Career Criminal Put To Death For Killing Wichita Falls Woman 10 Years Ago

KHOU.com

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- Condemned killer Odell Barnes went to his death continuing to profess his innocence. Barnes, 31, whose record included nine felony convictions, was executed Wednesday night for the murder of a Wichita Falls woman more than 10 years ago, making him the 10th Texas death row inmate to receive lethal injection this year.

Barnes insisted he was not responsible for the rape, beating, stabbing and shooting of 42-year-old Helen Bass at her home. The execution was delayed for about 10 minutes while authorities investigated reports that another man Wednesday had confessed to the Bass slaying Nov. 29, 1989.

But Barnes' attorney, Gary Taylor, moments before his client was strapped to the death chamber gurney, said the confession report was a hoax. Gov. George W. Bush's office also considered the report, "determined it was not valid, then proceeded with the process," prison spokesman Larry Todd said.

In a brief final statement, Barnes, whose last meal request was for "Justice, equality and world peace," expressed love to his family, supporters and lawyers. "I thank you for proving my innocence, although it has not been acknowledged in the courts," Barnes said. "May you continue in the struggle and may you change all that's being done here today and in the past." As the lethal drugs began taking effect, he took three deep breaths, accompanied by gurgling sounds. Nine minutes later, he was pronounced dead.

Five members of the Bass family, including the victim's mother and son, watched through a window a feet away. They had no reaction and declined to speak with reporters afterward. Barnes' three attorneys and a spiritual adviser, Robert Muhammed of the Nation of Islam, were among five witnesses selected by Barnes to watch him die. "Truly an innocent man was put to death," Muhammed said. "The real killers are still around."

Besides the capital murder conviction, Barnes' record included five robberies, two rapes and a burglary. At the time of the Bass murder, he was on parole for three weeks after serving 19 months of a 10-year prison term for robbery.

Earlier, he had been paroled after serving only three months of an eight-year sentence for robbery. The paroles came during a period when Texas had too many inmates and not enough prisons and state officials were forced to release inmates to comply with federal court orders governing prison crowding.

While Barnes' execution attracted little publicity in Texas, it drew attention in France, where he corresponded with death penalty opponents who contributed several thousand dollars to his defense. Jack Lang, head of the French National Assembly's foreign affairs committee, met with Barnes last month and was among two French lawmakers to ask Bush to halt the execution.

Afterward, Lang said in a BBC report that the execution proves that Bush is unfit for the U.S. presidency. Bush representatives in Austin, Texas did not immediately return a telephone call today from The Associated Press. Several French television crews were in Huntsville Wednesday night to cover the execution.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 18-0 this week to not recommend to Bush that Barnes' sentence be reduced. The panel also rejected a request for a 360-day reprieve.

That meant the governor could only issue a one-time 30-day reprieve, which he declined to do. The courts also refused to halt the execution. Barnes and his supporters contended his trial was based on fabricated evidence.

"That's a farce," Wichita County District Attorney Barry Macha, who prosecuted Barnes, said this week. "What's troubling with these 11th-hour attempts is that it revictimizes the victim in this case and in effect again rapes the victim and her family's good name."

Macha told the Wichita Falls Times Record News that he had received two phone calls from Bush's office minutes before Barnes was executed. "There was mention that one of the witnesses had recanted, and we were told it was Johnny Rey Humphries, but when my investigator contacted him, he denied it completely," Macha said.

 

Odell BARNES Jr.

Allegation

On March 1, 2000, the State of Texas, with acquiescence by the federal government, executed Odell Barnes by lethal injection. The state and federal governments failed to ensure Barnes's right to a fair and impartial trial. The unfair trial resulted in Barnes's execution.

Crime

Helen Bass was murdered on November 30, 1989. She had been shot, bludgeoned, and stabbed. She was found face down on her bed, nude. A rifle butt was found in her room and a kitchen knife covered in blood was found on the floor just inside the door to her house. The room was in shambles. Her jewelry box and two purses appeared to have been dumped and scattered. Other belongings were discovered near a fence outside her house. Barnes was arrested, tried, and convicted for the murder.

