SAVE CLARENCE RAY ALLEN FROM THE GOVERNATOR !

Posted on Mon, Dec. 12, 2005


Next man scheduled to die is 75
Allen would be the oldest and most infirm inmate to be executed since reinstatement of the death penalty in 1978
By HENRY WEINSTEIN
Los Angeles Times

While Californians debate whether Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should grant clemency to convicted murderer Stanley Tookie Williams, a legal battle has just gotten under way over the fate of the next man set for execution in California -- Clarence Ray Allen, who has a Jan. 17 date to die.

Allen, who will turn 76 on Jan. 16, was condemned to death for commissioning the murders of three people while he was behind bars. Legally blind and confined to a wheelchair, Allen would be the oldest and most infirm inmate to be executed in the state since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978. His clemency campaign is expected to focus on his age and ill health.

His situation is dramatically different from that of Williams, the co-founder of the Crips gang, who has been the subject of an unusual, highly visible clemency campaign. Full-page newspaper advertisements and speeches from prominent clergymen, celebrities and activists proclaimed that Williams has redeemed himself through his anti-gang activities.

In contrast, Allen has displayed no visible public support, and the last appeals court to review his case characterized his crimes as the very type that the death penalty was designed to address.

But Allen's attorneys have raised a question that is likely to recur, with the ''graying'' of death rows around the country and the concomitant health problems afflicting many elderly inmates: Is it appropriate to execute someone so old and infirm that he appears to no longer pose a threat?

There are now five condemned men in California who are over 70 and nearly three dozen in their 60s. Since California reinstated capital punishment in 1978, 31 men have died on death row of natural causes, and 11 have been executed. The oldest person executed in California in the modern era was 62-year-old Donald Beardslee, who was killed earlier this year.

While there has been sharp debate in recent years over the execution of people for crimes committed as juveniles, there is no law anywhere in the country setting an upper age limit for execution, and no death sentence has been commuted based solely on age or illness.

''Mr. Allen is seriously ailing. For years he has had chronic heart disease, and on Sept. 2, 2005, he suffered a massive heart attack and nearly died,'' said Somnath Raj Chatterjee, one of Allen's appellate attorneys.

''Ample reasons support allowing Mr. Allen to spend the short remainder of his fragile life securely locked up in prison.''

Allen's lawyers appear to have no stronger argument than his age and condition. His criminal history is especially unsavory.

Allen was convicted of arranging the murder of his son's girlfriend, Mary Sue Kitts, who was a potential witness against him in a market burglary case. While serving a life sentence at Folsom State Prison for contracting Kitts' murder, he offered to pay another inmate, Billy Ray Hamilton, $25,000 to kill eight people who had testified against him in the Kitts murder case.

After getting out of prison, Hamilton killed one of the witnesses, Bryan Schletewitz , son of the store owner, and two young market employees, Josephine Rocha and Douglas White. Allen was convicted of the three murders, and of conspiracy to murder the eight witnesses.

In rejecting his bid to have his sentence overturned, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who was appointed by President Clinton and who has voted to reverse some death sentences, wrote in May 2004 that the circumstances of the killings suggest that Allen remains a menace.

''Evidence of Allen's guilt is overwhelming. Given the nature of his crimes, sentencing him to another life term would achieve none of the traditional purposes underlying punishment,'' Wardlaw wrote. ''Allen continues to pose a threat to society, indeed to those very persons who testified against him. He has shown himself more than capable of arranging murders from behind bars. If the death penalty is to serve any purpose at all, it is to prevent the very sort of murderous conduct for which Allen was convicted.''

Late last week, Chatterjee and three other attorneys representing Allen filed a lawsuit in federal district court in San Francisco seeking to delay his execution on the grounds that his poor health has made it impossible for him to meaningfully assist his attorneys in the preparation of a clemency petition.

