Texas to execute man after 30 years on death row and six previous stays

Pending a last-minute intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court, Texas will on Wednesday evening execute 67-year-old Lester Bower Jr., who despite maintaining his innocence has served more than three decades on death row over the killing of four men at an aircraft hanger in a ranch near Dallas. 

Bower who could become the oldest Texas prisoner to be put to death, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection after 6 p.m. local time (7 p.m. EST). He was convicted in 1984 of murdering Bobby Tate, the owner of the ranch; Sheriff's Deputy Philip Good; Ronald Mayes, a former police officer; and interior designer Jerry Brown, over what lawyers for the state said was a deal — over a $4,000 ultralight airplane — that went awry. 

Prosecutors said Bower killed Tate to steal the plane that Tate was selling, and then killed Good, Mayes and Brown when they unexpectedly showed up at the hangar located in Grayson County. But after his conviction, Bower said his lawyers had witnesses who could attest that drug dealers were responsible for the deaths.

"If this is going to bring some closure to them (the victim's family), then good," Bower told The Associated Press in an interview two weeks ago. "But if they think by this they're executing the person that killed their loved one, then that's going to come up a little bit short."

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Bower's case in March after his lawyers had submitted a writ of certiorari, or judicial review, arguing that executing Bower — who has had his execution stayed by various courts on six previous occasions and spent over 30 years on death row in "solitary conditions" would amount to "cruel and unusual punishment and violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." 

Despite Bower's latest U.S. Supreme Court appeal, which his lawyers hope will delay his execution for a seventh time, experts said it was unlikely that Bower will get another reprieve, given that the top court previously declined to review the case.

"It is rare in those circumstances that they would grant a stay," Robert Dunham, the executive director of the nonprofit organization Death Penalty Information Center, told Al Jazeera. "The court has been asked on several occasions to review the constitutionality of keeping somebody on death row for decades, and on all previous occasions it has declined to review that issue."

There have been 1,408 executions in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Of those, 525 have occurred in Texas — by far the highest number in the nation and ahead of Oklahoma (112) and Virginia (110).  Of the 14 people to receive the death penalty in the U.S. so far this year, half of them were executed in Texas. 

County prosecutors built a case that painted a picture of Bower as being obsessed with acquiring the ultralight aircraft. Prosecutors said the killings occurred as part of covering up Bower's theft of the plane, The Star-Telegram newspaper reported. 

Bower had initially lied to investigators about not having any ties Tate or the aircraft, the Guardian reported, but he eventually acknowledged that he had been at the ranch, but said the four victims had been alive and well when he left with the disassembled plane that he said he had paid for. However, he could not produce a receipt, the AP reported.

Investigators said that Bower, who according to court documents, was a licensed firearms dealer, had obtained rare ammunition similar to what was used in the killings.

But Bower's case has raised questions because no incriminating fingerprints were found at the scene, and no murder weapon was recovered. Also, as part of Bower's previous request for a Supreme Court review, his lawyers said in court documents that the prosecution withheld evidence favorable to Bower about the ammunition used in the killings being not as rare as the jury was told.

Bower's case aside, death row cases have in the past been proved wrong. A study that appeared last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found that if all condemned defendants remained under their sentences indefinitely, at least 4.1 percent would be exonerated. Statistics compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center also showed that since 1973, 150 people have been exonerated and freed from death row.

"I can't speak to whether he is innocent or not, but the type of misconduct in this case by the government is the type of misconduct we have seen in other cases that did indicate innocence," Dunham said. 

With wire services