Salient Issues

• The original defense attorneys appointed by the state failed to investigate, and thus failed to discover and present evidence of Barnes's innocence.

• The original defense attorneys failed to have evidence that was used to convict Barnes tested by defense experts.

• Counsel who took over the case for federal appeals sought analysis of the crime scene, fingerprint identification, DNA testing, and additional time to conduct a factual investigation. All these requests were denied.

• Counsel in federal appeals nonetheless carried out independently funded investigations that yielded substantial evidence that raised doubts about Barnes's guilt.

• Blood on Barnes's coveralls, part of the evidence used to secure his conviction, contained a preservative found in test tubes used to store blood. The expert opinion of the chemist, hired by the defense, was that it did not come from "original, legitimate crime scene evidence . . . deriving from natural bleeding from a normal human being."

• The primary eyewitness and his sister saw a man jump a fence near the crime scene one and one-half hours before the victim returned home. The witness told his sister that the man was not Barnes, but testified at trial that it was Barnes.

• The two main witnesses for the prosecution were implicated in the crime by independent witnesses.

• The fingerprint on the murder weapon was analyzed by the state and was found not to be Barnes's fingerprint. A defense expert identified the fingerprint as belonging to one of the state's main witnesses.

• A lamp on which Barnes's fingerprint was found, and that the state claimed had been recently acquired by the victim, had been in the victim's home for at least five years. Barnes had been in the house numerous times and had helped move furniture.

• Evidence suggests that one of the state's witnesses cut a deal with the District Attorney on two drug charges pending against him in exchange for his testimony, although this was not revealed to Barnes's original trial lawyers.

Trial

Barnes was convicted of Helen Bass' murder. The prosecution's case against Barnes consisted primarily of circumstantial evidence. Two witnesses were presented to link Barnes to the murder weapon. There was substantial evidence implicating one of these witnesses in the murder. The other witness agreed to testify in exchange for a deal on two drug charges, despite a state policy prohibiting such deals. There was no other evidence that the gun had been in Barnes's possession or that he had used it. Two small spots of blood were found on coveralls in Barnes's car. The blood was consistent with the victim's blood type, which is also the blood type of 50% of the African-American population in in the U.S. Another witness for the prosecution testified that he had seen Barnes jump a fence at the victim's house one and one-half hours before she returned from work, even though he had earlier told his sister that it was not Barnes. This witness admitted he was at least 45 yards away. Barnes's mother testified that she had brought the victim home that night and returned to her home whereupon her son arrived within five minutes.

Defense attorneys appointed by the state failed to carry out their own investigation or to test independently the forensic evidence. At trial, they did not present evidence of Barnes's innocence or challenge the prosecution's witnesses.

Appeals

Initial appeals at the state level were handled by Barnes's original state appointed lawyers. Both the District Court of Wichita County and the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the trial court's decision and upheld Barnes's conviction and sentence. Part way through the appeals process, new attorneys took over the case. Finding that independent investigations and forensic testing had never been done, they asked courts for funds and time to investigate. In Texas, new evidence must be introduced within 30 days of the original sentencing. They were repeatedly denied, but performed an investigation using volunteers and private funding, which uncovered substantial evidence of innocence. They also uncovered evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, perjury, and constitutional violations. Nevertheless, state and federal courts denied relief.

Conclusion

Odell Barnes was executed despite compelling evidence of his innocence that was never heard by any court in the United States. His original court-appointed defense attorneys failed to provide him with adequate legal counsel. They neither found nor presented evidence of his innocence or evidence challenging key prosecution witnesses. Once the opportunity had been missed at the trial level, state and federal appeals courts refused to hear new evidence – evidence that had been suppressed by the prosecution and that had gone undiscovered by the defense. In many cases, inflexible time limits and increasingly rigid thresholds for review, such as those imposed by the Federal Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, lead to violations of constitutional protections and human rights. Odell Barnes's was one such case. Despite the fact that he did not receive a fair trial and in spite of evidence of his innocence, no appeals court would hear his case.

