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Terry D. CLARK
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics:
Rape
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder:
July 17,
1986
Date
of arrest:
July
1986
Date of birth:
May 17,
1956
Victim profile: Dena Lynn Gore
(female, 9)
Method of murder:
Shooting
Location: Chaves County, New Mexico, USA
Status:
Executed
by lethal injection in November 6,
2001
Summary:
Dena Lynn Gore disappeared on July 17, 1986, while riding a bike
near her home to a convenience store.
Her naked, bound body was found 5 days later in a shallow grave on a
ranch where Terry Clark was employed. She had been raped and shot 3
times in the back of the head.
At the time, Clark was free on bond pending appeal of his conviction
for kidnapping and raping a 6-year-old Roswell girl in 1984.
Clark pled guilty to kidnapping and murder in
1986, but the state Supreme Court overturned the sentence in 1994,
saying his constitutional rights had been violated.
In 1996, a second jury decided that Clark should die for the crimes. In 1999,
Clark waived his appeals. He is the first New Mexico inmate to be
executed in 41 years and the first ever to be executed by means of
lethal injection.
Terry Doug Clark (May 17,
1956 – November 6, 2001) was convicted of the murder
of nine-year-old Dena Lynn Gore. He was executed by
the State of New Mexico by means of lethal injection.
He became the first and (as of November 2007) the
only person to be executed in New Mexico since 1976
when the death penalty was reinstated.
Crimes
Terry Clark was convicted of
kidnapping and raping a six-year-old girl from
Roswell in 1984. Pending appeals in that case, he
was released on bond.
While out on bond, Clark drove to
Artesia on July 17, 1986 and kidnapped Dena Lynn
Gore. He then raped her and finally killed her by
shooting her in the back of her head three times. A
few days later, Clark was taken into custody and,
while in jail, he confessed to a minister.
Trial
At his trial later that same year,
Clark pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murder and
was sentenced to death, but the New Mexico Supreme
Court overturned the sentence in 1994, saying his
constitutional rights had been violated and that he
should be re-sentenced. During his re-sentencing in
1996, a second jury again decided that Clark should
die for his crimes.
Execution
Clark waived his appeals in 1999
and was executed in 2001. This made him the first
New Mexico inmate to be executed in 41 years and the
first ever New Mexico inmate to be executed by means
of lethal injection.
New Mexico Department of
Corrections
State Executes Clark; First Execution in 41 years
(Santa Fe)- The State of New Mexico executed
Terry D. Clark tonight by Lethal Injection for the First Degree
Murder of nine-year-old Dena Lynn Gore.
At Seven p.m., Mountain
Standard Time Tim Le Master, Warden of the Penitentiary of New
Mexico, began the Warrant of Execution upon Clark as ordered by the
Ninth Judicial District Court for the State of New Mexico.
The
Office of the Medical Examiner pronounced Terry D. Clark dead at
7:10p.m. He is the first New Mexico inmate to be executed in 41
years and the first ever to be executed by means of lethal injection.
On July 17, 1986 while free on bond during an
appeal for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl in
Roswell. Terry Clark drove to Artesia and kidnapped nine-year old
Dena Lynn Gore. Taking her to a nearby ranch where he sexually
penetrated her then shot her in the head three times.
On July 22,
1986 police went to the ranch and discovered the decomposed body
later identified as Dena Lynn Gore. Terry Clark was taken into
custody. While in jail, Terry Clark confessed to a family minister
that he had kidnapped the girl, had sex with her, and then shot her
when she said, “you’re going to pay for this.”
“Tonight, here at the Penitentiary of New Mexico,
personnel and machinery of the New Mexico criminal justice system,
the criminal and appellate law code, and the New Mexico Corrections
Department.
“Have brought “truth” to those words”, by carrying-out
without incident, the clinical-lethal injection, of Terry Douglas
Clark, his execution was conducted with decency, in a professional,
dignified, and compassionate manner,” said New Mexico Corrections
Secretary Robert J. Perry. Mr. Clark’s final statement before the
lethal drug solution was injected into his arm was, “ 15 minutes. ”
On July 14, 2000, attorneys filed a petition for
habeas corpus, challenging Clark’s conviction and sentence. However,
Clark personally wrote to the judge and requested that the petition
be dismissed.
