December 12

Texas Conducts Last Execution Slated for 2001

HUNTSVILLE, Texas  - A man convicted of killing an off-duty police officer during a 1988 robbery was put to death by injection on Wednesday in what was expected to be the last execution of the year in the United States.

 Vincent Cooks, 37, was the 17th person in Texas and the 66th nationally to be executed in 2001.

 Both figures were well down from 2000, when Texas put a U.S. record of 40 people to death, contributing to a national total of 85 executions.

 For the first time since 1996, Texas did not lead the country in executions, giving way to Oklahoma, which put 18 people to death this year.

 But overall, Texas remains the nation's leader in capital punishment, with 256 executions since the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) lifted a national death penalty ban 25 years ago. The next closest state is Virginia, with 83 executions during the same period.

 Cooks was condemned for the Feb. 26, 1988, shooting death of Gary McCarthy, an off-duty police officer working as a security guard at a Dallas grocery store.

 Police said Cooks and two accomplices tried to rob the store manager of $30,000 in cash as he returned from a nearby bank with McCarthy at his side.

 McCarthy, 33, intervened and was shot by Cooks, they said. The would-be robbers fled with no money and were later caught. Cooks' accomplices both got 20-year sentences after telling police he was the triggerman.

 EXECUTION CALLED 'NOTHING RIGHT'

 In a final statement made while strapped to a gurney in the Texas death chamber, Cooks denied that he shot McCarthy. He was quoted as saying, ``By them executing me ain't doing nothing right.''

 He also apologized to his mother, Annie Daniels, who witnessed his death. ``I'm sorry, Teach, for not being a better son and not doing better things. It wasn't your fault. You raised me the way you should. At least I won't be there no more,'' prison officials quoted him as saying.

 ``You were a good son, son,'' Daniels reportedly replied.

 For his final meal, Cooks requested 12 pieces of chicken, two double-meat cheeseburgers, French fries, two large onions, two large tomatoes, six sweet pickles, salad dressing, five jalapeno peppers, peach cobbler and milk.

 The Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment, said there were no more executions scheduled for this year in the United States.

 In a report issued on Wednesday night, it said executions had declined in the past two years because the public had been made wary of the death penalty by a number of cases in which inmates waiting on death row were found to have been wrongly convicted.

 ``People are very aware that innocent people have walked off of death row, and it wasn't the justice system that always caught these cases,'' center Director Richard Dieter said.

 ``The innocence question strikes them as risky, so across the board, there's close scrutiny being paid to the death penalty,'' he told Reuters.