  

The Wrong Man -- The Odell Barnes Affair

Case account by Michaël Charlton, Philip Wischkaemper and Gary Taylor, Attorneys.

Edited by Stormy Thoming-Gale

JusticeDenied.org

Introduction

Thirty-one-year old Black American Odell Barnes was sentenced to death May 25, 1991, for the murder of his friend and lover, Helen Bass. Although he has continually maintained his innocence, Odell Barnes has been on Texas' death row for nine years. All of his legal recourses have been rejected. The United States Supreme Court examined his last filed appeal in early October 1999. That appeal was rejected on November 4, 1999 and a date for Mr. Barnes' execution was to be fixed within 90 days of that date.

Mr. Odell Barnes now has an execution date set for March 1, 2000. Unless something happens to prevent it, our country may be killing yet another innocent person.

Odell Barnes was condemned to die at the end of a hasty prosecution marked by a botched police investigation. Mr. Barnes' state-designated attorney openly admitted his incompetence. He neglected to call several key witnesses to the stand and defended Mr. Barnes without taking advantage of court-ordered appraisals that were indispensable to his case. Both the judge and prosecutor had been elected by a pro-death penalty population. The prosecutor hand-picked the jury from this same electoral population. All of these together should be enough to justify canceling the death sentence as well as enough to order a new trial. Still, the most important question is: Why has Barnes' guilt never been proven -- much less demonstrated? Is this just another case of a prosecutor's quest to "win at any cost?"

The Crime

In Wichita Falls, Texas, on the night of November 29, 1989, Ms. Helen Bass was murdered. She was killed in her own house by a shot to the head after being beaten, then stabbed with a kitchen knife. Long-time friend and former sister-in-law, Sharon Mergerson, discovered Ms. Bass on November 30, 1989. She found Ms. Bass nude, lying face down on the bed in her bedroom. The bedroom was in shambles, a condition inconsistent with Ms. Bass' housekeeping habits. In the bedroom, Ms. Mergerson observed a lamp, an open jewelry-box and a rifle.

The Prosecution's Theory and The Truth

Eye Witnesses

Odell Barnes was arrested on the basis of the sole testimony of Robert Brooks, who allegedly saw Mr. Barnes in front of Ms. Bass' house on November 29. Robert Brooks testified that he was driving by Ms. Bass' home at approximately 10:30 p.m. on that day, when he saw Mr. Barnes fall down after hurdling the victim's wooden fence. Brooks said that Barnes got up and then went over the chain link fence in the victim's backyard.

Mary Barnes, Odell Barnes' mother, drove Ms. Bass home from work on November 29, arriving at Ms. Bass' home between 11:20 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.. After Ms. Bass went inside her house, Mary Barnes went home. Mary Barnes arrived home at about 11:45 p.m., and Odell Barnes arrived around five minutes later wearing a tan coat and gray pants, and not coveralls as the prosecution claimed. Mr. Barnes went to bed sometime later and went to work the next morning.

Mr. Brooks' testimony became suspect when it was established that the time Mr. Brooks said he saw Mr. Barnes (10:30 p.m.) was nearly 45 minutes before Ms. Bass left work (11:14 p.m.) and one hour before she returned home (11:30 p.m.).

Moreover, Mr. Brooks admitted he was about 40 yards away from the person he claimed was Odell Barnes, that it was the middle of the night on an ill-lit street, and that he was wearing tinted glasses and barely knew Mr. Barnes.

Mr. Brooks further damaged his testimony by initially asserting that he had been alone in his car, although his own sister, Bobbie Jean Brooks, later declared that she was with him in the vehicle that night and that she thought the person she'd seen was Barnes, but could not formally identify him. Ms. Brooks further said that her brother told her that the person they saw was not Odell Barnes. Ms. Brooks said that at the time, they did see Johnnie Ray Humphries at the dead end of Normandy Street where the path ended in the field behind Ms. Bass' house.