Judge Bonem held a four-day hearing, at which various
mental health experts and others testified concerning Clark’s mental
competence.
On August 10, 2001, Judge Bonem held that Clark
was mentally competent to waive further review of his case, and
dismissed the habeas corpus petition as Clark had requested.
The
judge set Clark’s execution for November 6, 2001. An attorney
attempted to obtain review of Judge Bonem’s ruling in the New Mexico
Supreme Court, but Clark wrote to that court and asked that the
petition filed on his behalf be dismissed.
On September 14, 2001,
the New Mexico Supreme Court granted Clark’s request and refused to
consider the petition filed on his behalf.
Since New Mexico’s last execution in New Mexico
in 1960. 7691 people have been murdered in our state according to
records from the State Office of Medical Investigator.
ProDeathPenalty.com
Dena Lynn Gore was kidnapped in 1986 as she rode
a bicycle near her home. Dena disappeared July 17, 1986, while
riding a bike to an Artesia convenience store.
Her naked, bound body was found 5 days later in a
shallow grave on a Chaves County ranch where Terry Clark was
employed. She had been raped and shot 3 times in the back of the
head.
At the time, Clark was free on bond pending
appeal of his conviction for kidnapping and raping a 6-year-old
Roswell girl in 1984.
Clark, 43, of Roswell, pled guilty to kidnapping
and murder in 1986, hoping that his death sentence would be commuted
by outgoing Gov. Toney Anaya, a death penalty opponent who had just
emptied death row, commuting all 5 inmates' sentences to life
imprisonment as he neared the end of his term. But Clark's
sentencing was delayed until after Anaya left office.
Clark was sentenced to death in 1987, but the
state Supreme Court overturned the sentence in 1994, saying his
constitutional rights had been violated. The court said the jury
wasn't accurately told how much prison time Clark faced if he were
given a life term, and it ordered him resentenced.
A 2nd jury, this one in Grant County, decided in
1996 that Clark should die for the crimes. The Supreme Court refused
to consider an appeal.
Both juries considered Clark's conviction for
the 1984 kidnapping and rape of a 6-year-old Roswell girl when they
sentenced Clark to die. Clark has always maintained his innocence in
that crime, and his lawyers argue that the juries should not have
been told about the conviction.
In 1999, Clark waived his appeals, fired his
attorneys and wrote letters asking to die. He said he was at peace
with his crime and he wanted to be executed. In July, the state
Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for Clark.
Clark resumed his
appeals in February 2000 after an execution date was set. "I know we
still have a long way to go, especially if he's not going to waive
it," said the victim's mother, Colleen Gore, from the Estancia auto
repair shop where she works. But she said the state Supreme Court
ruling was "great. I think this is the start of showing people you
can't hurt our children.
Enough is enough," she said. When Clark
resumed his appeals, Colleen Gore said "I think it's a tactic but
this is our system and that's the way it works. So it will be a
little bit longer, maybe 20 years longer," she said with tears in
her eyes.
She said she was excited when she first heard the
execution date for Clark, who was in the courtroom, wearing
sunglasses and his hair in a ponytail. Clark has again dropped his
appeals and requested execution.
UPDATE - A spokesman for the state Department of
Corrections announced that Terry Clark was read the warrant for
execution at 7 p.m., made a statement, and was given the series of
chemicals immediately thereafter.
He was declared dead at 7:12 p.m.
Terry Clark never denied killing 9-year-old Dena Lynn Gore, who was
found shot to death in 1986 on the New Mexico ranch where he worked,
but never offered an explanation for it. Against the wishes of his
lawyers, who argued he was mentally ill, Clark decided to drop any
appeals last March and asked a judge to go ahead with his execution.
In August, District Judge David Bonem found Clark competent to
decide on his execution and set the date for Tuesday. "I will not
allow myself, my family and the victim's family to be put through
any more," Clark wrote to Bonem. "15 years of being at trials and
court hearings, I'm not going to miss the day to say, 'Justice for
Dena,'" said Patti Jo Grisham, a long-time friend of Dena Lynn's
mother, Colleen Gore.
Grisham was among about 2 dozen people who
traveled from Artesia to support the Gore family outside the
Corrections Department gates Tuesday night.
