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James P. FREE
Jr.
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Rape
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder:
April 24,
1978
Date of birth: 1958
Victim profile: Bonnie Serpico
(female, 34)
Method of murder:
Shooting
Location: DuPage County, Illinois, USA
Status: Executed
by lethal injection in Illinois on April 6,
1995
James Free Jr., 36. Fatally shot
Bonnie Serpico, 34, of Glen Ellyn, after raping her and another
woman April 24, 1978, in a Glen Ellyn factory.
James Free was convicted of the
1978 murder of Bonnie Serpico,
34. He was on leave from the
Army when he slipped into the
office of a data-processing
company in a suburb of Chicago
and, carrying a gun and a knife
and wearing a towel wrapped
around his face, tried to rape
Ms. Serpico and a co-worker. Ms.
Serpico broke away, and Mr. Free
shot her to death. He also shot
the co-worker, who survived.
2 Executions In Illinois,
Rarity There
By Don
Terry - The New York Times
March 23, 1995
The first double execution in Illinois in 43 years, and the first
outside the South since the 1976 Supreme Court ruling that allowed
reinstatement of the death penalty, was carried out by lethal
injection at the Stateville Correctional Center near here early this
morning.
As killers go, the two men put to death were "just
a couple of average Joes," and so the carnival atmosphere that often
accompanies the end of more notorious criminals was absent outside
the prison's high walls.
Baptist ministers opposed to capital punishment
prayed for the souls of the condemned men and for the state, a woman
walked through the cold darkness carrying a sign that said, "Execute
Justice, Not People," and most of the demonstrators on both sides of
the issue had gone home before the executions were complete.
When the serial killer John Wayne Gacy was
executed last May behind the same prison walls, people sold T-shirts.
And they chanted "Let the clown die!" so loudly that a man who lives
a couple of miles away, Jesse Cantu, heard the commotion and hurried
to the prison to join the fun.
In contrast to that night, when Mr. Cantu found
hundreds of people eager for the condemned prisoner's death, this
time there were only a few death-penalty proponents like himself,
along with several dozen opponents.
"These were just a couple of average Joes, who
committed one terrible crime apiece," Mr. Cantu said. "They're not
famous. Maybe that's why more people aren't here. But I came out to
have some fun and to support the death penalty."
Indeed, if there was anything at all
extraordinary about this early morning's proceedings, it was just
how ordinary the ritual of executions has become. A total of 270
people have now been put to death by the states since the Supreme
Court's 1976 ruling, and the routine outside the prisons has become
all but unvarying: Officials emerge to tick off the details matter-of-factly
-- the condemned's last meal, his last words -- and protesters pack
up their candles and begin planning their next vigil.
One demonstrator today, Bill Pelke, a 47-year-old
steelworker, said that last year he stood outside four prisons, from
Idaho to Indiana, to protest executions. Today's vigil was his first
of this year, he said, "and I hope my last, but I know it won't be."
"They're all the same," he said. "Tragic."
The condemned men -- Hernando Williams, the 40-year-old
son of a Chicago minister, and James P. Free Jr., 41, a former Army
mechanic who grew up in Chicago's western suburbs -- committed
unrelated murders and did not know each other until they were sent
to death row nearly 17 years ago.
They died about an hour apart.
Mr. Williams was black, Mr. Free white. They were
executed together, prison officials said, simply because their
appeals had been exhausted at the same time. But some protesters
outside the prison said they believed that the state had timed the
executions to coincide as a way of demonstrating that capital
punishment in Illinois was applied without prejudice.
Mr. Williams was sent to his death for the 1978
murder of Linda Goldstone, a 29-year-old childbirth instructor. He
forced her into the trunk of his car in Chicago and drove her around
the city for 36 hours, raping her at least twice and keeping her in
the trunk even as he attended a court hearing on an earlier rape
charge.
After once giving her $1.25 for bus fare and
freeing her, he changed his mind a few minutes later, recaptured her
and forced her back into his car. Finally he shot her to death.
The Williams case has become a bizarre issue in a
current City Council race in Chicago. Mr. Williams was briefly
married to Shirley Coleman, who is now a Councilwoman, and, although
they were divorced before the murder, her opponent in an April 4
runoff, Hal Baskin, has been quoted in The Chicago Sun-Times as
apparently blaming her at least partly for the crime. "She may not
have been giving the man what he needed at home," he said.
As for Mr. Free, he was convicted of the 1978
murder of Bonnie Serpico, 34. He was on leave from the Army when he
slipped into the office of a data-processing company in a suburb of
Chicago and, carrying a gun and a knife and wearing a towel wrapped
around his face, tried to rape Ms. Serpico and a co-worker. Ms.
Serpico broke away, and Mr. Free shot her to death. He also shot the
co-worker, who survived.
When it came time for Mr. Williams to die today,
he had no last words, the authorities said.
Mr. Free, however, asked for forgiveness, adding,
"Taking my life will not bring back the victims."
"Capital punishment," he said, "is not the answer."