At first, Mr. Brooks did not reveal that he was promised assistance in exchange for his testimony.

The Blood

Policemen noticed the presence of numerous blood splashes spread widely around the room where Ms. Bass was discovered. A pair of coveralls that allegedly belonged to Odell Barnes was removed from the car Mr. Barnes, Joseph Barnes and Johnnie Humphries had occupied together. Two tiny bloodstains were found on the coveralls. The blood found on the coveralls is of the same blood group that Ms. Bass and 50% of the Black American population share.

This discovery is incompatible with the prosecution's theory that Mr. Barnes murdered Ms. Bass. If Mr. Barnes was, in fact, at the scene of the crime, his clothes would have been covered with the victim's blood to a much greater extent.

Scientific evidence played almost no role in Mr. Barnes' trial. Trial counsel, although authorized to hire the services of an expert, failed to exploit the possibilities presented by the scientific evidence in Mr. Barnes' case. Both trial lawyers gave affidavits saying that they "never performed or attempted to perform any scientific testing in preparation for the trial of Odell Barnes."

Long after Mr. Barnes was convicted of capital murder, the State sought DNA testing to determine the relationship between Mr. Barnes and the blood spots on the coveralls and the bloodstains on the knife. These tests revealed that the DNA recovered from the bloodstains on the coveralls belonged to the victim. At Counsel's request, Kevin Ballard, M.D., Ph.D. tested the bloodstains on Mr. Barnes coveralls. These were the bloodstains that Judy Floyd, of Gene Screen, determined to have belonged to the victim. Dr. Ballard tested these bloodstains for EDTA, oxalic acid, fluoride and citric acid. These chemicals are the most typical preservatives used with blood.

Dr. Ballard's testing reveals that the reference sample of the victim's blood and the blood stains on Mr. Barnes coveralls both contain citric acid, the preservative used in yellow-topped and blue-topped blood tubes. Based on these tests, Dr. Ballard concluded that the blood on Mr. Barnes' coveralls could not be "original, legitimate crime scene evidence in the form of a stain deriving from natural bleeding from a normal human being." Instead, this blood came from a source which or who possessed preserved blood. In other words, this suggests that the blood on Mr. Barnes' coveralls was planted.

The Fingerprint

Odell Barnes' fingerprint was found on a lamp in the house of the victim. Mr. Barnes had been to Ms. Bass' home several times; she was his mistress. Though this seems to explain the fingerprint on the lamp, the State presented testimony suggesting the lamp was recently acquired in order to demonstrate Mr. Barnes could not have left his fingerprint on the lamp during one of the "social" occasions. However, the lamp had not been recently acquired. Corey Bass, the victim's son, viewed pictures of the lamp used at Mr. Barnes' trial and unequivocally stated that the lamp was in his mother's home for at least five years before her death.

No other fingerprint of Odell Barnes was found, whereas several fingerprints from other unidentified people were taken. However, while Lt. James Cron of the Dallas County Sheriff's Office identified Mr. Barnes' fingerprint on the lamp, he compared no one else's fingerprints to those found at the crime scene because Wichita Falls Police did not provide any other prints for comparison.

The Shoe

Investigators established that one door of the victim's house was kicked in and held the print of a shoe suspected of belonging to Odell Barnes. The expert who examined the door and the shoes of Odell Barnes concluded that there are thousands of shoes capable of making such a print.

The Gun

Willie Bass Jr. was the victim's son. He testified that he gave his mother a .32 caliber pistol and bullets in April, 1988. Malorie Wilson taught Ms. Bass how to load the pistol. Mr. Wilson was supposed to teach Ms. Bass how to use the pistol on the Monday and Wednesday before her death, but they hadn't found an opportunity to do it. Ms. Bass also had a rifle in her bedroom, on Wilson's instructions, because of recent violence in the community.