Child's killer dies: With two mystery
words and gaze locked on warden, Clark succumbs in 8 minutes
By Joline Gutierrez Krueger - The Albuquerque
Tribune
SANTA FE - Terry Clark offered no apology, gave
no last look, no last emotion, no answers as he clenched his jaws
and breathed his last in the state's first execution in 41 years.
It took eight minutes for the convicted child's
killer to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening, seconds for him
to mutter his last, unexplained words: "15 minutes."
On and off death row since the 1986 kidnapping,
rape and murder of 9-year-old Dena Lynn Gore of Artesia, the 45-year-old
Clark had fought his own attorneys' attempts to appeal his death
sentence, winning his chance to die in August when a state district
judge found him competent.
The execution - the first in the state by lethal
injection - went off without a hitch and without a last-minute
reprieve, the red telephone in the Penitentiary of New Mexico death
chamber silent and unanswered.
Before the curtains were drawn in the death
chamber, witnesses said they heard an emotional conversation.
Warden Tim LeMaster said later Clark had been
saying a prayer.
Clad in a white shirt and dark pants concealed by
a white sheet tucked neatly under his feet, Clark appeared numb,
blank, but began blinking repeatedly as LeMaster read the death
warrant.
He never looked at the 24 witnesses gathered in
two separate viewing rooms off the death chamber in Unit 4, part of
the North Unit that Clark called home for much of the past 15 years.
His head, elevated by a pillow, remained facing
right toward LeMaster, who in the last days of the condemned man's
life had become something of a confidant.
At 7:02 p.m., a lethal cocktail flowed into the
intravenous needles plunged into both of Clark's arms at the elbow
crook - sodium thiopental to sedate, pancuronium bromide to collapse
the lungs and diaphragm, and potassium chloride to stop the heart.
A minute later, his cheeks puffed and he let out
a breath, then a light gasp, a hard grimace as if in pain or in deep
concentration. His eyes closed, his face relaxed, the last gush of
air released, a gurgle emitted, and he was gone.
LeMaster and Clark's spiritual adviser, an
unnamed Christian minister who baptized the convict while in prison,
remained at Clark's side throughout the last minutes of his life.
Corrections Secretary Rob Perry said a state
Office of the Medical Examiner physician pronounced the time of
death as 7:10 p.m. after a heart monitor attached to Clark's fingers
slowly thumped into silence.
Aside from the mysterious "15 minutes" comment
and a barely audible murmur sounding like the word "burning" two to
three minutes into the procedure, Clark said nothing more.
LeMaster told reporters later that he had
promised Clark not to divulge the meaning behind the "15 minutes."
"And I want to honor his last request," a weary
LeMaster said. "I know what it is. I would read a book. It's called
`Dead Man Walking.' And you'll know."
Attorney General Patricia Madrid said it was a
reference to Clark's belief that in 15 minutes he would be in
heaven.
Others said they imagined his comments referred
to his 15 minutes of fame as his execution day neared.
Clark's body was ferried moments after the
execution to the OMI in Albuquerque where it will undergo an
autopsy. Clark will be interred at the Sunset Mausoleum in
Albuquerque, LeMaster said.
The 21 witnesses for the state stood silently
shoulder to shoulder in one room, a few sniffles sounding after it
was over.
Clark's girlfriend, Jean Ortiz of Roswell, plus a
lawyer who handled his appeal and another woman were in a smaller,
separate room, said media witness Barry Massey, a reporter for The
Associated Press.
"I think it was kind of like I thought it would
be," said Holly Lawrence, one of the witnesses chosen by the warden
to attend the execution. "I expected him not to express sorrow or
remorse, and unfortunately I got what I expected."
Also among the witnesses were the parents of Dena
Lynn, the Artesia girl who was kidnapped from an evening bike ride
July 17, 1986, and shot in the head three times when she told Clark
he would pay for what he did.
Her body, trussed up and decomposing, was found
five days later buried in a shallow grave on a remote ranch 60 miles
northwest of Artesia.
"There is not a day that goes by that I don't
suffer from extreme guilt," Clark said in a Feb. 21, 2000, letter to
a Tribune reporter. "The shame of it is why I chose to die instead
of having to live with that on my mind from day to day."
But Tuesday night, Clark had no words of remorse
for Colleen and Jeff Gore. Divorced before their daughter's death,
they stood together, Jeff Gore's arm around Colleen's shoulder, in
the crowded witness room no larger than an average bedroom.
