The 6th Execution of 2023
John Balentine, 54, convicted of killing three teenagers while they
slept in a Texas Panhandle home more than 25 years ago was executed on
February 8, 2023, the sixth inmate to be put to death in the U.S. this year and the
second in as many days, reported The Associated Press.
Balentine's attorneys argued that
his trial was marred by racial bias. He received a lethal injection at the state
penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, for the January 1998 shooting deaths of
Edward Mark Caylor, 17, Kai Brooke Geyer, 15, and Steven Watson, 15, at a home in
Amarillo. Prosecutors said all three were shot once in the head as they slept.
Balentine appeared jovial as witnesses were entering
the death chamber, asking if someone standing near the gurney could remove the
sheet covering the lower two-thirds of his body “and massage my feet.” Then he
chuckled.
After a brief prayer from a spiritual adviser who held
Balentine’s left foot with his right hand, the prisoner gave a short statement
thanking friends for supporting him. Then he turned his head to look through a
window at seven relatives of his three murder victims and apologized.
“I hope you can find in your heart to forgive me,” he
said.
The mothers of each of the three victims were among
the witnesses a few feet from him.
He took two breaths as the lethal dose of the powerful
sedative pentobarbital began flowing through intravenous needles in his arms,
snored twice, yawned and began snoring again loudly. The snores — 11 of them
—became progressively quieter, then stopped.
At 6:36 p.m., 15 minutes after the drugs began, a
physician pronounced him dead. The victims’ witnesses then shared high-fives
before leaving the death chamber. They declined to speak with reporters afterward.
Caylor’s sister, who was among the witnesses watching
him die, was Balentine’s former girlfriend, and prosecutors said the shootings
stemmed from a feud between Caylor and Balentine. Ballentine, however, argued
that Caylor and others had threatened his life over his interracial
relationship. Balentine is Black. The three victims were white.
Balentine confessed to the murders. One of his trial
attorneys said Balentine turned down a plea agreement that would have sentenced
him to life in prison because the racists threats he received made him afraid
of being attacked or killed while incarcerated.
Lawyers were pursuing two legal strategies to save
their client before he was executed. The first was to argue that his trial and
sentencing were tainted by racism. But Balentine was also among five Texas
death row inmates who sued to stop the state’s prison system from using what
they allege are expired and unsafe execution drugs. Despite a civil court judge
in Austin preliminarily agreeing with the claims, the state’s top two courts
have now allowed three of the five inmates participating in the lawsuit to be
executed. Robert Fratta, 65, was put to death Jan. 10 and Wesley Ruiz, 43, on
Feb. 1.
Prison officials said the state’s supply of execution
drugs is safe.
Separately, Balentine’s attorneys alleged the jury
foreman in his case, Dory England, held racist views and used racial slurs
during his life and bullied other jurors who had wanted to sentence Balentine
to a life sentence into changing their minds. Lola Perkins, who had been
married to England’s brother, told Balentine’s attorneys that England “was
racist against Black people because that is how he was raised.”
England, in a declaration before his death in 2021,
said he pushed for Balentine’s death sentence because he worried if the accused
was ever released that England himself “would need to hunt him down.” However,
England also said he threatened to report another juror to the judge for making
prejudiced comments when the person “started going off about this Black guy
killing these white teenagers.”
Balentine’s attorneys also alleged prosecutors
prevented all prospective Black jurors from serving at the trial and that
Balentine’s trial lawyers referred to the sentencing proceedings in a note as a
“justifiable lynching.”
Randall Sherrod, one of Balentine’s trial attorneys,
said Wednesday he could not remember the note but denied that he or the other
attorney, James Durham Jr., had any racist attitudes toward Balentine. Durham
died in 2006.
“I think he got a fair trial,” Sherrod said of
Balentine. “I think we had a good jury. ... We tried to help John whatever way
we could.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday declined an appeal
from Balentine’s attorneys to halt the execution so that his claims of racial
bias could be properly reviewed.
A defense request for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to
temporarily stay the execution also failed and the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals denied a request to stay Ballentine’s execution over allegations that
“racism and racial issues pervaded” his trial. The appeals court denied the
stay on procedural grounds without reviewing the merits.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Texas Board of Pardons and
Paroles unanimously declined to commute Balentine’s death sentence to a lesser
punishment or to grant a 30-day reprieve.
“Without a thorough judicial consideration of Mr.
Balentine’s claims, we can have no confidence that the death verdict isn’t
tainted by racial bias,” said Shawn Nolan, one of Balentine’s attorneys.
Potter County District Attorney Randall Sims, whose
jurisdiction includes Amarillo, where the murders occurred, had pushed for the execution
to go forward. On Monday he declined to comment ahead of the execution.
Koda Shadix, the younger brother of Geyer, one of the
victims, said in a video posted online last week that he was upset by efforts
to delay justice.
Balentine has “shown no remorse and absolutely does
not care what he did. All he cares about is his life,” Shadix said.
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