," Wells said.
One thing that does appear to be indisputable is that the crime that earned Webster a death sentence more than 14 years ago was heinous.
On Sept. 24, 1994, Webster and three other men from Pine Bluff, Ark., were in search of two drug dealers who had ripped them off. They didn't find the dealers at their Arlington apartment, but they kidnapped the dealers' sister, Lisa, a high school honor student.
They drove her to Arkansas and, over the next two days, repeatedly raped her. They led her to a nearby park and hit her on the head with a shovel until she lost consciousness. Webster gagged, stripped and doused her with gasoline before burying her alive.
Orlando Hall was also sentenced to death in the case. Three other men were convicted in the murder and sent to prison.
Richard Roper, who prosecuted the Webster case in Fort Worth in 1996, said whether Webster was mentally retarded "was a hotly contested issue at trial."
"They had several well-renowned experts that testified to say he was mentally retarded," said Roper, now in private practice. "We had experts that testified he wasn't."
In appeals, Webster's attorneys cited the Supreme Court's 2002 ruling in Atkins vs. Virginia that executing the mentally retarded constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. But the 5th Circuit upheld the death sentence based on the same arguments and evidence from his trial.
In February 2009, Webster's attorneys obtained the new records in question, which are from when Webster applied for Social Security benefits to treat health problems and show that three doctors who examined him thought he was mentally retarded.
Roper disputes the contention that the new evidence is conclusive.
But the quality of that evidence is not the reason the 5th Circuit said it can't stop the execution. Instead, the barrier was a 1996 federal criminal law that puts severe limits on the number of times an inmate can challenge their sentence.
To file more than one appeal, the inmate has to have new information "sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable fact finder would have found the [defendant] guilty of the offense," according to the law.
Such technicalities often come into play in cases like this, said Steve Hall of the StandDown Texas Project, which advocates a moratorium on the death penalty.
"Unfortunately, the situation when many death penalty cases and issues go to the Supreme Court is it's not a simple question that's being asked," Hall said. "It is often a highly technical, very convoluted question of procedure in law ... so the fact that you've got a situation that appears to be straightforward with a straightforward answer isn't always the case."
To Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., the Webster case could be a missed opportunity for the Supreme Court.
"I think the feeling has grown that the Supreme Court in 2002 decided this mental retardation issue but then has abandoned it, has left it to the states and even the federal government to put up barriers or to make it difficult to prove by setting case standards or burdens," Dieter said. "The Supreme Court hasn't revisited it to sharpen this ruling to make sure it works the way it's intended."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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