[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, VA., FLA., ALA.

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 9




TEXAS----impending execution

Dallas County man set for execution



A man linked to a 1993 murder through DNA evidence is scheduled to be the last 
inmate executed by the state of Texas in 2018.

Alvin Braziel Jr., 43, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday at the 
Huntsville “Walls” Unit. He would be the 13th inmate put to death by the state 
this year.

Braziel has been incarcerated at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston since 2001 for 
the murder of 27-year-old Douglas White.

Court testimony states that, on Sept. 21, 1993, Douglas and his newlywed wife, 
Lora, were walking along a jogging trail at Eastfield College in Mesquite. 
While walking along the trail, a man, later identified as Braziel, stepped out 
from behind the bushes and pointed a gun at from behind the bushes and pointed 
a gun at them.

According to court records, the man demanded money from the young couple. Lori 
testified that she and her husband prayed during the robbery. “Where’s your God 
at now?” Braziel asked before shooting Douglas twice.

Braziel would then drag Lora behind some bushes and sexually assault her before 
running off. Douglas died from his injuries and Lora survived to report the 
incident to law enforcement.

The case went unsolved for years, until DNA evidence taken from the female 
victim linked Braziel to the crime. At the time Braziel was serving a five-year 
sentence in TDCJ custody for sexual assault of a child. During his trial, 
Braziel maintained that he did not kill Douglas.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Braziel’s last round of appeals in 2016. As of 
Saturday afternoon, there were no pending appeals in the Supreme Court.

(source: normantranscript.com)








VIRGINIA:

Murder in the Mountains: Buchanan man executed after violent rape, attack on 
sister-in-law----Roger Coleman professed his innocence until his execution in 
1992, and his case gathered national attention with showcases on talk shows and 
religious figures speaking out against his execution.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following story is one of 38 featured in the newly released 
book, “Murder in the Mountains: High-profile cases in the Deep South counties 
of Southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia,” by the editorial staffs of 
the Bluefield Daily Telegraph and Register-Herald in Beckley.

Wanda Faye Thompson McCoy picked up the phone around 9:30 p.m. at her home in 
the remote Long Bottom area near Grundy, Virginia. She recognized the voice on 
the other end of the line.

Her husband, Bradley, was calling from his workplace at a coal company because, 
he would later say, his 19-year-old wife “was more or less afraid to stay by 
herself.”

It was the last time they would talk.

Approximately an hour later on that Tuesday, March 10, 1981, the young woman 
was brutally raped and murdered. Her assailant slashed a wound in her neck 4 
inches deep, severing her jugular vein, according to court testimony. She was 
also stabbed twice in the chest.

Bradley McCoy left work around 11:05 and arrived home about 10 minutes later to 
find his wife in a pool of blood in their bedroom, he said at the subsequent 
murder trial.

Upon his discovery of the body, Bradley called his father Hezzie, who notified 
the authorities. A dispatcher at the sheriff’s department testified that she 
received the call at 11:21.

The victim’s body was “still warm,” said county medical examiner Dr. Thomas 
McDonald, when he arrived at the scene of the crime. He placed the approximate 
time of death at 10:30 p.m.

Forensic photos taken at the scene indicated Wanda’s body was dragged from the 
living room to the bedroom.

A state medical examiner, Dr. David Oxley, would testify that Wanda died from a 
“slash wound to the throat.” Word quickly spread that the teenager had nearly 
been decapitated.

The Wytheville office of Virginia State Police began the investigation, led by 
Trooper Jack Davidson. He announced that the following Monday night that Roger 
Keith Coleman, also of Grundy, had been arrested for the crime. A press report 
indicated that Bradley McCoy had given police Coleman’s name.

Coleman, 22, was married to the victim’s sister.

So began a sensational, emotionally charged public spectacle on the local, 
national and international level that continued even after Coleman’s execution 
by the state of Virginia on May 20, 1992.

• • •

One year and a week after the murder, the county courthouse in Grundy opened 
its doors for the first day of Coleman’s trial. Newsweek magazine would later 
report that signs were visible stating “Time for another hanging in Grundy,” 
and that townspeople lined up for seats in the gallery.

