After his interim appointment, Holmes was re-elected for five more four-year terms, evidently satisfying the citizens of Harris County and their desire to get “tough on crime.” Holmes was quite aggressive in seeking the death penalty in capital cases. Researcher Scott Phillips(36) notes that during the period from 1976, after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, to 2008, Harris County, if it had been a state, would have ranked second in executions in the nation after the state of Texas itself. This period covered all but three years under Holmes. Phillips made a study of 504 defendants indicted for capital murder during the period of 1992-1999. Of these, Holmes sought the death penalty for 129. Numerically, there was no racial bias: approximately equal percentages for the death penalty for whites, Hispanics, and blacks. However, statistically, the death penalty demanded for blacks was much higher for “less serious” forms of murder (as defined by Phillips) and much lower for all groups when the victims were black victims rather than white. This study, an Issue Brief, showed no discernible differences between white and Hispanics.
Holmes’s position on applying the death penalty appears to follow Pontius Pilate’s wash-my-hands doctrine.(37) Holmes claims to care little about his critics and thinks much of the criticism that comes his way should be directed at the people who make the laws: “It’s your business if you criticize the death penalty. But I think you are out of line if you are being critical of me.” Instead, Holmes says death penalty opponents should focus their fire on legislators. “I have never stumped for or against the death penalty,” he explains. “That’s a legislative issue. It’s a personal issue that’s wrapped up in morality and religion. I’ve looked at all the issues that are important to me. And I’ve resolved it in my heart and mind. I’ve resolved that I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.”
On Holmes’s behalf, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andy Horne wrote, “Holmes was a hard worker and always—always—in the office before 8 a.m. John Holmes’ attitude [toward the death penalty] nonetheless is correct—legally speaking: Legislatures make and change the laws while the Executive branch, including the District Attorneys, enforces those laws. It is no criticism to enforce the law aggressively. It is a violation of the oath of office to do otherwise.”(38)
One incident during the pre-trial barely caught my attention. Little did I know at that point that it was the insertion of a thin piece of silk in my tapestry by the Master Himself. The prosecution was questioning Mr. John O. Vennard, a prospective juror, or in legalese, a “venireperson.”
“Mr. Vennard, would you be able to render the death penalty should the facts in this case clearly warrant such a judgment?”
“It would be very hard for me to give a person death. Nevertheless, I would be able to sit on a jury that returned such a verdict,” he replied.
“So, you are saying that you could render the death penalty in the punishment phase of this trial? Let me read you the three clear-cut questions that each juror must answer in the affirmative to render the death penalty as taken directly from Article 37.071(b) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure:
IF the defendant’s conduct that caused the death of the deceased was committed deliberately and with the reasonable expectation that the death of the deceased or another person would result;
IF there is a probability that the defendant would commit acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society;
IF raised by the evidence, whether the conduct of the defendant in killing the deceased was unreasonable in response to the provocation, if any, of the deceased.
“What I am saying is, number one, did the defendant expect that the deceased would die from her actions? Number two, if ever released, would the defendant continue such acts of violence? And number three, was the conduct of the defendant unreasonable to any provocation from the deceased. If you can answer yes to all of these three questions, then you must render a judgment for the death penalty. Could you, if evidence so presented itself, answer yes to these three questions?”
“I don’t know whether I could find a person guilty of capital murder and answer the questions affirmatively, but I will certainly try to fulfill this responsibility if selected. Yes, I could reach a fair verdict, including a verdict sentencing the defendant to death, but that would depend on the facts and circumstances.”
“What you are saying, Mr. Vennard, is that you would examine each of the three questions meticulously for a potential negative response?”
“Uh…yes.”
“You think that you might have to answer one of this questions in the negative?”
“Yes, I am pretty sure.”
“You are saying that you would be more than likely to answer one of these questions with a definite no, am I correct?”
“Uh…yes, I would always answer one of these in the negative so the defendant could receive life imprisonment rather than death.”
“Regardless of the facts, you would answer one of these in the negative.”
“Uh…yes.”
“Your honor, we challenge this venireperson for cause.”
“Mr. Vennard,” said Judge James, “before I rule on this, let me ask you as simply as I can put it: Could you return a verdict for the death penalty?”
“No, I would avoid giving the death penalty…Well, if the facts were horrible enough, I guess I could give the death penalty. It would be a more severe penalty.”
“Mr. Vennard, let me repeat my question; could you return a verdict for the death penalty? Yes or no, please.”
“Uh…no.”