50 F.3d 1362
James P. FREE, Jr., Petitioner-Appellant, v.
Howard A. PETERS, III and Neil F. Hartigan, Respondents-Appellees.
No. 95-1692.
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
Submitted March 21, 1995.
Decided March 21, 1995.1
Published March 29, 1995.
Before POSNER, Chief Judge,
BAUER and CUDAHY, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
Petitioner James P. Free, Jr.
is scheduled to be executed by the State of Illinois on March
22, 1995. He filed a motion under Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b) in the
district court and sought a stay of the execution pending the
U.S. Supreme Court's decision whether to grant a writ of
certiorari in Lackey v. Texas, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 1274,
131 L.Ed.2d 192 (1995) which raises the issue of
[w]hether the execution of a death sentence
constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth
Amendment as understood by the Framers if, as a result of
inordinate delay not attributable to his own conduct, the
condemned inmate is forced to endure nearly two decades on death
row, during which time his execution is repeatedly rescheduled.
Cert. Pet. at ii.
Dist. Ct. order of March 20,
1995.
The district court found the
Lackey case was "clearly and materially distinguishable, and
thus can provide no relief to Free." We agree. In Lackey the
majority of the time that the defendant spent on death row was a
result of very protracted proceedings in his mandatory direct
appeals to the state supreme court. His discretionary state and
federal actions accounted for relatively few years.
Free's mandatory direct
appeal, on the other hand, was disposed of in about three and
one half years in 1983. The remaining years since then have
resulted from Free's pursuit of his discretionary appeals in
both state and federal court. We agree with the district court
that any inordinate delay in the execution of Free's sentence is
directly attributable to his own conduct. The circumstances of
this case are clearly distinguishable from Lackey. The judgment
of the district court is AFFIRMED. Petitioner's Emergency Motion
for a Stay of Execution is DENIED. The mandate shall issue
immediately.
*****
CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting with respect to emergency stay of execution:
Free has requested an
emergency stay of execution of his death sentence pending the
Supreme Court's decision scheduled for March 24, 1995 (three
days from today) on whether to grant a writ of certiorari in
Lackey v. Texas, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 1274, 131 L.Ed.2d 192
(1995). I would grant an emergency stay on the very limited
basis requested.
Free has been on death row for
fifteen and a half years since his sentence of death was
originally imposed. He is scheduled to be executed in the early
morning hours of March 22, 1995 (tomorrow). His death sentence
was vacated by the district court in 1992 after hearings before
a Magistrate Judge. The death penalty was reimposed by this
court in 1993.
Free claims that at least six
years of his time on death row are not attributable to his own
conduct. He further asserts that, including the ten-year period
of time he sought post-conviction relief as provided by Illinois
law at the time in question, 725 ILCS 5/122-1 et seq., only a
small fraction of this time on death row is attributable to his
conduct. The Illinois Supreme Court set three execution dates
for Free prior to the present one.
As Judge Aspen has pointed
out, Free's case seems quite factually distinguishable from that
of Lackey--a Texas prisoner likewise held for many years on
death row. But the Supreme Court has up to now announced no law
governing allegedly excessive death-row delay, exacerbated by
the setting of multiple execution dates and similar arguably
painful events, as possible violations of the Eighth Amendment.
It seems to me that in light
of the exceedingly minimal stay requested and the potentially
resounding impact of a grant of certiorari in the Lackey case,
an emergency stay should be granted. A decision in Lackey might
create a wholly new dimension in death cases.
Weighing the rather trivial
consequences of a grant of an emergency stay against the grave
and irrevocable consequences of a denial, the grant of the
request of the emergency stay is appropriate. Cf. Pratt & Morgan
v. Attorney General of Jamaica, Privy Council Appeal No. 10 of
1993, 3 WLR 995, 143 NLJ 1639, 2 AC 1, 4 All ER 769 (Nov. 2,
1993) (en banc) ("in any case in which the execution is to take
place more than five years after sentence there will be strong
grounds for believing that the delay is such as to constitute
inhuman or degrading or other treatment"); Coleman v. Balkcom,
451 U.S. 949, 952, 101 S.Ct. 2031, 2033, 68 L.Ed.2d 334 (1981) (Stevens,
J., concurring in the denial of certiorari); Solesbee v. Balkcom,
339 U.S. 9, 14, 70 S.Ct. 457, 460, 94 L.Ed. 604 (1950)
(Frankfurter, J., dissenting); Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238,
288-89, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 2751-52, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972) (Brennan,
J., concurring); People v. Anderson, 6 Cal.3d 628, 100 Cal.Rptr.
152, 493 P.2d 880, cert. denied, 406 U.S. 958, 92 S.Ct. 2060, 32
L.Ed.2d 344 (1972); District Attorney for Suffolk District v.
Watson, 381 Mass. 648, 411 N.E.2d 1274, 1289-95 (1980).
I would therefore grant an
emergency stay pending the decision of the Supreme Court with
respect to certiorari in Lackey.