Circuit Court Judge Nick E. Persin sequestered the jury at a local motel, with 
good reason. There was plenty of talk going around.

Coleman’s past was known in the county. He had gotten into trouble as a 
teenager for making obscene phone calls, according to a story reported years 
later in The Washington Post Magazine.

In April 1977, shortly before his graduation from Grundy High School, Coleman 
knocked on the door at the home of Brenda Rife. The area was suffering from 
then-frequent flooding, causing the school to be closed, and phone lines were 
down. According to court records cited in an Associated Press story, Coleman 
asked for a glass of water, then drew a gun.

At gunpoint, he made Rife tie up her 6-year-old daughter, then threw Rife onto 
a bed. She refused his order to undress, and escaped when she realized that 
Coleman had left his gun outside the room.

Coleman was sentenced to 3 years in the state penitentiary for the attack. He 
served 20 months, according to the Post.

On a dark and cold Monday night in January 1981, two women working in the 
Buchanan County library had an unsettling encounter with a man who they would 
identify as Coleman.

According to a story first reported in the Bristol (Virginia) Herald-Courier, 
Patricia Hatfield said that the man walked through the front door with “this 
cold, dead look,” and masturbated on the desk. He ran off as she called police.

The other library worker, Jean Gilbert, was also an artist, the newspaper story 
related. She drew a picture of the stranger. A policeman suggested he could be 
Coleman, and a check of a high school yearbook resulted in a “spot on” 
identification. Gilbert is now deceased.

Local law enforcement did not pursue the 1981 complaint, Hatfield said. After 
Coleman was charged with McCoy’s death, Hatfield told the Herald-Courier that 
she thought, “If somebody had taken the library thing seriously, this might not 
have happened.”

Coleman pleaded innocent of the charges of rape and of murder in the commission 
of rape. The maximum sentence for murder in Virginia was death.

• • •

The prosecution in the McCoy murder trial began making its case on March 16, 
1982, calling 21 witnesses to the stand that day.

A forensic expert from Roanoke, Virginia, Elmer Gist Jr., detailed that he had 
examined hair, saliva and blood samples from Coleman, and samples of hair and 
semen taken from the victim’s body, according to trial coverage in the 
Bluefield Daily Telegraph.

Gist said that Coleman’s blood type was B, which he said is present in about 10 
% of the population. Semen taken from the victim’s vagina indicated B type 
blood.

McCoy had type O blood - the same type found sprinkled on Coleman’s blue jeans, 
Gist said.

Blood was detected on a yellow-handled pocket knife surrendered by Coleman, but 
the amount was too limited to determine origin or identification, Gist 
reported.

During the four-day trial, the prosecution contended that earlier on the night 
of the murder, Coleman had gone to the residence of Sandra Stiltner, across 
Slate Creek from the McCoys’ home. They alleged that Stiltner’s husband met 
Coleman at the front door. Coleman reportedly asked for a tape he claimed he 
had left there a few days earlier. He then left.

Grundy attorney Tom Scott, aiding in the prosecution’s case, told the court, 
“Wanda Faye McCoy was not the intended victim. This man is a shrewd individual. 
He left his tape there … His plan had been foiled. … He could not kill and 
rape.”

According to the state’s timeline, Coleman then waded across Slate Creek to 
Wanda McCoy’s residence, believing correctly that her husband was away at work.

During his final statement, Prosecutor Mickey McGlothlin discounted a statement 
by Coleman which indicated blood found on his pants leg — which matched the 
victim’s blood type — may have come from a cat scratch. The prosecutor noted 
that Coleman said he was not sure where the blood came from, or how his pants 
legs got wet.

Scott said Coleman had failed to “account for his steps” from the speculated 
time of the killing to the time he arrived at his home.

Coleman, during testimony, maintained he was at a coal company bath house in 
Grundy when the slaying occurred.

Scott stated, “Mrs. McCoy was killed in a cold, calculated, inhumane manner.” 
As he held color photographs of her body before her jurors, he talked about the 
deep throat wound and the chest stabbings.

“That’s an animal that did that,” he said.