The oldest man on death row anywhere in the United States is 89-year-old LeRoy Nash in Arizona. He was sentenced to death row for killing a coin shop employee in 1982, after he escaped from the Utah State Prison. He does not have an execution date.

Next week though, Mississippi is scheduled to execute John Nixon, 77, despite protests from a former Mississippi Supreme Court judge that executing an elderly man offends ''the moral values of our people.''



© 2005 Monterey County Herald and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.montereyherald.com

December 21, 2005

State Atty. Gen. Urges Execution for Allen
From Associated Press

SACRAMENTO — The oldest convict on California's death row should be executed for the viciousness of his crimes despite his age and failing health, the state attorney general's office said Tuesday.

In a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer's office argued against granting clemency to Clarence Ray Allen, who is scheduled to be executed Jan. 17 for ordering hits on three people in 1980 while he was behind bars at Folsom State Prison.

Allen, 75, claims his physical infirmities, including a recent heart attack, have left him nearly deaf and blind and warrant a reprieve. He is also in a wheelchair.

"It is completely irrelevant now to whether he deserves to die for his monstrous crimes," Supervising Deputy Atty. Gen. Ward Campbell wrote to Schwarzenegger.

The attorney general's office argued that because Allen had ordered killings from inside prison, keeping him alive could be a security risk.

"Mr. Allen has shown that imprisonment is simply no guarantee of public security," Campbell wrote. He added that "in the case of Clarence Allen, life imprisonment is simply not a sufficient deterrent."

Schwarzenegger has turned down all three requests for clemency he has received since becoming governor, including one earlier this month from Crips co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams, who was executed last week.

Allen was sentenced to death for hiring a hit man who murdered three people at a Fresno market. Allen, who was already in prison for murder, had the trio killed because he feared their testimony would hurt his chances of prevailing on appeal, prosecutors said.

The convicted hit man, Billy Ray Hamilton, also is on death row. Prosecutors said Hamilton was following Allen's orders when he killed Bryon Schletewitz, Douglas Scott White and Josephine Rocha.

Nazi Schwarzenegger could not perpetrate his barbarism without the enthusiastic assistance of that good Death Penalty Democrat Attorney General Bill Lockyer, the two of them representing the twin parties of the death penalty and capitalism, the Republicans-Democrats. Only Peace & Freedom Party and the Green Party oppose the death penalty. This is another reason why everyone who opposes the death penalty must never vote for any Democrat or Republican at any level of office.

When we make the phone calls to the governor (he has a San Francisco office, as well as a Sacramento office), one of the many things we could say it that all of Europe, most of Latin America, Australia, Ivory Coast and Senegal have abolished the death penalty. California and the US are in the company of barbarians, and the perpetrators of the death penalty are barbarians (and that includes those who support it in Cuba, China and anywhere else).

This is going to be some scene: A sick old man in a wheelchair will be forced to walk into the death chamber, which is not wheelchair accessible, to be murdered by the Schwarzenegger-Lockyer and their fascist friends, after having been revived from a heart attack so that these 2 Nazis could kill him with our tax dollars. Clearly it is Nazi Schwarzenegger & Lockyer who are a menace to humanity, not Clarence Ray Allen.

Once again, the so-called "liberal" 9th Circuit proves its fascist colors. I do not know why the fascists complain about the 9th Circuit.

A good way to celebrate MLK weekend is to have a full 3-day weekend vigil outside San Quentin and a barrage of phone calls to the governor. We can be sure Martin Luther King would be with us at this vigil if he were here today.

As to whom we should appeal, we should appeal to all who oppose the death penalty, regardless of age, color, disability or any other identity. The fact is, because the death penalty is always a class weapon of terror by the capitalist class against the workingclass, and in the US, it is also a racist weapon ,those who are most often against the death penalty are poor and non-white, but that is not always the case.

Clearly, it is not sympathy that will put an end to the death penalty but political strength which will threaten the politcal careers of these barbarians. We can only do that by refusing to vote either Republican or Democrat. You have to send a clear message: You oppose the death penalty and therefore you only vote Peace & Freedom or Green because their party opposes the death penalty.

