HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, in a highly unusual vote, recommended a convicted murderer set to die Thursday for his part in the fatal shooting of Houston convenience store clerk have his sentence commuted to life in prison.
The board’s action Wednesday, on a 5-2 vote, leaves the decision on whether Robert Lee Thompson lives or dies with Gov. Rick Perry.
Thompson, 34, was condemned under the Texas law of parties for being an accomplice when Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed, 29, was gunned down 13 years ago.
Thompson’s partner, Sammy Butler, received a life prison term.
Thompson got death.
“This is hugely significant,” Patrick McCann, Thompson’s lawyer, said. “I’m thrilled... Whatever gets my guy to a life sentence I’m thrilled with.”
Perry is not required to follow the recommendation of the board, whose members he appoints.
“The governor has received the board’s recommendation but has not made a decision,” Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle said.
Thompson was set to die after 6 p.m. Thursday.
“I spoke with his office of general counsel and his
representative there, and they couldn’t tell me when he would make his decision,” McCann said.
In his clemency request, McCann compared Thompson’s case to that of Kenneth Foster, another inmate condemned under the law of parties.
Two years ago, Foster won a commutation recommendation from the parole board. Perry agreed and Foster now is serving a life sentence. Prison officials said it’s the last time a Texas governor commuted a death row inmate’s sentence to life in prison.
Perry’s explanation for commuting Foster was that Foster and his co-defendant were tried together on capital murder charges for a slaying in San Antonio. In Thompson’s case, he and Butler were tried separately in Houston.
At least a half dozen other Texas inmates have been executed under the law of parties.
Under the law, offenders conspiring to commit one felony like robbery can all be held responsible for another ensuing crime, like murder.
The U.S. Supreme Court since 1982 has barred the death penalty for co-conspirators who don’t themselves kill. The justices, however, in 1987 made an exception, ruling the Eighth Amendment didn’t prohibit execution of someone who plays a major role in a felony that results in murder and whose mental state is one of reckless indifference.
McCann also has an appeal before the Supreme Court raising questions about the competence of Thompson’s trial lawyers, arguing jurors who decided Thompson should be executed never learned of his abusive childhood, an upbringing by a mentally ill and drug- and alcohol-addicted mother and a household where he was “raised in and among felons.”
Thompson believed he was doing a public service by robbing and shooting Asian and Middle Eastern grocery store clerks in Houston. The 10th-grade dropout was 21 at the time of Mohammed’s shooting. Another clerk at the same store was shot four times by Thompson but survived.
“I feel remorse now that I’ve grown and understand certain things now,” Thompson told The Associated Press recently from a visiting cage outside death row. “But as far as my motives, I’m not going to feel guilty about standing behind my community.
“I wasn’t thinking of this being wrong. It was more: You’re not doing us right,” he said of the store clerks. “They rob us. They watch us like crazy. We’re all victims.”
Evidence at his trial showed Thompson, who is black, told detectives he went on a two-month crime spree in 1996 because God told him to do something about store clerks who discriminated against blacks.
The killing was one of three he acknowledged to authorities. In two of the slayings, Thompson told detectives he was the gunman.
Asked in prison if he’d ever killed someone, he replied: “No one died in front of me. I’ve shot at people. Different things happen.”
According to testimony at his trial, Thompson and Butler walked into the southwest Houston convenience store and Thompson demanded money from 32-year-old clerk Mubarakali Meredia. Even though Meredia complied, he was shot. Thompson went around the store counter and shot him three more times, then placed his .25-caliber pistol at Meredia’s head and fired again but the gun was out of ammunition. Instead, court documents show he used a cash register drawer to bash Meredia in the head.
Butler opened fire at Mohammed, hitting him once, then fired again through the passenger side window of their car as he and Thompson were fleeing. Mohammed was killed with the second shot. Jurors decided Butler didn’t intend to kill Mohammed and gave him life in prison rather than death.
Meredia survived his wounds and testified against Thompson.
