Report from 2010 Lobby Day During Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break

Texas House Speaker's Committee Room

By Hooman Hedayati

As part of the 2010 Anti-Death Penalty Lobby Day on March 18, I and several students participating in the Anti Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break visited several offices of Texas legislators at the capitol in Austin with information on Hank Skinner. We asked legislators to write clemency letters to Gov. Perry in support of Skinner, who was scheduled for execution the week after the Lobby Day. The students had been trained in how to lobby on March 17 in a workshop led by Alison Brock, chief of staff to State Rep. Sylvester Turner. James Tate, one of the spring break students, reported on the lobbying training on the Dallas Morning News blog.

The day after the training, we put into action what we learned from Alison by going door to door to visit the offices of our own state representatives and several other members of the Texas Legislature, including Lon Burnam, Ruth Jones McClendon, Harold Dutton, Elliott Naishtat, and Rodney Ellis.

We had initially intended to lobby for moratorium legislation for next year's legislative session. However, after meeting with Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner, Hank Skinner's wife, who talked about her husband's case during the alternative spring break, we decided that we can be more effective by asking legislators to write clemency letters in support of DNA testing that could possibly exonerate Hank Skinner. 

The lobby day started with a press conference at the House Speaker's Committee room. The press conference was hosted by Colleen Farrell on behalf of all the students participating in the alternative spring break. Colleen, Amnesty International's Student Regional Coordinator, is a student at SUNY-Geneseo in New York, She came to Texas to attend the alternative spring break to learn more about the death penalty. With all the local Austin channels present, plus Univision and several other reporters, Colleen introduced the exonerated former death-row inmates one-by-one: Ron Keine, Juan Melendez, Shujaa Graham, Perry Cobb, Curtis McCarty and Derrick Jamison. Some of them had come within days and even hours of being executed. Some of them had come within days and even hours of being executed. The exonerees said they supported a moratorium on executions and called on Gov. Perry and Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to stay the upcoming execution of Hank Skinner to allow testing of the DNA evidence. Colleen then introduced Hank's wife, Sandrine, who also spoke.

Video: Fox 7 Austin


After the press conference, we went to one of the committee rooms in the Capitol Extension where each exoneree talked in detail about his case and how he had been convicted despite being innocent and how he later had been exonerated. Rep. Lon Burnam, a long time supporter of SADP and also an abolitionist, had sent an email to all the legislative offices in the capitol inviting them to come and hear the exonerees tell their stories.

The Texas legislature is not in session so a most legislators were not in Austin, but staff members of several legislators attended the event, alongside people from other organizations, such as the Texas Catholic Conference. Many tourists walked in the room curious about what was going on and left the room outraged at the injustices of our criminal justice system.

Afterward, the students divided into several groups with each group assigned to visit several legislative offices. Juan Melendez, who spent more than 17 years on Florida's death-row for a crime he did not commit, accompanied my group. First, we visited the office of Rep. Elliot Naishtat, who represents the University of Texas at Austin, where I and several other students went and still go to school. We met with Dorothy Browne, Chief of staff to Rep. Naishtat. She apologized to Juan for not being able to attend the panel discussion event earlier in the day. She had already heard about Hank Skinner in the news and promised to talk to Rep. Naishtat about writing a clemency letter. Before heading for the 5 PM rally and the march through the SXSW crowd on 6th street, we visited the offices of Rep. Harold Dutton, Senator Ellis and Rep McClendon, who represents a student in our group. According to reports in CNN and the Texas Tribune we know that at least two of the state legislators we visited wrote clemency letters to Rick Perry urging him to stop the execution of Hank Skinner today. Naishtat wrote in his letter regarding questions in Skinner's case, "post-conviction DNA testing of evidence could help resolve these questions. Governor, I believe we have time to answer questions in Mr. Skinner's case. We should take that opportunity to have moral certainty that justice is achieved in the case."

Read Rep Naishtat's letter.

Read the letter by Senator Ellis.

On March 24, minutes before Hank's scheduled execution, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and stayed his execution, giving us another reason to celebrate our success at the 2010 Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break.

Next year, the alternative spring break will fall in the middle of the 2011 Texas legislative session, so we plan to spend the next year getting ready to visit the capitol again to lobby for a moratorium on executions.

Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break Students Get Legislators to Write Clemency Letters for Hank Skinner

CNN is reporting that Texas lawmakers have written letters to Rick Perry urging him to stop the execution of Hank Skinner today. Last Thursday, students participating in the Anti Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break visited several offices of Texas legislators in Austin with information on Hank Skinner and asked legislators to write clemency letters for Skinner to Perry. The students visited both Senator Ellis and Representative Naishtat, both of whom are mentioned in the CNN article as having written letters.

The students were trained in how to lobby last Wednesday in a workshop held by Alison Brock chief of staff to Rep. Sylvester Turner. James Tate, one of the students, reported on the lobbying training on the Dallas Morning News blog. The next day they put into action what they learned. They had intended to lobby for a moratorium on executions, but Thursday morning the plan was changed to lobby legislators to write clemency letters for Hank Skinner.

Thank you to the students for making a difference!

Read Rep Naishtat's letter.

Read letter by Senator Ellis.

If you have not yet called Rick Perry to urge him to stay the execution of Hank Skinner so that thee DNA evidence can be tested, call now!.

Rick Perry's Phone Number 512 463 2000.

(CNN) -- Texas state lawmakers are among those calling for a last-minute reprieve for a condemned inmate who is requesting DNA testing of evidence, even as he is set to die Wednesday night.

Henry "Hank" Skinner, 47, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. (7 p.m. ET) for the New Year's Eve 1993 murder of his live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two sons, Elwin Caler, 22, and Randy Busby, 20, in Pampa, Texas.