My comments the past 2 days have been taken off the message baord for no reason what so ever. Nice campaign..but what..Allen's getting a needle in the arm January 19 as puinishment for the murders he committed. Tough shit..move on and take up the case of the next murderer instead of addressing issues of th innocent in this world.

My comments the past 2 days have been taken off the message baord for no reason what so ever. Nice campaign..but what..Allen's getting a needle in the arm January 19 as puinishment for the murders he committed. Tough shit..move on and take up the case of the next murderer instead of addressing issues of th innocent in this world.

What if it turns out later he was innocent? Innocent people sometimes get sent to death row.

See:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/20/1434244

Clarence allen , got a bad deal in begining hes the first man in california to be convicted with no body,the man that was paid to get on the stand confessing he was ordered to kill kitts got aquitted,also the same man who massacured the ryan family back in 1983 who also was never charged,hmm... Id say, furrow was a good payed informant, who is very well protected yet .do some research,none of those people that was killed in frans market never testified in no murder case.yes we all know it should of never happened.Ifeel for both familys who knows what really happened.

Just a fact check for you accuracy. Mr. Allen will only have to step approx. a half-step (assisted by staff) onto the modified dental chair set up for lethal injection. That is simply the fact. Feel free to call if you have any other facts on the process you'd like to know or print.

do you ppl understand what this guy did ....he is responsible for four deaths ...one apparently a minor...he deserves death My only regret is that it took so long ...if justice were swift maybe people would learn from it

The death penalty is barabric and uncivilized.

If you don't like the death penalty, move to Europe.

How about you move--anywhere???
See, rather than run with my tail between my legs, I choose to stay here and make changes from within. The death penalty will end and people will go beyond their ape-like religious idocy and become more civilized. The irony, is that in Manifest Destiny, the so-called 'civilized' christinians came to the U.S. raping, plundering and stealing in the name of 'civilizing' the barbarians. The idiocy lives on today. I hope this country rises from this slumber of ignorance.

that really messed up how they brought Mr. Allen back to life after he flatlined just to kill him there way and shit. The system is fucked up man they know the dude is in a wheelchair but they gonna make him walk to die that just not right.

i dont think anybody should choose when somebody else dies

i am astounded to read in our ehglish press that clarence ray allen is to be executed this week, i can not imagine what is in the going on in the mind of arnnie to think that it is right and proper for an old man who is so ill and about as much danger to the rest of california as a wet sponge and has had the threat of death over him for over two decades and in the last few mounths died only to be brought back to a hellish life by doctors only so that he can be EXECUTED by the state on tuesday.
shame on you sir for your lack of humanity, L JONES LONDON ENGLAND

You are very correct. Indybay is biased, this is an activist website, not a chatroom. We clearly work for progressive/left/more radical solutions to the many failures of this society and the world here. We provide an alternative to the mainstream/right-wing crap that we get all day. Your venom toward Democrats/liberals is trutly misguided here---most of us are not Democrats and are as (almost) sickened by them as the corrupt Repbulicans. Try to start thinking outside of the simple 'Left-Right' 'Liberal-Conservative' box that has been created and perpetuated for you to fall into. It's much more complex than that. Truly, I, and many other activists in the Bay area, would be as embarassed to call ourseves Democrats as Republicans--both are 'by and for the corporations' now--republicans are just a bit dumber (but not much)

to "Oslo"--just becasue someone doesn't identify a one of the two ruling parties, that doesn't automatically default them to "Green" either. what if I told you I was registered as "Undeclared" because I don't fit into a simple box, and that I change my registration if I feel I need to, for primaries, ect. Wouldn't fit so neatly into a box and it wouldn't make it so easy to make broad, unsubstantiated generalizations, would it??