They did not stand in the front row at the glass,
customary for victims' families to do so that their faces are the
last ones a killer sees.
"There was just quiet between them, no sobbing,
just quiet," said Sylvia Hewett, an Artesia newspaper reporter who
served as one of two media representatives in the witness room.
"There was a tearful strength."
Witness Paul Steele said Jeff Gore told him that
he planned today to visit his daughter's grave in a White Oaks
cemetery and tell her that the vow he made to her 15 years before
had finally been fulfilled.
"He said he made a vow over her grave the day she
was buried: Whoever did this to her would die," said Steele, a
University of New Mexico professor.
Gore said he would then drive back to his home
near El Paso, walk out to his back yard and scream and yell and cry,
Steele said.
"It's over for him," he said.
The Gores were among the few who did not speak to
a room filled with reporters after the execution. But others had
their say.
"What happened tonight wasn't about Terry Clark;
it was about this little girl - Dena Lynn Gore," said Thomas
Rutledge, the district attorney who prosecuted the case. "Justice
was served tonight 15 years after the heartaches began."
In July 1986, Dena Lynn rode her brother's
bicycle to an Allsup's in Artesia to buy a soda. It was the first
time she had made the five-block trip alone.
Clark, then 30, was already looking at a 24-year
prison sentence for the Oct. 8, 1994, rape and kidnap of a
6-year-old Roswell girl.
Clark has always maintained his innocence in that
case.
He had been out on $50,000 bond pending an appeal
to the state Supreme Court when Dena Lynn disappeared. Ordered to
stay out of Roswell, Clark was living with brother Steve Clark, who
managed the Squaw Canyon Ranch, where the girl's body was later
found.
Less than five months after his arrest, Clark
suddenly pleaded guilty Dec. 4, 1986, to kidnapping and first-degree
murder, thinking that he could win a pardon from then-Gov. Toney
Anaya, who had spared the lives of all five inmates already on New
Mexico's death row before he left office.
The plan failed, and Clark was sentenced to death.
In 1994, Clark was pulled off death row when the state Supreme Court
overturned his sentence. Two years later, a second jury sentenced
him again to death.
That, Clark says, is when he decided it was time
to stop fighting and accept his lethal fate.
But attorneys continued to contend that Clark had
suffered brain damage from a 1984 head injury and was not competent
to make that decision.
Those appeal efforts continued up to several
hours before the 7 p.m. execution.
New Hampshire Coalition Against
the Death Penalty
Convicted Child Killers Executed
Two convicted child killers were put to death by
lethal injection Tuesday night in Georgia and New Mexico, that
state's first execution in nearly 42 years.
Terry Clark never denied killing 9-year-old Dena
Lynn Gore, who was found shot to death in 1986 on the New Mexico
ranch where he worked, but never offered an explanation for it.
Against the wishes of his lawyers, who argued he was mentally ill,
Clark decided to drop any appeals last March and asked a judge to go
ahead with his execution.
Dena Lynn was raped and killed, her body
was buried in a shallow grave on a ranch north of the southeastern
oil town of Artesia, from which she disappeared during a bike ride
to a convenience store. Clark, a ranch hand and convicted child
molester, was arrested.
That year, Clark followed his lawyers' advice and
pleaded guilty in hopes that then-Gov. Toney Anaya would commute his
pending death sentence. Anaya, an opponent of capital punishment,
had just emptied death row, commuting all five inmates' sentences to
life imprisonment. But Anaya's term ran out before Clark was
sentenced.
In August, District Judge David Bonem found Clark
competent to decide on his execution and set the date for Tuesday."
I will not allow myself, my family and the victim's family to be put
through any more," Clark wrote to Bonem.
Earlier Tuesday, the U.S.
Supreme Court denied a challenge from lawyers that questioned
Clark's state of mind and competence to accept his death sentence.
At the Capitol, several hundred anti-death penalty supporters held a
candlelight protest before Clark was to be injected with lethal
drugs.
"Fifteen years of being at trials and court
hearings - I'm not going to miss the day to say, 'Justice for Dena,'"
said Patti Jo Grisham, a long-time friend of Dena Lynn's mother,
Colleen Gore. Grisham was among about two dozen people who traveled
from Artesia to support the Gore family outside the Corrections
Department gates Tuesday night.