McGlothlin recommended a death sentence to the jury.

Eventually, it was the defense’s turn to present its final statement.

Coleman had sat most of the morning slumped back in a brown cushioned chair, 
according to the Daily Telegraph account of the trial. His hands remained 
clasped until one of his court-appointed attorneys, Stephen Arey, stood to 
address the court.

For the 1st time in his trip, Coleman momentarily shed tears.

Arey reviewed principal pieces of evidence that had been presented.

He said that foreign hair on Wanda’s body was “consistent” with that of the 
defendant, but that experts could not say if it was definitely that of Coleman.

There was blood on the woman’s leg that was the same blood type as Coleman, but 
he reminded the court that about “10 %” of all persons have Type B blood.

He noted that about 40 to 45 % of the population had Type O blood, the same as 
Wanda McCoy’s — the same type found on Coleman’s pants.

“These are not unique facts,” Arey emphasized. “These are percentages … .”

He then suggested that evidence at the scene may have been tampered with due to 
the numerous law enforcement officers who had been summoned to the murder 
scene. He questioned why the scene was not immediately secured.

“There were people parading in and out of there that night. Was the light on or 
off? Was the furniture overturned or not?” he asked.

“They must have been falling all over themselves in there.”

A discrepancy was pointed out, that one officer recalled that the victim’s 
hands were near her socks when he arrived at the home. All other witnesses said 
that the woman’s hand were raised above her head.

McGlothlin, responding to that comment, said, “The officer made a mistake.”

Judge Persin read the jurors their instructions — and ordered Buchanan County 
Sheriff Auburn Ratliff to check the jury room for “any foreign matter.”

The jury began deliberations about 6 p.m. on that Thursday night. They were 
dismissed at 8 p.m. for dinner, and returned at about 9:30 p.m. By 
approximately 10:45, they had reached a decision on both the rape and murder 
charges.

Guilty.

• • •

Consistent with Virginia state law, the jury returned to the courtroom the next 
morning to deliberate on the sentence for the murder conviction.

Before their verdict was ready, Persin said “threats had been received.” He 
cleared the courtroom of “some 150 spectators,” according to the Daily 
Telegraph coverage. Each spectator was searched before being allowed back in 
the room to hear the jury’s decision.

They recommended the death penalty. Persin set sentencing for the following 
month, nothing that state law required the filing of a report by the probation 
department before he could act.

On April 23, the sentencing hearing commenced. James Bevins, a probation and 
parole officer, delivered his pre-sentencing report. Under cross examination, 
he said he interviewed jailers and said their comments were “favorable. … They 
had no problems with Mr. Coleman.”

Defense attorney Terry Jordan pointed out that the report noted Coleman’s 
“intelligence and religious beliefs.” He said Coleman, who was still in the 
custody of the county sheriff’s department, attended all the religious services 
he could while in jail — and had taken a correspondence Bible course.

Appealing for mercy, Jordan said, “We submit that this man should live … .”

McGlothlin, in rebuttal, recalled the trial testimony that Wanda McCoy was at 
home, “minding her own business, (when) the defendant … raped her, brutally 
murdered her.”

He cited the 1977 attempted rape conviction.

“Fortunately, she got away,” the prosecutor said. “Wanda Faye Thompson McCoy 
did not get away.”

“He showed Wanda Faye Thompson McCoy absolutely no mercy. No mercy whatsoever,” 
McGlothlin said. “He must be banished from the community. I ask the court to 
sentence him to death.”

He called Coleman a “dangerous man,” and commented that many men turn to 
religion while in jail.

Persin asked Coleman if he had anything to say. He said he believed the 
murderer was still walking the streets.

“I still maintain my innocence,” he said. “But I will not ask for mercy.”

Whatever would happen to him “is the Lord’s will,” he said.

On the rape conviction, Persin sentenced Coleman to a life prison term. Then he 
addressed his decision on the murder charge.

He said it is very difficult to sit and judge one’s fellow man, but that it is 
sometimes “absolutely necessary if we’re going to live in an orderly society.”

