Ponchai Wilkerson

Ponchai "Kamau" Wilkerson (* 15. July 1971 in Houston , Texas ; † 14. March 2000 in Huntsville , Texas) was a murder for robbery sentenced to death Americans. He fought against his execution for years and was known for several prison incidents.

biography

Ponchai Wilkerson had African American and Asian ancestry and grew up in Texas. His father was a former Deputy Sheriff from the Harris County .

On November 28, 1990, Wilkerson ambushed a Houston jewelry store and shot the owner in the process. On the basis of testimony, he was quickly arrested and convicted of a number of other serious crimes. He is said to have been involved in a four-week series of crimes with a number of car thefts, robberies and illegal arms deals, as well as drive-by shoots in which one person was killed and three others injured. In July 1991, he was sentenced to death for willful murder of Chung Myong Yi and transferred to the Texas death row of the Ellis Unit . During his imprisonment there, he was selected for the so-called “Work Capable Program” along with around 150 other death row inmates. It was an experimental program that allowed death row inmates to move relatively freely outside of their cells, maintain contact with other inmates, and do supervised work inside the detention center.

Wilkerson denied to the last that he had deliberately killed the owner of the jeweler and fought against his death penalty, exhausting all legal remedies, but unsuccessfully.

Together with six other inmates, he attempted to escape on November 26, 1998. During a festive Thanksgiving dinner , the men had hidden in a recreation room and prepared the beds in their cells with pillows and sheets so that the guards did not suspect by visual inspection. They had also darkened their white prison clothes with felt-tip pens to make them harder to see at night. After the cells closed, they broke open a door to the leisure yard, worked their way through a separating fence and got to the main yard. From there they climbed the roof of a building and waited for darkness to come.

Shortly after midnight, however, they were spotted descending by guards who immediately sounded the alarm and opened fire, whereupon Wilkerson and five other inmates surrendered. Only Martin Gurule was able to escape and thus made the first successful escape from Texas death row in over 64 years, but died of drowning the night he escaped. As a result of this incident, the Work Capable Program was discontinued and the Texas death row was transferred to the Terrell Unit in March 1999 .

On February 8, 2000, amid fierce protests from the National Black United Front and the SHAPE Center , his death sentence was confirmed for the last time and the execution was dated March 14. One activist was sentenced to a month in prison for her vocal behavior.

On February 21, Wilkerson and Howard Paul Guidry, also sentenced to death for a contract killing, held a female guard hostage to protest her death penalty. Wilkerson had freed himself from his cell and along with Guidry, who was being taken to a shower, overpowered the officer. They did not give up until 13 hours after Wilkerson was allowed to meet opponents of the death penalty.

On the day of his execution, he refused to be removed from his cell and had to be overpowered by a SWAT team. He was then taken by van to the Huntsville Unit , where he declined one last meal and last words . Shortly before his execution with the lethal injection he had spat a universal key for his handcuffs and ankle cuffs at the feet of the priest who was present. Where he got it from could not be determined. At 6:24 p.m. ( UTC − 6 ) he was pronounced dead. This made him the eleventh person to be executed in Texas in 2000.

Web links

• Execution of the Day
• Texas Execution Information Center
• Ponchai Wilkerson, Executed 14, 2000 by Lethal Injection in Texas