Post by SoulTrainOz on Jun 20, 2006 6:47:10 GMT -5
By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press
LIVINGSTON, Texas - Condemned prisoner Lamont Reese acknowledges a disreputable past.
"I'm no angel," Reese said from a tiny visiting cage outside Texas death row. "I can tell you that. I was selling drugs. That's what I did. I sold crack for so many years."
But he said he's not a killer, wasn't the gang member as he was portrayed at his trial and wasn't involved in one of Fort Worth's bloodiest shootings in recent times.
Reese, 28, faces lethal injection Tuesday evening in Huntsville for the slayings of three men outside a convenience store in 1999. Two others were wounded in the gunfire.
In a recent interview at the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, home of death row, Reese said an innocent person was being put to death.
"They said I was the ringleader," he said. "I was not at the crime... They're saying I killed those guys. I had no idea who they were."
Lawyers went to the federal courts, challenging the constitutionality of the lethal injection drugs, to try to keep Reese from becoming the 12th Texas inmate executed this year and the second of three scheduled to die this month. At least a dozen others have dates over the next four months for trips to the nation's busiest death chamber.
On the evening of March 1, 1999, Reese's girlfriend, 18-year-old Kareema Kimbrough, walked out of a convenience store about four miles southeast of downtown Fort Worth and drew the attention of several men who were drinking and playing dice outside the place, according to police. Reese emerged a few moments later from the store and became angry with the men flirting with Kimbrough.
The couple then went to a house where they met up with three others, including a pair of juveniles, and armed themselves with handguns and assault rifles. Kimbrough, who Reese describes as his wife and who brought her 2-year-old son with her, was behind the wheel and dropped off the four near the store.
The gunmen sprayed the scene with bullets. Kimbrough swung back, retrieved her friends and they all sped off together.
Anthony Roney, 26, Riki Jackson, 17, and Alonzo Stewart, 25, were killed. A 24-year-old man and 13-year-old boy were wounded.
A day after the shooting, police caught a break investigating another shooting. A man told them some of the people involved in the store shooting were bragging about it, and when he told them they were crazy, he got shot. That led to the arrests of Reese, Kimbrough and the others. Detectives found ammunition in Reese's car that matched bullets found at the shooting scene.
"The evidence in court was pretty clear that he was the triggerman," said Sean Colston, one of the Tarrant County district attorneys who prosecuted Reese.
From death row, Reese said he wasn't at the convenience store but was "at a dope house in the same neighborhood." He also said some 20 minutes after the time of the shootings, he and Kimbrough were seen on a surveillance tape at a video store, checking out a movie, suggesting he couldn't have been involved in the gunfire. Defense attorneys at his trial produced the tape and also took issue with some of the prosecution witnesses, described as drug addicts and felons.
Jurors didn't buy the defense, returning a guilty verdict, then deliberating for about two hours before deciding Reese should be put to death.
Reese, who said his lawyers advised him to not testify at his trial, said he thought jurors were swayed by testimony indicating the shootings may have been gang-related.
"I wish I had testified," he said.
Reese grew up in Louisiana and said he spent much of his childhood in state custody there after his mother was sent to prison,
Kimbrough, now 26, is serving a life prison term on a capital murder conviction. The three others, including the two juveniles who were charged as adults, agreed to plea bargains and are serving sentences ranging from 35 to 50 years.
Scheduled to die next is convicted murderer Angel Maturino Resendiz, a former FBI Ten Most Wanted fugitive set for lethal injection June 27 for the fatal stabbing of Houston-area physician Claudia Benton in December 1998.
Benton, killed at her home in the Houston enclave of West University, is among at least 15 victims police in Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Illinois have linked to Resendiz.
The Mexico native, who became known as the "Railroad Killer" because many of the attacks were near railroad tracks and because he was known to hop on trains to travel around the United States, has claimed to have committed even more killings.
Source: The Associated Press
LIVINGSTON, Texas - Condemned prisoner Lamont Reese acknowledges a disreputable past.
"I'm no angel," Reese said from a tiny visiting cage outside Texas death row. "I can tell you that. I was selling drugs. That's what I did. I sold crack for so many years."
But he said he's not a killer, wasn't the gang member as he was portrayed at his trial and wasn't involved in one of Fort Worth's bloodiest shootings in recent times.
Reese, 28, faces lethal injection Tuesday evening in Huntsville for the slayings of three men outside a convenience store in 1999. Two others were wounded in the gunfire.
In a recent interview at the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, home of death row, Reese said an innocent person was being put to death.
"They said I was the ringleader," he said. "I was not at the crime... They're saying I killed those guys. I had no idea who they were."
Lawyers went to the federal courts, challenging the constitutionality of the lethal injection drugs, to try to keep Reese from becoming the 12th Texas inmate executed this year and the second of three scheduled to die this month. At least a dozen others have dates over the next four months for trips to the nation's busiest death chamber.
On the evening of March 1, 1999, Reese's girlfriend, 18-year-old Kareema Kimbrough, walked out of a convenience store about four miles southeast of downtown Fort Worth and drew the attention of several men who were drinking and playing dice outside the place, according to police. Reese emerged a few moments later from the store and became angry with the men flirting with Kimbrough.
The couple then went to a house where they met up with three others, including a pair of juveniles, and armed themselves with handguns and assault rifles. Kimbrough, who Reese describes as his wife and who brought her 2-year-old son with her, was behind the wheel and dropped off the four near the store.
The gunmen sprayed the scene with bullets. Kimbrough swung back, retrieved her friends and they all sped off together.
Anthony Roney, 26, Riki Jackson, 17, and Alonzo Stewart, 25, were killed. A 24-year-old man and 13-year-old boy were wounded.
A day after the shooting, police caught a break investigating another shooting. A man told them some of the people involved in the store shooting were bragging about it, and when he told them they were crazy, he got shot. That led to the arrests of Reese, Kimbrough and the others. Detectives found ammunition in Reese's car that matched bullets found at the shooting scene.
"The evidence in court was pretty clear that he was the triggerman," said Sean Colston, one of the Tarrant County district attorneys who prosecuted Reese.
From death row, Reese said he wasn't at the convenience store but was "at a dope house in the same neighborhood." He also said some 20 minutes after the time of the shootings, he and Kimbrough were seen on a surveillance tape at a video store, checking out a movie, suggesting he couldn't have been involved in the gunfire. Defense attorneys at his trial produced the tape and also took issue with some of the prosecution witnesses, described as drug addicts and felons.
Jurors didn't buy the defense, returning a guilty verdict, then deliberating for about two hours before deciding Reese should be put to death.
Reese, who said his lawyers advised him to not testify at his trial, said he thought jurors were swayed by testimony indicating the shootings may have been gang-related.
"I wish I had testified," he said.
Reese grew up in Louisiana and said he spent much of his childhood in state custody there after his mother was sent to prison,
Kimbrough, now 26, is serving a life prison term on a capital murder conviction. The three others, including the two juveniles who were charged as adults, agreed to plea bargains and are serving sentences ranging from 35 to 50 years.
Scheduled to die next is convicted murderer Angel Maturino Resendiz, a former FBI Ten Most Wanted fugitive set for lethal injection June 27 for the fatal stabbing of Houston-area physician Claudia Benton in December 1998.
Benton, killed at her home in the Houston enclave of West University, is among at least 15 victims police in Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Illinois have linked to Resendiz.
The Mexico native, who became known as the "Railroad Killer" because many of the attacks were near railroad tracks and because he was known to hop on trains to travel around the United States, has claimed to have committed even more killings.
Source: The Associated Press