Larry Fletcher, a firearms examiner with SWIFS (Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office), conducted tests on a revolver and ammunition submitted by the Wichita Falls Police. Fletcher testified that he could neither identify nor eliminate the revolver as the murder weapon because the recovered bullet was too damaged. In Fletcher's opinion, the recovered bullet and the gun were consistent -- the gun and the bullet had six grooves, with right hand twist rifling and both were the same brand.

The Witnesses

Two witnesses, Pat Williams and Johnnie Ray Humphries, claimed to have seen Odell Barnes in possession of the gun.

Pat Williams was one of the State's key witnesses at the trial. Mr. Williams was a known drug dealer in East Wichita Falls. Williams' testimony was instrumental in placing the victim's .32 Caliber handgun in Mr. Barnes' hands on the night of the murder. This was the same gun identified as the one most likely to have been used in the murder.

On January 12, 1990, Mr. Barnes' trial counsel filed a "Motion for Disclosure of Evidence Favorable to the Accused." Within that motion there was a request for information related to "...any deals, grants of immunity or leniency. Or other benefits given to or placed upon any witness." Trial counsel for Mr. Barnes was never told that Pat Williams received a consideration for his testimony. T

estimony in Mr. Barnes' trial began April 29, 1991. On March 1, 1991, Pat Williams pleaded guilty to one count of Delivery of a Controlled Substance and one count of Possession of a Controlled Substance. Williams received a ten year probated sentence and a one thousand dollar fine on the Delivery case with a concurrent ten-year sentence on the Possession case. Both cases were pending during the investigation of the Bass case.

Tammy Lewis, Mr. Williams' former girlfriend, in a sworn statement, said that Pat Williams told her he had an agreement with the Wichita County District Attorney, Barry Macha, concerning his case. If he testified for the State against Mr. Barnes, Mr. Williams would not go to jail. Pat Williams received probation for two drug cases. This was not his only benefit. Williams later was given an "early release" from his probation on both cases.

Pat Williams testified that he was a casual acquaintance of Mr. Barnes. Mr. Williams said he saw Mr. Barnes at the Holiday Creek Apartments in the early morning hours of November, 30, 1989. Mr. Barnes had a gun in his possession, the one owned by Ms. Bass. Williams said he was able to "get a good look" at the gun and that he saw the gun again later that day when he bought it from Johnnie Humphries. Mr. Barnes was not present when Williams bought the gun. At that time, the gun had four live rounds and one empty chamber.

Impeachable Testimony

At trial, Johnnie Ray Humphries testified that Mr. Barnes seemed to already be aware of the murder when he, Mr. Barnes and Joseph Barnes saw the police around the victim's home on their way home from work. However, Joseph Barnes testified that he did not give Johnnie Ray Humphries a ride home from work that day. Therefore, all of his testimony comes under suspicion.

In Humphries' testimony, he said that on November 30, 1989, Odell Barnes, his brother, Joseph Barnes, and Johnnie Humphries came home from work together. Odell Barnes could not get into his house because he did not have a key. They went to Humphries' house. Humphries stayed in the house for six to seven minutes. When he returned, he had a sack with him, which Humphries later traded off to another person.

Johnnie Ray Humphries testified that he was with Mr. Barnes the evening of November, 29, and that Mr. Barnes wore the coveralls that were introduced into evidence. The next morning, Mr. Barnes told Humphries that he had taken a gun from his father and asked for help in selling the gun. After work, the two retrieved the gun from under Mr. Barnes' bed -- it was the victim's gun. Humphries unsuccessfully attempted to sell the gun to two of his family members and eventually sold the gun to Pat Williams.

Rodney Deon Brown was at the Holiday Creek Apartments the night of November 29, and he saw Mr. Barnes and Johnnie Humphries at least three times that night. Later, Mr. Brown went to Pat Williams' house and saw a bloody gun but Williams told him that it did not matter "because if anything goes down, 'he' will state we don't know anything." Further, Mr. Brown saw a bloody purple bandana in the car where Mr. Barnes and Johnnie Ray Humphries sat. When he asked about it, Humphries told him to ignore it. The next day, Brown asked Humphries about the bloody bandana and Humphries said that he had done something, but did not want to talk about it anymore because he thought he might get into trouble.