As to the jury’s recommendation, he said, “Now the court is faced with that 
same awesome responsibility the jury had. … The court puts a great deal of 
emphasis in jury verdicts. To do otherwise would really frustrate the system 
under which we operate in this country.”

Calling the murder “a vicious crime,” he said, “I can’t disagree with the 
verdict of the jury. Therefore the judgment of the court … is that you be 
sentenced to death in the electric chair and the court will set the date of 
execution for July 12, 1982.”

The judge offered the opinion that whatever happened to him in the future, 
Coleman “must face a higher judge than this court and it is my hope and prayer 
that the higher judge will grant you mercy.”

Scott, one of the prosecution’s attorneys, told the Herald Courier later, 
“There are many thoughtful people on both sides of the issue of the death 
penalty — and all of them have valid points. But if ever there were a case for 
the death penalty, this was the case.”

It sounded final. It was anything but final.

• • •

10 years later, Roger Keith Coleman was still living on death row.

Death sentences trigger automatic appeals, taking months and years to play out, 
and Coleman’s case was no different.

As time unfolded, stories started to circulate claiming that another Buchanan 
County resident had raped and killed Wanda McCoy, and that he had attacked 
other women near Grundy.

In early 1992, one of those women told her story of an attack to a Roanoke 
television station, according to newspaper reports. She died the next day – 
from a prescription pill overdose, a police report concluded.

Coleman’s defense tried to introduce that line of stories as “new evidence” in 
their appeals.

Federal Judge Glen Williams told The Associated Press in May 1992, “The man 
implicated denied it, and his blood (type A) doesn’t match the evidence and 
Roger Coleman’s does.”

That crucial point was hammered home by Virginia Senior Assistant Attorney 
General Donald R. Curry, who presented the state’s case against Coleman’s 
petition.

“He (Coleman) is attempting to abuse and manipulate the system,” Curry said. 
“These claims are contrived.”

Tom Scott, the lawyer who helped prosecute Coleman in his original 1981 trial, 
reinforced Williams’ contention about the 1992 proceedings, stating that “the 
scientific evidence already in existence, including the DNA evidence, which 
Coleman himself commissioned, reinforces Coleman’s guilt and the fact that he 
acted alone ….”

Scott predicted, correctly, that the appeal “will clearly be rejected.”

After failing with state appeals, the next step was an appeal to the federal 
courts.

Coleman’s legal team missed the deadline to file that federal appeal – by 1 
day. The United States Supreme Court eventually ruled that the missed deadline, 
as specified in law, actually did matter, and that the right to an appeal had 
been forfeited.

• • •

Along the way, Coleman’s case was transformed into a sort of national 
plebiscite on capital punishment in America. At the heart of this effort were 2 
people who became the convicted man’s chief advocates – James C. McCloskey, 
executive director of Centurion Ministries, and Washington, D.C.-based attorney 
Kathy Behan.

Celebrities, big-city newspapers, magazines and national TV talk shows were 
recruited to allow Coleman to proclaim his innocence as the date approached for 
his appointment with the electric chair.

Former Bristol Herald-Courier reporter Kathy Still said earlier this year, 
“They thought they’d found the poster boy for wrongful conviction in a 
death-row case.”

The reputation of Grundy and its legal apparatus were trashed.

The initial trial was described as “a garden-variety capital case” in a 1992 
Newsweek magazine article. It said the crime took place “in a small, sooted 
town of central Appalachia,” and it gave rise to “the kind of twisted tale that 
gives Southern Gothics a good name. Trouble is, this one’s not fiction … .”

The article described the process as “Investigation, trial, conviction, some 
mediocre lawyering, a few unsuccessful appeals – in America, the defendant gets 
a basic trial, not a perfect one.”

The article alleged falsely, “Coleman was convicted and sentenced to death, 
wholly on circumstantial evidence.”

Regarding the missed filing deadline for a federal appeal, the national news 
magazine quoted Behan as saying, “We’ve all heard of people who get off because 
of a technicality. … Roger is going to be executed because of one.”

Coleman had sought out McCloskey in 1988. His Centurion Ministries represented 
clients who they thought may have been wrongly convicted. McCloskey had a good 
record of identifying prosecutorial errors and of freeing innocent people.