The last execution in New Mexico was on Jan. 8,
1960, when David Nelson became the only person to die in the state's
gas chamber.
Two Angry Neighbors Took on a Child Killer and
the Law
By Joline Gutierrez Krueger -
Alburquerque Tribune Online
The Roswell women can still remember a time
before Terry Clark, before parents in their southeast New Mexico
community became too afraid to let their children out of their
sights. Before Dena Lynn Gore.
But Jayne Willis and Betty Williams Lehrman
remember, too, the legacy of Dena, the 9-year-old Artesia girl who
became Clark's victim in 1986 and the reason for his execution by
lethal injection Tuesday at the Penitentiary of New Mexico near
Santa Fe.
Because of Dena, the state's appellate bond law was
changed to prevent people convicted of certain felonies, such as
rape, from being free on bail while they appeal. Clark had been out
on $50,000 bond pending appeal of a 1985 conviction of raping a 6-year-old
Roswell girl when he snatched Dena from her bike and raped and
killed her.
The change was called the "Dena Lynn Gore law."
Willis and Williams Lehrman helped make it a reality two years after
Dena's death. "It was Bill 51, I remember, and it was meant to keep
some offenders like child molesters behind bars," Willis said in a
recent interview from her home in Roswell. "That's what we wanted.
Everyone was so upset with the legal system and the way a man like
Terry Clark could have been let out of jail. But it was just such a
shame that a little girl had to die to get that law changed."
It
began as the worst "I told you so" Willis and Williams Lehrman could
have imagine that hot July in 1986 when they heard the news about
Dena. "I went to our newspaper here in Roswell the day she was found,
and I told them, I know who did it," Willis recalled. "And they said
how do you know? And I said I just know it's Terry Clark and
somebody needs to know about it. I just had that feeling about it."
Editors shooed her off, but on her way home she heard on the radio
that the police had just picked up Clark in connection with the
little girl's death. "And I thought, oh, my God, it's happened just
like we feared," Willis said. "But that wasn't true. It was worse
than what we thought." By the time she got home the newspaper
editors had already called.
"We had already been mad about how someone like
Terry Clark had been allowed to be on the streets," said Williams
Lehrman, who also still resides in Roswell. "Now we were really mad."
Never ones for taking on advocacy or political roles, the women said
they got involved nevertheless because they knew Clark's previous
victim, Donita Welch, the 6-year-old girl who Clark had been
convicted of kidnapping and raping and leaving for dead out on an
isolated road west of Roswell. She had been walking home from school
on the afternoon of Oct. 8, 1984, when a man in a white and blue car
with a child's car seat in the back drove up behind her and grabbed
her.
The little girl lived in their neighborhood and
went to school with Willis' daughter. "That's when I started paying
attention to child molesters and child kidnappers," Willis said.
Although she had never met Clark personally, she soon learned much
about the unassuming city carpenter and father of two. And she
didn't like what she was learning. There were other girls.
On Sept. 29, 1984, an 18-year-old woman told
authorities she was walking along a dark Roswell street when a man
forced her into his white and blue car at gunpoint. She escaped.
On
Oct. 7, 1984, Cynthia Lee Fernandez told authorities a man in a
white car parked in front of her Roswell home and stared through her
window at her young daughter. Fernandez said she stood next to her
daughter and engaged in a "stare down" until the man drove away.
Three days before Dena went missing, an 11-year-old girl said she
was followed by a man in a white and blue vehicle. She escaped.
All three females identified the man as Clark.
Only the 18-year-old's story resulted in criminal charges. Those
were later dropped. "I never believed for a moment that this little
girl (Donita) was the first one," Willis said. "I don't think he
woke up one morning and he became a child molester. I just think
this was the first time he got caught."
Willis said she began
attending Clark's hearing and reading news articles on the case. She
also enlisted the help of Williams Lehrman, a co-worker at a Roswell
concrete company, to write letters demanding that Clark's bond be
rescinded and he be put back behind bars. "We wrote everyone we
could think of, even the president of the United States," Willis
said. "We were ignored totally," Williams Lehrman said.
Then Dena disappeared. That's when the women
stopped being ignored. When Dena's bound and decomposing body was
unearthed from a shallow grave on a remote ranch northwest of
Artesia where Clark had been staying with his brother, the women say
their resolve got even stronger.
