N.M. Execution Haunts Ex-Governor

By DEBORAH BAKER,

SANTA FE, N.M.  - Weeks before he was to leave office in 1986, New Mexico Gov. Toney Anaya emptied death row, commuting all five inmates' sentences to life imprisonment.

He could have reached out to one more but didn't: child killer Terry Clark, who faces death by injection Tuesday. If the execution is carried out, Clark will be the first person executed in New Mexico in over 41 years.

``Legally, I could have prevented it,'' said Anaya, a lawyer now in private practice in Santa Fe and an opponent of capital punishment.

``As (the execution) gets closer, I continue to second-guess my decision ... wondering if I did the right thing,'' he said. ``It's very personal to me.''

Anaya, a Democrat, was governor in July 1986 when a 9-year-old girl in the southeastern oil town of Artesia disappeared during a five-block bike ride to a convenience store.

Dena Lynn Gore's body was later found in a shallow grave on a ranch north of town. Clark, a ranch hand and convicted child molester, was arrested.

Believing that Clark would be convicted and sentenced to death for killing Dena Lynn - and with the promise of a commutation from Anaya if that happened - Clark's public defenders advised him to plead guilty in December 1986 and tried to get him sentenced quickly.

But a state district judge refused to set a sentencing hearing before Anaya's term ended, saying he was too busy and the governor's office was meddling.

Clark's lawyers tried to persuade Anaya to grant a conditional pardon before Clark was sentenced, guaranteeing him a life term rather than death, but Anaya refused.

``While a governor has immense powers to commute or pardon, the line has to be drawn somewhere,'' he said in a speech on his next-to-last day in office.

Critics already were threatening a constitutional amendment to strip the governor's office of pardoning powers, and Anaya worried about a greater backlash if he pardoned Clark.

``There was certainly a high degree of risk,'' Steve Aarons, one of Clark's original lawyers, said of their strategy. But Clark had told them he wanted to plead guilty to spare the Gore family further ordeal, he said.

``There were still a lot of reasons to hope when we took that dangerous step,'' Aarons said.

Other lawyers later would argue - most recently in a last-ditch appeal filed a week before the execution date - that Clark's guilty plea was based on a false promise.

They also say that because of possible brain damage, Clark might not have been competent to plead guilty, and they argue that years in solitary confinement have left him depressed and suicidal, which he disputes.

``I am a man who made a terrible mistake,'' Clark, 45, wrote to the state Supreme Court from prison two years ago. ``I feel the shame of what I did every time I wake up in this place.''

Clark says he wants to die, that life in prison is ``a fate worse than death.'' He convinced a judge in August, over his lawyers' protests, that he was competent to make that decision and drop his appeals.

Anaya worries that Clark's execution will open the door to others.

``I think it's going to begin the process of desensitizing us to the violent nature of killing - and the next one will be easier,'' he said.

There are three other New Mexico prisoners awaiting execution, none with a scheduled date.

The state's capital punishment law is tightly drawn, and juries, especially in the heavily Hispanic, heavily Roman Catholic, northern part of the state, have historically been reluctant to impose death sentences.

Since the first state-supervised execution in 1933, seven men have died by electrocution and one in the gas chamber.

Clark's would be the first death by injection and the first in the state since 1960. Gov. Gary Johnson has refused to intervene.

The parents of Clark's young victim say they just want the appeals to end and their ordeal to be over.

``I will believe it's over and done when he's strapped into that bed,'' said Jeff Gore, the child's father, reached at his home in Chaparral.

Of the latest appeals, Gore said, ``It's more games again, some more bleeding hearts getting involved in something they should keep their noses out of. None of them are interested in justice.''

Death penalty opponents, meanwhile, are conducting a 41-day vigil outside the state Capitol and intend to protest on Tuesday if the execution isn't stopped.

The case will be on Anaya's mind, too.

``I'll probably be saying a prayer for New Mexicans and for Terry Clark's soul,'' the former governor said.

New Mexico Governor Says Eliminating Capital Punishment

 May Be "Better Public Policy" 

New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson recently sent a letter to the hundreds of people who wrote to him about the upcoming execution of Terry Clark.  In the letter, Johnson, who campaigned as a supporter of the death penalty, said his mind was "not closed on the subject" of capital punishment, adding:      I am of the opinion that swift and sure punishment deters crime.  Currently, I do not believe that New Mexico's death penalty serves as an effective preventative measure because it is neither swift nor sure.  The time period currently allowed for appeals under the process is too long and yet I have come to believe that innocent people might be put to death if these safeguards are not in place.     Opponents allude to an array of alarming national statistics, which suggest that the death penalty is discriminatory in its application.  Those opposed to the death penalty point out the disparities that exist with regard to individuals receiving the death-penalty sentence. They argue persuasively that these disparities are a result of several factors including prosecutorial discretion as well as racial and economic discrimination.     Although I do not intend on declaring a moratorium on executions in New Mexico, eliminating the death penalty in the future may prove to be better public policy given the reality of the sentence today. Accordingly, within these parameters, I am open to a debate on this topic.(Santa Fe New Mexican 10/28/01). Terry Clark is scheduled to be executed on November 6, 2001.  It will be the first execution in New Mexico in over 40 years.