In a 2006 article in the magazine Philadelphia, author Matthew Teague said that 
when McCloskey met Coleman, “he found the inmate to be wholly unlike the 
monster the locals described. He seemed thoughtful and articulate, soft-spoken 
and gentle.”

The meeting took 3 hours, the article said, even though McCloskey had already 
become familiar with the case by analyzing trial transcripts, legal motions, 
witness accounts and the like.

“McCloskey already knew all the details, but he wanted to test Coleman, to hear 
his voice, to know him as a man,” Teague wrote. McCloskey was quoted as saying 
that Coleman “looked me square in the eye. Earnest. Authentic. Forthright. Not 
charismatic, he could never snow you over with his charisma. But he was 
forthright.”

Eventually, Coleman made his case for his innocence on Larry King Live, the 
Today Show and the Phil Donahue Show, one of the top nationally-syndicated TV 
talk shows of the era.

The Washington Post Magazine story said, “Soft-spoken and thoughtful, Roger 
Coleman had presented his case calmly and articulately, with logical 
explanations and apparent sincerity.”

Pope John Paul II and Mother Theresa spoke out against his execution, according 
to The Associated Press.

A massive last-ditch appeal was launched to have people write letters to 
Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder, asking him to call off Coleman’s 
execution.

Roger Keith Coleman’s face was not the one that the people of Grundy would have 
wanted to represent their region on the cover of a national news magazine.

Yet the bespectacled visage of Coleman was the cover image of the May 18, 1992 
edition of Time. The bold headline beneath his photo stated, “THIS MAN MIGHT BE 
INNOCENT. THIS MAN IS DUE TO DIE.”

Coleman died 2 days later in a prison electric chair.

His final words included, “An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight. 
When my innocence is proven I hope Americans will recognize the injustice of 
the death penalty as all other civilized nations have. …”

Still, who witnessed the execution, said there were “around 100 TV cameras” 
outside the prison that day.

• • •

Even after the execution, the case did not go away. Death penalty opponents 
pushed for more DNA testing, using newly refined procedures, to find out once 
and for all if Coleman had been guilty or innocent.

Mark R. Warner, who had been sworn in as Virginia’s governor in 2002, ordered 
new testing of material that had been preserved since March 1981. It was said 
to be the second case nationally in which DNA evidence of an executed man was 
analyzed.

The results were announced in January 2006. The chance that Coleman was not the 
murderer was established at 1 in 19 million. Warner announced that the testing 
had conclusively proven that Coleman was guilty. The debate was over.

To his credit, McCloskey fully acknowledged he had wrongly backed Coleman.

“We now know that Roger’s proclamations of innocence, even as he sat strapped 
in the electric chair moments before his death, were false,” McCloskey said in 
a press statement dated Jan. 12, 2006. “Indeed, this is a bitter pill to 
swallow.”

“Even though the results are far different than I expected, and even though 
this particular truth feels like a kick in the stomach, I do not regret that 
this effort has at last brought finality to all who have had an interest in 
this matter,” he said.

“I trust that all those with the power and authority to do so throughout the 
nation will follow in Governor Warner’s footsteps – to have the courage and 
vision to preserve all the biological evidence and allow post conviction and 
even post execution DNA and other forensic testing to go forward so that the 
absolute truth may be known to all.

(source: bdtonline.com)








FLORIDA----impending execution

Florida Gives Jose Jimenez Execution Date of December 13, 2018



The Supreme Court of the United States has refused to halt the execution of 
Florida inmate Jose Jimenez. The Supreme Court did not issue a reason for 
refusing to hear the case. Jose has 2 appeals pending before the Florida 
Supreme Court, including one filed Saturday.

Jose Antonio Jimenez is scheduled to be executed at 6 pm EST, on Thursday, 
December 13, 2018, at the Florida State Prison near Raiford, Florida. 
55-year-old Jose is sentenced to death for the murder of 63-year-old Phyllis 
Minas in Miami, Florida on October 2,1992. Jose has spent the last 25 years on 
death row in Florida.

