Clarence Ray Allen

Clarence Ray Allen

Clarence Ray Allen (born  January 16, 1930 in Blair , Oklahoma , †  January 17, 2006 in San Quentin State Prison , California ) was an American murderer. He was the 1005th person to be executed by lethal injection in the state of California since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 .

After a theft he had an accomplice killed and instigated the murder of three other people from prison. He was initially sentenced to life imprisonment and then to death after the triple murder. The sentence was carried out by lethal injection in January 2006 . At that time he was the oldest ever executed in California, which caused worldwide media interest.

crime

In 1974 Allen was the driving force behind a burglary at Fran's Market , a supermarket near Fresno . His accomplices were his son Roger, Ed Savala and two employees of the security company Allen ran at the time, Carl Mayfield and Charles Jones. Allen had keys to the store's doors and alarms stolen, and arranged a date for his son's friend, Mary Sue Kitts, with the son of one of the shopkeepers, Bryon Schletewitz, while the break-in occurred. Looted $ 500 in cash and $ 10,000 in postal orders. After the theft, Kitts informed Schletewitz who had committed the theft. She knew because she had helped everyone follow the instructions. Schletewitz approached Allen's son Roger, who admitted the crime and informed his father. Thereupon Kitts should be poisoned with cyanide capsules , but this failed, so that Allen decided to have her strangled by Charles Furrow and her body thrown into the Friant core canal. The body was never found. Allen was charged with the theft, conspiracy, and murder of Kitts in 1978 and sentenced to life imprisonment with no early release.

In Folsom Prison, where Allen was serving his sentence, he prepared another murder plot: he commissioned his fellow prisoner Billy Ray Hamilton, who was about to be released on parole, to kill witnesses who had testified against Allen, including Bryon Schletewitz . Apparently Allen was aiming for a new trial in which - after the crimes he had planned - no one could have appeared as a witness to his disadvantage. With a sawed-off shotgun, Hamilton shot Schletewitz who worked there in the supermarket that Allen had stolen from; he also killed Josephine Rocha and Douglas White, two young employees of the business, and injured two other people. When a neighbor who had heard the gunshots came up and returned Hamilton's fire, Hamilton escaped injured. Hamilton was caught trying to rob a liquor store five days after the crime. He was carrying a "hit list" with the names and addresses of eight witnesses who testified against Allen.

Legal proceedings

In 1981 Allen was tried in a court in Glenn County, California. The proceedings initiated by the then California Attorney General lasted 23 days, during which 58 witnesses were heard. Allen's shared responsibility for the deaths of the people Hamilton shot was considered proven. Allen's previous convictions, especially the verdict in the Kitts trial, were an aggravating factor. The jury sentenced Allen to death in November 1982 .

In 1987 the California Supreme Court upheld the death sentence. During the proceedings, there had been disagreement among the judges about the adequacy of the previous judgment. While Judge Grodin described Allen's crimes as "shabby incidents" and saw an "exceptionally large number" of aggravating circumstances, his colleague Broussard stated that the attorney general influenced the jury in the first trial by explicitly calling for the death penalty, despite the fact that it was a legal requirement in this case is not mandatory. This deprived the jury of the freedom to make a “normative decision”.

In 2005 the case was re-examined by the Ninth Court of Appeals. In his legal assessment, Judge O'Neill wrote:

“The evidence of Allen's guilt is overwhelming. Given the nature of his crimes, a re-sentencing to life imprisonment would not serve any of the traditional purposes of punishment. Allen continues to pose a threat to society, especially for those very people who testified against him in the triple murder trial discussed here, and has proven that he is not capable of rehabilitation. He has shown himself to be capable of carrying out murders from prison to a considerable degree. If the death penalty is to serve any purpose at all, it is the prevention of such murderous behavior that everyone has been sentenced for. "

In January 2006, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his capacity as Governor of California, declined to pardon Allen . He wrote that Allen's "behavior cannot be traced back to youth or inexperience, but instead the result of the hardened, calculating decision of a mature man". He also referred to a poem by Allen in which he glorified his deeds; there it says: "We rob and steal and for those who squeal are usually found dying or dead." ("We rob and steal, and those who sneak are usually found dying or dead.") Obviously, Schwarzenegger was not aware that this was a quote from Bonnie Parker's poem The Story of Bonnie and Clyde , which ironically found the Describes preconceived public opinion about Bonnie and Clyde . A few days later, the Ninth Court of Appeals refused to recognize that executing the now nearly 75-year-old and physically disabled man was a cruel or inappropriate punishment. The United States Supreme Court did not consider the case.

execution

Allen's execution was controversial because at the time of the execution he was 76 years old and his ability to see, hear and walk was said to have been severely impaired. He also suffered from adult diabetes and the aftermath of a heart attack that he had in September 2005. Death penalty advocates pointed out that the death row inmate's health did not reduce the severity of his guilt. His lawyers and execution opponents, however, described Allen as harmless to society and his execution as "superfluous". In addition, Allen's health was controversial. He didn't need any help when he lay down on the bed, and he kept eye contact with the visitors and officers. "That was no surprise," said San Quentin spokesman Vernell Crittendon, who was present at the execution. "I watched him for a long time, he always went himself and read his letters himself".

Allen died at 12:38 p.m. on January 17 after being given two lethal injections . Because of his alleged Choctaw descent, two Indian clergymen were with him shortly before his death. His final words, read immediately after the sentence was carried out, were, “Hoka Hey, it's a good day to die. Thank you very much. I love you all. Goodbye. ”He was the oldest executed person in California and the second oldest death row inmate in the United States.

Web links

• NZZ: "76-year-old executed in California"
• ACLU collection of documents on the Allen case ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ reporter's eyewitness account of Allen's execution