Harvey Neil was also at the apartments that night and saw Humphries with a .32 caliber pistol wrapped in a purple bandana. Neil said that Humphries wore blue or brown coveralls with blood on them. Humphries asked for twenty dollars for the gun but Williams advised Neal not to buy it.

It does appear that perhaps these two accused Odell Barnes so they could escape being convicted of the crime.

New Suspects

Elizabeth Holley worked as a nurse at the Wichita Falls State Hospital before and after Ms. Bass' murder. As a part of Ms. Holley's duties, she sat with a patient in the substance abuse unit named Homer Kines. When the news reports of this murder were broadcast on television, Ms. Holley was sitting with Mr. Kines. Mr. Kines told her he knew Mr. Barnes did not commit this murder. Mr. Kines said he saw Johnnie Ray Humphries coming out of the door of the victim's home on the day of the murder. Mr. Kines also expressed fear of Johnnie Ray Humphries.

Sandy Durant was in the Wichita County Jail in April, 1996, housed on a cellblock with several other women. Ms. Durant remembers the women in her cell talking about Mr. Barnes after something was on television about his case. The conversation centered around the "true story" of the murder.

Marquita Mackey, one of the women, said that on the night of the murder, she was home when three men came to her apartment covered in blood and carrying guns. She identified these men as "Delbert," "Pat," and "Johnnie Ray." According to Mackey, the men wanted clean shirts and Johnnie Ray threatened her, saying, "I'll kill you like I killed Helen Bass." From this conversation Ms. Durant understood that her cellmates believed Mr. Barnes was "set up" for this murder.

There are several reasons to believe Ms. Durant's statement. First, she took notes of the conversation. Ms. Durant wrote these notes on the back of another note she received from her boyfriend, Michael Street, who was in the Wichita County Jail. When Michael Street was recently shown this note, he identified it as one he gave Ms. Durant in the Wichita County Jail in 1996. Also, the headlines in the Wichita Falls newspaper, the Times Record News, indicate that Mr. Barnes' case was being covered by the press at that time.

One of the women who shared Ms. Durant's cell in April 1996, was Josie Pope Rose, who knows several of the other women. One of those women, Brenda Columbus, has a daughter named Tammy Lewis, who is a hair stylist. Mr. Barnes' attorneys, Taylor and Wischkaemper, approached Ms. Rose to ask for her help in finding Brenda Columbus. Shortly afterward, Tammy Lewis was cutting Ms. Rose's hair and Ms. Rose told her that two lawyers were looking for her mother.

Ms. Lewis told Ms. Rose that her mother had important information about Ms. Bass' murder. Brenda Columbus told her daughter that Marquita Mackey helped "cover up" the murder by getting rid of the bloody clothes and getting clean clothes for Pat Williams, Johnnie Ray Humphries, and Pat's cousin from Dallas. Columbus said that the men first approached her but she refused. Marquita Mackey's apartment was very close to the apartment where Columbus lived.

Duretha McKnight was at Johnnie Ray Humphries' home when he and his sister, Dedra Humphries, got into an argument. The police were called and when they arrived Dedra told them that Johnnie Ray Humphries was a drug dealer, had guns and that he killed Ms. Bass. Later that evening, Dedra and Ms. McKnight were in Dedra's apartment when Johnnie Ray Humphries came over. Johnnie Ray Humphries yelled at Dedra about telling the police those things, but he never denied they were true.

Lastly, Odell Barnes had no motive whatsoever to kill his friend.

After reading his case, you are sure to see that a very serious doubt exists as to Odell Barnes' guilt. His death sentence must be overturned before this irrevocable penalty is enforced.

Odell Barnes Jr.