To the "deterrent" guy, you presented the false arguement, using Richard Allen Davis, to imply that he would get out. Clearly, there are sickos who should not get out, that is what Life w/out Parole is for. The death penalty is barbaric, it doesn't deter people from murder, and the majority of the 'civilized' doesn't use it.

His last crime... He stole the phrase "It's a good day to die" from the Klingon Empire.

Updated: 2:49 a.m. Tuesday] As a crowd of protesters banged drums and sang plaintive American Indian songs outside the prison gates, convicted triple-murderer Clarence Ray Allen became the oldest inmate to be executed in the state of California early Tuesday morning, the day after his 76th birthday.
Allen was pronounced dead at 12:38 a.m. in San Quentin State Prison, 18 minutes after the lethal drugs were first administered intravenously. He was given an extra shot of potassium chloride, which stops the heart, at 12:35, according to Corrections Department spokeswoman Elaine Jennings.

Allen, a descendant of Choctaw Indians, placed a large white feather with dark tips on his chest and wore an elaborate yellow, green and red beaded headband.


With the aid of prison guards, Allen was able to walk on his own to the table, although his shuffle seemed strained.
Once strapped to the gurney, he lifted his head up to apparently mouth "Where are you?" and "I love you" and to make eye contact with his representatives in the witness chamber.

Medical officials managed to secure the intravenous catheters into Allen's arms within minutes - a catheter was in his right arm within five minutes; his left arm was prepared in about two minutes.

The execution commenced about 12:19 a.m. Within three minutes, Allen turned his head to the left, then straight ahead. About 12:22 a.m., the feather on his chest rose with Allen's final breaths. He was described as turning ashen white, and then blue.

Prison warden Steve Ornoski released Allen's final statement shortly after his death.

Allen spoke of how much he enjoyed his last meal of buffalo steak, Kentucky Fried Chicken, sugar-free pecan pie and sugar-free black walnut ice cream, and he gave thanks to his friends, family, supporters and "all of the inmates on death row that I'm leaving behind that they will be joining me one day."

"My last words will be 'Hoka Hey, it's a good day to die.' Thank you very much, I love you all. Good-bye."

Allen spent his last day meeting with a spiritual adviser, family, friends and members of his legal team, according to a prison spokesman.

The execution was witnessed by more than 40 people: five witnesses and two spiritual advisers chosen by Allen; seven members of victims' families and surviving victims of Allen's crimes; 12 witnesses chosen by the prison warden; and 17 members of the media.

Earlier in the day, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a final appeal to halt the execution of the 76-year-old Allen, upholding an earlier decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

His legal team argued that executing a frail old man would constitute cruel and unusual punishment, and that it was unconstitutionally cruel to force Allen to spend 23 years on death row.

Justice Stephen Breyer cast the lone dissent, saying he would have granted a reprieve.

Allen, who suffered a heart attack in September, was largely immobile, legally blind and a diabetic.

He is the 13th inmate executed in California since voters reinstated the death penalty in 1978. Allen is the second-oldest inmate executed in the nation in the modern era.

Michael Satris, one of Allen's defense attorneys, was critical Monday night of the state's decision to carry out the execution.

"It's a sorry state of affairs for the state of California," Satris said. "I hope we evolve our standards of decency...How can we drag an old man from his death bed just to be executed?"

Prosecutors have said that time should not excuse Allen from realizing his death sentence for the murders. And family members of those murdered said a protracted appeals process had allowed Allen to reach his twilight years, which had been denied their loved ones who were shot to death 26 years ago.

After the execution, relatives of murder victim Josephine Rocha released the following statement: "It has taken 23 years, but justice has prevailed today. Mr. Allen abused the justice system with endless appeals until he lived longer in prison than the short 17 years of Josephine's life."

Allen's execution was the second death sentence carried out in San Quentin in as many months. In December, 51-year-old Stanley Tookie Williams, co-founder of the Crips street gang, was executed by lethal injection for four murders in Los Angeles. Michael Angelo Morales, 45, faces execution Feb. 21, for the rape and murder of a teenage girl in Lodi.