Prior to being arrest fro murder, Jose worked as a painter

On October 2, 1992, Jose Jimenez entered the home of Phyllis Minas, located in 
a north Miami apartment complex. Jimenez was also a resident of the apartment 
complex. Once Jimenez was inside, he beat and stabbed Phyllis. A neighbor heard 
her screaming “Oh God, Oh my God!” during the attack and attempted to enter the 
apartment through the open front door. As they were entering, Jimenez slammed 
the door shut and locked it. The neighbor called the police.

Jimenez exited the apartment by going out onto a balcony, where he jumped to a 
neighboring balcony before jumping to the ground. A custodian witnessed a man, 
whom he later identified as Jimenez, drop to the ground from the balcony. 
Jimenez changed his clothes and cleaned himself up before re-entering the 
complex and asking someone to use their phone to call a cab.

When rescue workers arrived at Phyllis’ apartment, she was still alive. She 
died a short time later. Jimenez was arrested on October 5, 1992, at his 
parents home in Miami. His fingerprints had been found inside Phyllis’ 
apartment. He was tried, convicted, and then sentenced to death in December 
1994. The jury’s decision was unanimous.

Following his death sentence, Jose was also charged and convicted of 2nd-degree 
murder of Marie Debas, robbery with a deadly weapon, and burglary with assault 
for a crime that occurred on October 19, 1990. For that crime he was sentenced 
to a total of 49 years in prison.

Jose was scheduled to be executed earlier this year, however, it was stayed by 
the Florida Supreme Court just days before the execution. Jose’s case was 
stayed after his attorney requested more time to review over 1,000 new pages of 
police documents from the initial police investigation, that was given to him 
for the 1st time just 2 weeks before the scheduled execution. Jose’s lawyer 
further said, that 2 weeks was not enough time to throughly examine all the 
documents, as it appeared some handwritten notes by the detectives contradicted 
their trial testimony.

Please pray for peace for the family of Phyllis Minas and Marie Debas. Please 
pray for strength for the family of Jose Jimenez. Please pray that if Jose is 
innocent, lacks the competency to be executed or should not be executed for any 
other reason, that evidence will be presented prior to his execution. Please 
pray that Jose may come to find peace through a personal relationship with 
Jesus Christ, if he has not already.

(source: theforgivenessfoundation.org)








ALABAMA:

Man convicted of killing Auburn student from Marietta appeals death sentence



A man sentenced to death row for the kidnapping and killing of an Auburn 
University student from Marietta in 2008 has filed an appeal for a new trial, 
Channel 2 Action News reported Friday.

Courtney Lockhart, a U.S. Army veteran from Smith Station, Ala., was convicted 
in 2011 for the murder of Lauren Burk, who was 18 years old and a college 
freshman.

Lockhart was found guilty of forcing her to undress before shooting her in the 
back when she tried to jump out of her moving car March 4, 2008. She was found 
a few miles from Auburn’s campus and died later that night at East Alabama 
Medical Center.

Burk’s Honda Civic was found burning shortly afterward at the Hinton Field 
parking lot near a dormitory on campus. Lockhart was arrested 3 days later in 
Phenix City, Ala.

According to a letter from the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, Lockhart is 
now filing for a new trial, claiming his defense attorney, Jeremy Armstrong, 
gave such an inadequate defense that he deserves another chance, Channel 2 
reported.

Jim Burk, Lauren’s father, told the news station he’s furious that Lockhart is 
trying to appeal and get out of his death sentence.

“Oh, it’s made me sad and nervous and upset and confused altogether,” Burk 
said. “My goal is to make sure he gets nothing that he wants.”

In 2011, Lockhart was sentenced to life without parole by a Lee County, Ala., 
jury, but the judge decided to overrule the jury and sentenced Lockhart to 
death.

“And for him to be able to sit in that cell every day and think about his life 
ending one day like my daughter’s did, it gives me some sort of comfort,” Burk 
told Channel 2.

Lauren Burk graduated from Walton High School in 2007 and was a member of Delta 
Gamma sorority at Auburn.

Lockhart’s hearing will be Dec. 17 in Alabama.

(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)