"Since his arrest in the early morning hours of January 1, 1994, Mr. Skinner has always and consistently maintained that he did not commit the crimes for which he was convicted," defense attorney Robert Owen wrote this month in a 30-page letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, seeking a 30-day reprieve of Skinner's execution.

Skinner's attorneys maintain that DNA testing of the evidence could establish his innocence and determine the real killer.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on a stay of execution in the case Wednesday. If the high court denies Skinner's request to review the case, the decision falls to Perry, according to David Protess, a Northwestern University professor and director of the university's Medill Innocence Project, which has investigated Skinner's case.

On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended Perry reject a reprieve for Skinner on a unanimous vote and also voted against granting Skinner's request for a commutation of his death sentence.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis and state Rep. Elliott Naishtat both sent letters to Perry on Tuesday urging him to issue the reprieve.

"It has come to my attention that there are numerous problems with Mr. Skinner's case that raise serious questions regarding the fairness of his trial and whether or not he is guilty," Ellis wrote.

Perry has received more than 8,000 letters from Skinner's advocates urging a stay, according to the Innocence Project and Change.org, whose members and supporters have sent the letters through their Web sites.

Word about the case has spread as far as France, where demonstrations are planned Wednesday at the U.S. Embassy in Paris by supporters of Skinner's French wife, Sandrine Ageorges.
Since Skinner's conviction in 1995, he "has tirelessly pursued access to the untested physical evidence," according to court documents filed with the Supreme Court in February.

That evidence includes vaginal swabs and fingernail clippings from Twila Busby, hairs found in her hand and two knives found at the scene, along with a dishtowel and a windbreaker jacket, according to the filing.

Skinner has never denied being in the home when Busby and her sons were killed. However, he maintains he was incapacitated because of the "extreme quantities of alcohol and codeine" that he had consumed earlier that evening, according to the documents.

Prosecutors maintain forensic evidence gathered at the scene and witness statements point to Skinner. A female friend of Skinner's who lived four blocks away testified at Skinner's trial that he walked to her trailer and told her that he may have kicked Twila Busby to death, although evidence did not show she had been kicked. The neighbor has since recanted parts of her testimony.

Authorities followed a blood trail from the crime scene to the female friend's trailer and found Skinner in the closet, authorities said. He was "wearing heavily blood-stained jeans and socks and bearing a gash on the palm of his right hand," according to the Texas attorney general's summary of the case.

In addition, authorities said cuts on Skinner's hand came from the knife used to stab the men. Skinner claimed he cut it on glass. Some DNA testing was done, which implicated Skinner, but not on the items he now wants tested.

"DNA testing showed that blood on the shirt Skinner was wearing at the time of his arrest was Twila's blood, and blood on Skinner's jeans was a mixture of blood from Elwin and Twila," authorities said.
However, Owen wrote in the Supreme Court filing, "the victims' injuries show that whoever murdered them must have possessed considerable strength, balance and coordination." Twila Busby was manually strangled -- so forcefully that her larynx and the hyoid bone in her throat were broken. She then was struck with an axe or pick handle 14 times, hard enough to drive fragments of her "unusually thick skull" into her brain," the court documents said.

"While attacking Ms. Busby, the perpetrator had to contend with the presence of her six-foot-six-inch, 225-pound son, Elwin Caler, who blood spatter analysis showed was in the immediate vicinity of his mother as she was being beaten," the court filing said.

"Somehow, the murderer was able to change weapons and stab Caler several times before he could fend off the attack or flee." Randy Busby was then stabbed to death in the bedroom the two brothers shared, the documents said.

Evidence presented at trial suggested that Twila Busby's uncle, Robert Donnell -- who is now deceased -- could have been the killer. At a New Year's Eve party she attended for a short time on the last night of her life, Donnell stalked her, making crude sexual remarks, according to trial testimony. A friend who drove her home from the party testified she was "fidgety and worried" and that Donnell was no longer at the party when he returned.

"The defense presented evidence that Donnell was a hot-tempered ex-con who had sexually molested a girl, grabbed a pregnant woman by the throat and kept a knife in his car," according to Owen's letter to Perry.

An expert testified at trial Skinner would have been too intoxicated to commit the crimes, and a review of the evidence suggests that Skinner might have been even more intoxicated that initially thought, Owen writes.

Media outlets in Texas have been supportive of a reprieve for Skinner. "Before sending a man to die, we need to be absolutely sure of his guilt," the Houston Chronicle wrote in an editorial Friday.

Skinner's wife, Ageorges, told Radio France Internationale in a Tuesday interview that she began writing to Skinner in 1996 and they began visiting in 2000.

"They just need to do DNA and fingerprint comparison with that other suspect that was never investigated," she said in an audio clip of the interview posted on RFI's Web site. She does not name Donnell, but said the person died in a car accident in 1997.

Recently, questions have swirled in Texas regarding the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham for a fire that killed his three daughters. And on March 19, Perry issued a posthumous pardon to the family of Timothy Cole, who was serving a 25-year sentence for aggravated sexual assault when he died in prison from an asthma attack.

Complete video of Witness to Innocence's press conference at the Texas Capitol

On Friday, 24 exonerated ex-death row prisoners from across the country held a news conference to call for the establishment of a statewide commission on wrongful convictions while a moratorium is imposed on executions in Texas. They spent a combined total of nearly 200 years on death row for crimes they did not commit. They were joined by State Rep. Elliott Naishtat and former Bexar County District Attorney Sam Millsap. Naishtat (D-Austin) is a longtime supporter of a moratorium on executions, while Millsap has become an outspoken critic of the death penalty since the 1993 execution of Ruben Cantu, who many believe was innocent. Both KUT and Statesman covered the event.