On the day of Dena's funeral, they
staged a rally in front of the courthouse in Roswell to call for a
change in the appellate bond law that had allowed Clark loose.
Hundreds of people attended. "Things just rolled," Williams Lehrman
said. "Suddenly, all over the state people were getting involved
with us."
Some 20,000 people from across the state and beyond signed
the petition that before Dena's death had only garnered a couple of
thousand. Dena's mother, Colleen Gore, eventually joined in the
cause, traveling with the women often to Santa Fe to lobby
legislators for a change to the law. Another woman joined as well.
Her name was Jean Ortiz, a newly divorced mother
of two who had moved to Roswell from New York to live with her
mother. "She was the first person to walk in and ask if she could
help," Willis said. "She asked if she could help get petitions
signed. She wanted to do anything she could - stuff letters,
whatever." Ortiz went with them to Santa Fe, sometimes sharing the
same hotel room with Colleen Gore, the women said.
Years later, the
women said they learned from a newspaper article that Ortiz, who had
fought alongside them, was now Clark's fianc‚e. "Jean is a traitor
in the worst way," Willis said. "She stabbed Colleen Gore and her
family in the back." Ortiz has said she wrote Clark a letter in
prison asking him "why he wasn't dead yet" and received a letter
back that warmed her heart and changed her mind about him. Their
relationship began after that.
On Tuesday, Ortiz was one of the witnesses
invited by Clark to watch his execution. Willis and Williams Lehrman
said that these days when they see Ortiz they keep on walking. Ortiz
was not the only one to incur the women's ire. After Dena's death,
they said they continued to publicly castigate state District Judge
Paul Snead for allowing Clark to post $50,000 bond in the first
place. Snead, they said, had been lenient on Clark because he knew
his family.
"He broke every rule," Williams Lehrman said. "If
Judge Snead hadn't let him out, Dena would be alive today." Shortly
after Dena's death, Snead retired and suffered a heart attack, the
women said. "Our publicity hurt him a lot," Williams Lehrman said. "Finally,
his daughter asked us to lay off because he was getting so sick."
Snead could not be reached for comment.
A woman who answered two
phone calls to a Roswell listing for a Paul Snead hung up abruptly.
It has been 17 years since both women began their quest to see a
change in the legal system, 15 years since Dena's death, 13 years
since the Dena Lynn Gore law. Both women still say they are
recognized on the streets of Roswell as the women who took on Terry
Clark and the law.
Williams Lehrman said she still goes to bed every
night remembering the faces of Donita and Dena and the other
children damaged for a lifetime by a moment of evil. "It is sad this
whole thing took a child," Willis said. "I will never forget it
myself. I never got to meet Dena, and that is sad for me. That is
sad for everyone."
Statement of Governor Gary
Johnson Regarding the Execution of Terry Clark
For Immediate Release - Tuesday November 6, 2001
SANTA FE – “At approximately 7 p.m. today, Terry
Clark was executed by lethal injection.
I am satisfied that justice was done, and that
the state carried out its obligation to its citizens. Mr. Clark
deserved the punishment he received for the heinous crimes that he
committed, crimes for which he properly paid the ultimate price. I
can only hope that his execution will serve as a lesson to all those
who would engage in such evil acts.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the family of
Dena Lynn Gore, who have suffered so many years from the death of
their daughter, and I pray that the events of today will provide
them some resolution to the nightmare they have lived for so long.
No parent should ever have to face such hardship.
I commend the professional manner in which the
New Mexico Corrections Department, Secretary of Corrections Robert
Perry, and Warden Tim LeMaster performed their duty to carry out the
sentence against Terry Clark.
Now that the sentence against Mr. Clark has been
carried out, I ask New Mexicans to put the emotions surrounding this
event behind us and move forward.”
Donita Welch speaks about being attacked by
Terry Clark when she was six years old during a press conference
held after Clark's execution in the New Mexico State
Penitentiary. Behind her is Assistant Attorney General Bill
McEven.
(Lewis Jacobs / Daily Lobo)
Terry D. Clark
Confessed child-killer
Terry Clark leaves the courtroom after being given the death
penalty by lethal injection in Silver City, N.M., in 1986. The
executioner who carried out the death sentence learned how to
administer the deadly chemical cocktail as a member of the
lethal injection team in Texas.
