USA: PENA MORTE; ESEGUITA IN TEXAS 19MA CONDANNA NEL 2002

 HUNTSVILLE, 8 AGO - Con la messa a morte di un uomo accusato di aver aggredito ed ucciso due donne nella zona di Houston, il Texas conferma il suo record di esecuzioni capitali negli stati americani.

  Richard Kutzner, 59 anni, e' la diciannovesima persona uccisa con un iniezione letale nel penitenziario di Huntsville dall' inizio dell' anno e non e' che il primo dei sei detenuti le cui condanne alla PENA DI MORTE sono state gia' fissate entro il mese in corso.

  Kutzner era accusato di aver aggredito ed assassinato nel gennaio del 1996 due donne, Kathryn Harrison e Reta Van Huss, che furono anche derubate di soldi e gioielli. L' uomo aveva sempre proclamato la sua innocenza ed anche prima di essere sottoposto all' iniezione letale ha ribadito di essere vittima di un errore giudiziario. 

TEXAS -execution -  Career criminal with 2 death sentences executed

08-AGO-2002 

Repeatedly proclaiming his innocence, a career criminal with convictions in 3 states was executed Wednesday evening for killing a suburban Houston woman.

 "There's nothing else I can say. I didn't do this," Richard William Kutzner, 59, said while strapped to the death chamber gurney.

 Looking at the daughter of one of his victims, Kutzner blamed the murder on "2 guys who worked for me."

 He also renewed his call for DNA testing on evidence from the crime scene that he insisted would exonerate him. Kutzner said he hoped his death would keep others from sharing his fate.

 "Warden, this is murder just as surely as the people who killed Rebecca's mother," he said, referring to Rebecca Harrison. "I guess that's it. Warden, send me home."

 As the drugs began taking effect, he remarked, "I taste it. I'm gone" After uttering a long gasp, he was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m., 10 minutes after the lethal dose began.

 It was 1 of 2 death sentences given to Kutzner, who acknowledged offenses but insisted they didn't include a pair of Houston-area slayings 17 days apart in 1996.

 "I was convicted on the barest of circumstantial evidence," he said recently from death row. "I have never ever harmed anybody in the course of my so-called criminal career."

 Kutzner was convicted of robbery in California in the 1960s, theft in Texas in 1984 and aggravated robbery 4 times in Texas in 1985. The Mount Clemens, Mich., native also was convicted of armed robbery in suburban Detroit and served prison time in his home state.

 Condemned for strangling Kathryn Harrison, 59, at her Montgomery County real estate office, he was the 19th inmate executed this year in Texas and first of two set for consecutive evenings this week.

 Harrison was choked and bound with plastic wire and cable ties Jan. 22, 1996. A videocassette recorder and a computer keyboard were missing. The restraints on the victim typically are used by air conditioning technicians, a job held by Kutzner and a trade he learned while imprisoned in California for an Orange County conviction.

 Kutzner was within a day of execution in July 2001 when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the punishment to examine his request for DNA testing on evidence. His appeal was the 1st under a new state law, intended to boost the integrity of the Texas criminal justice system, that provided state-paid DNA testing in cases where biological evidence exists and the identity of an offender was at issue.

 Kutzner argued a hair at the scene of Harrison's murder was not his, was withheld from evidence and should be tested. Prosecutors contended the woman's office was a public place, negating the significance of a hair belonging to someone other than Kutzner.

The court agreed with the state and refused the request.

 "I expect the people of Texas really do want justice and want to know if they're going to kill people, at least they're going to kill the right ones," Kutzner said. "If I got a DNA test, I can show somebody else was at the scene of the crime."

 Kutzner's lawyer, Jim Marcus, argued in federal court appeals that testing of hair and also of scrapings from under the fingernails of the victim could show someone else committed the murder.

 "Placing a known offender, with no other connection to the scene, near the body of the victim would be powerful evidence of Mr. Kutzner's innocence," Marcus said.

 "I'm sure he's proclaiming innocence, but there's no doubt in my mind," said Mike Griffin, the Montgomery County district attorney who prosecuted what he called "a tremendously good circumstantial case."

 Griffin said the state appeals court believed even if DNA showed the hair belonged to someone else, "the evidence is so overwhelming that what difference would it make?"

 Earlier Wednesday, the district attorney's office gave Marcus the evidence so he could arrange his own tests,

 "It's no indication on our part there's something wrong with the case," said Gail McConnell, an assistant prosecutor who handles appeals in Montgomery County. "We have our evidence. We stick by it. But we're not going to deny any person, especially someone with a death sentence, the ability to test it.

 "As far as we're concerned, we had the evidence to convict."

 The Harrison murder was very similar to one in nearby Harris County. Reta Van Huss, 54, was found Jan. 5, 1996, on the floor of her Spring-area residence where she ran a storage space business. Witnesses said Kutzner had been there a few days earlier, inquiring about space. A contract with his name on it was found on her desk.

 Kutzner endorsed a $300 money order, 1 of 2 money orders stolen from her. He contended another man gave him the money order.

 Then authorities found 30-inch plastic tie wraps at his house and in his vehicle that matched those on the victim. Like Harrison, Van Huss was strangled, and her hands and feet were bound with the strips.

 A Harris County jury took 16 minutes before returning a death sentence.

 Authorities matched the same strips to both killings. An FBI analyst testified that the metal cutter recovered from Kutzner's truck was used to cut the plastic strips at both murder scenes. Friends testified that he gave them Harrison's VCR and keyboard.

 "I didn't do it, I didn't do it," Kutzner repeated from death row. "I've been convicted, and it doesn't make any difference to the courts.

 "I'm an ex-convict," he said, explaining why prosecutors went after him for capital murder. "I was easy."

 On Thursday, convicted killer T.J. Jones was set to die for fatally shooting a 75-year-old Longview man during a 1994 carjacking. Jones was 17 at the time of the crime.

Kutzner becomes the 19th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas, and the 275th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982.

Kutzner becomes the 39th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 788th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.