Allen was serving a life sentence at Folsom State Prison for ordering the strangulation of 17-year-old Mary Sue Kitts when he hatched a plan to kill eight witnesses to the crime in anticipation of a new trial.

He enlisted inmate Billy Ray Hamilton, who was about to be paroled, according to the state attorney general's summary.

On Sept. 5, 1980, Hamilton entered a store in Fresno shortly before closing time and pointed a sawed-off shotgun at the proprietor's son, Bryon Schletewitz, 27; co-workers, Josephine Rocha, 17; Douglas White, 18; and Joe Rios.

Schletewitz was shot in the forehead at close range. White was shot in the neck and chest. Rocha, who was sobbing, was shot through her heart. Rios escaped into the women's restroom, but Hamilton caught up with him and shot him in the face. Rios was the lone survivor.

Authorities later found a coded "hit list" including the names of Schletewitz and his father, Ray Schletewitz, who had testified against Allen at the Kitts trial. Evidence led authorities to Allen, who was already behind bars.

A jury in Glenn County sentenced Allen to death in November 1982, for orchestrating the three shotgun murders from his Folsom prison cell. The latest execution triggered protests outside the gates at San Quentin and at the Capitol, although the crowds were just a fraction of those that turned out to protest Stanley Tookie Williams' execution last month.

By the time the execution began after midnight, about 300 protesters remained, braving the chilly night.

Protester Bill Babbitt said he knows what it is to lose a relative to execution. He watched in May 1999 as his brother, Manuel Pina Babbitt, was executed for the murder of 78-year-old Leah Schendel of Sacramento.

"I believed in the death penalty, until it came knocking on my door," said Babbitt, who sits on board of directors of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights.

Babbitt said he attended church services with Allen's family on Monday.

"I recognized the pain in their hearts," he said.

In Sacramento, more than a dozen people gathered on the north side of the Capitol late Monday night to protest the execution.

"This guy was a jerk who committed some bad crimes, but no one deserves the death penalty," said Ken Bennett, one of the demonstrators. Allen "could have spent the rest of his life in prison. He's old, so it wouldn't be long, anyway."

So Clarence Ray Allen was executed because he killed 4 people? Can we now see the death sentence being passed on Bush, Rumsfeld, Perle, Powell, Rice, Negorponte, Cheney, Ex President Bush senior, Clinton and every existing ex-president and their surving lickspittles, for atrocities carried out in the name of profit since 1945?

Those who advocate the death penalty do so because they think it is a deterrent to violent crime. However, throughout the world, no sociologist or criminologist, or anyone hired to study the subject, has been able to demonstrate conclusively that the death penalty acts as a deterrent t to the commission of the crime for which it has been exacted.

And neither has it been proved that the abolition of the death sentence leads to the terrifying consequences predicted by its propagandists. Indeed, in many cases, countries that have abolished the death penalty boast a reduction in homicides. In 1975, the year before Canada abolished the death penalty, its homicide rate was 3.09 per 100,000. By 1986 the rate was down to 2.19, the lowest it had been in over 15 years. In one FBI study in the USA it was shown that the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty was four times higher in states with capital punishment than in states without it. This revelation lead many to conclude that legal executions may actually stimulate violent crime by exemplifying society’s approval of killing.

Of course, these are arguments lost on the likes of Bush and Schwarzenegger for whom killing is as natural as brushing your teeth. One makes a political career out of executing prisoners; the other became famous making films in which his speciality was killing. Both represent a corrupt and unaccountable political regime which serves as nothing but the executive of corporate America. One has no more emotion than the wide-screen cyborg he is most famous for, the other kills with the same indifference as another mass murderer currently standing trial in Iraq. Neither of them fit enough to clean Clarence Allen's shoes.