USA: PENA MORTE; GIUSTIZIATO PER DELITTO COMMESSO A 17 ANNI

 HUNTSVILLE (STATI UNITI), 9 AGO - Sale a 20 il numero delle persone messe a morte nello stato americano del Texas dal' inizio dell' anno. L' ultimo ad essere consegnato al boia e' stato T. J. Jones, un giovane di 25 anni, riconosciuto responsabile di aver ucciso nel 1994, quando aveva appena 17 anni, un pensionato di 75 anni.

   Il delitto avvenne davanti alla casa della vittima, Willard Davis, a Longview, in Texas. Jones, che era insieme ad un complice ed in un forte stato di ubriachezza, sparo' all' anziano dopo che questi si era rifiutato di consegnargli la sua auto.

  ''Vorrei dire ai familiari della vittima che imploro il loro perdono e che sono veramente pentito per quello che feci. Mamma e papa', vi amo. Non preoccupatevi per me'', ha detto Jones prima di essere sottoposto all' iniezione letale.

  T. J. Jones e' la dodicesima persona ad essere messa a morte nel Texas nonostante il crimine di cui era accusata fosse stato commesso prima dei 18 anni. Nel carcere di Huntsville sono gia' state programmate altre quattro esecuzioni capitali entro la fine del mese di agosto.  

Texas man convicted of murder at 17 executed

09-AGO-2002

An 8th-grade dropout who was a teenager when he was convicted of killing an East Texas man during a carjacking more than 8 years ago apologized for the crime and was executed today.

 "I would like to say to the victim's family I regret the pain I put y'all through. I hope you can move on after this," T.J. Jones said, looking at relatives of his victim.

 Then Jones, 25, turned to a second window where his mother was watching and said, "Mom, I love y'all. Take care. I'm ready."

 He gasped and stopped breathing. Jones was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m., 7 minutes after the lethal dose began. His mother sobbed quietly and was comforted by Jones' aunt.

 Jones was 17 when he was arrested with 3 companions for gunning down 75-year-old retired electrician Willard Davis, who had surrendered his car to them outside his home in Longview, about 190 miles north of Houston.

 "They tried to make him get in the back seat and he said: 'No. Here's my car. Please let me go to my wife,'" recalled Alfonso Charles, an assistant district attorney in Gregg County who helped prosecute Jones. "And T.J. shot him right between the eyes."

 Jones' lawyers filed no late appeals to try to halt the punishment.

 "He has exhausted his remedies," attorney Don Davidson said.

 Jones' sentence and his age at the time of the shooting renewed criticism from traditional death penalty opponents. As a teenage offender, Jones "would not be facing this punishment in almost any other country in the world," Amnesty International said in a statement.

 "He's not a juvenile," Gregg County District Attorney Bill Jennings responded. "Under Texas law he is an adult and he's in an adult system.

 "He did an adult crime and he deserves to receive an adult penalty, which in this case 12 jurors decided should be death."

 Texas is among 22 states that allow capital punishment for 17-year-olds.

 Jones was the 12th Texas inmate and the 20th in the United States executed since 1976 for a murder committed when the killer was younger than 18. In May, and with much greater outcry from capital punishment opponents, Napoleon Beazley received lethal injection in Texas for killing the father of a federal judge. Beazley was 17 at the time of the crime.

 "I'm pretty sure of my fate here," Jones, who declined to speak with reporters in the weeks leading up to his execution, said on a Web site sponsored by an anti-death penalty organization. On the site, he asked for pen pals "who will give me moral support and if possible help me to make the rest of my stay here as comfortable as can be in this situation."

 Court records show Jones and 3 partners approached Davis the mid-afternoon of Feb. 2, 1994 and demanded his red Chrysler LeBaron. When Davis surrendered the car but refused to go with them, he was shot with a .357-caliber Magnum.

 Witnesses saw Jones and his companions get in the car and drive away. Davis' wife of 56 years heard the shots from inside her house and was among the 1st to see the body.

 All 4 teenagers were arrested soon after the shooting.

 "The car made it a short distance before a tire blew out," Jennings said.

 Jones' partners were convicted of engaging in organized criminal activity and received long prison terms.

 Testimony showed Jones lived in a gang house with the then-16-year-old mother of his child and was addicted to smoking marijuana laced with embalming fluid. He had been arrested repeatedly as a juvenile for burglary and police said the gang was believed responsible for numerous assaults.

 3 days before the Davis killing, authorities determined Jones shot a convenience store clerk during a robbery in nearby Tyler. The victim survived 5 bullet wounds and testified against Davis in the punishment phase of the capital murder trial.

 Another 2 executions are set for next week, and 2 more for later in the month, including Toronto Patterson, who was 17 in 1995 when he was arrested for shooting a mother and her 2 young daughters at their home in Dallas.

 Jones becomes the 20th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 2nd in as many days. Richard William Kutzner, 59, was executed Wednesday for killing a Montgomery County woman during a robbery. Kutzner had a 2nd death sentence for a similar Harris County slaying. Jones was the 276th condemned inmate put to death in Texas since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982.

 Jones becomes the 40th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 789th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.