“The court grants the prosecution’s challenge for cause. Mr. Vennard, thank you; you are excused.”
“Your honor,” said one of my defense lawyers, “we would like to examine Mr. Vennard.”
“No, sir,” said the judge with an air of no equivocation and no room for rebuttal. And thus Mr. Vennard became, in a reversed sort of manner, an “angel unawares.”(39)
* * *
Prisons, hospitals, funerals—any place where human misery exists, you are likely to find a dedicated Christian attempting to bring comfort. When those in the ministry learned that the D.A. was going to seek the death penalty, various volunteers, including graduates from Teen Challenge, visited me. They ministered to me; I went to church services; I listened to Bible readings, but other than a desire to hear more, there was no booming voice from the heavens, no lightning, no blinding light.
Karen Apple often came and talked to me in the Tank (the name given to a room in the Harris County Jail with cells around the periphery holding from one to three prisoners). Karen had a background in drug abuse and found cure and conversion in Christ through Teen Challenge.(40) She had a marked influence on my redemption. Another person who visited me was Levita Henley, a Harris County volunteer jail chaplain. Levita would come and spend the whole day with me, sitting on the floor outside the bars of my cell and talking to me. Levita was a mighty messenger, a Pentecostal, with no hesitation in her commitment to Christ. We talked for several days, and then she read Bible verses to me. During the trial, she had me recite the Sinner’s Prayer with her:
“Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior. In Your Name. Amen.” (41)
This particular Sinner’s Prayer is from Billy Graham’s 1954 London Crusade. I am sure these were not the exact words; there is no standard format, no formula, and no prescribed incantation. The leader of the prayer, often referred to as the messenger, opens their heart to and turns their mouth over to the Holy Spirit. The receiver opens their heart to commitment and receives each word into their soul. If not recited with a repentant spirit and an open heart, the words fall on rocky soil and fail to grow.
The words of this prayer with L
evita fell on fertile soil. When I repeated “Amen,” I felt something throughout my whole being—physically, emotionally, spiritually—a change in my very blood flow as if I were a new person, light and free of the weight of incrimination. That night, however, I struggled to accept the free gift of redemption. How could God forgive me? How could He ever turn His back upon the horrible crime I had committed?
* * *
After my jury selection concluded, my trial began on August 19. Once again I rode the cramped little elevator reserved for the accused to the sixteenth floor of the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, the 248th District Court. I was extremely sleepy. They had given me an extra dose of Valium for the trial. I don’t remember whether the elevator ride took a minute or a day.
In an anteroom, the officer removed my handcuffs, and I straightened a new dress. Procedure requires that a female defendant wear a different dress each day of the trial. Thus I entered the courtroom as a “normal” person with makeup, dressed in “normal” clothes rather than that of an already condemned villain, pale and in chains, wearing an orange jumpsuit. That was presumably the idea.
Mike and Linda Briddle, my co-defendants, were not present during the trial, neither for the defense nor for the prosecution. Almost six months had passed, and they were still fighting extradition from Colorado.
The conviction part of the trial took a little more than a day, a sort of formality, I suppose, since I had pleaded guilty in Colorado. However, Texas and several other states where the jury decides punishment require a trial for conviction so the jury can hear the details of the case. And details did they hear. The prosecution read my guilty plea into the record, all of its twenty-six pages with emphasis and examinations on every gruesome item from corroborating crime-scene personnel. During the conviction phase of my trial, and also in the punishment phase, I kept nodding off because of the Elavil and Valium. One of my attorneys would kick me under the table, and I would jerk to attention like a startled deer—giving everyone the obvious picture of being rudely awakened and that I was bored beyond remorse and just didn’t care.
I left the courtroom on August 20, not sure the jury could render the death penalty in the punishment phase that started the next day. I covered myself with prayer late into the night.
The punishment phase of the trial took about the same length of time as the conviction. The prosecution again brought out the gruesome details of the crime. Every time they mentioned California, they pronounced it with the connotation of Sodom and Gomorrah, referring to it nasally as if the very word had an odor reflecting the liberal thinking and prominent drug culture so prevalent in Caleefonyuh. They brought in the old man that Mike and I had robbed in Whittier. It didn’t occur to me that he might—just might—have been looking for revenge against the young girl who had spurned his sexual advances. Then they read and entered my complete juvenile record from California:
“At age eleven, on October 13, 1967, Ms. Perillo, then known as Pamela Lynn Walker, was declared a ‘runaway’ and referred to the Department of Public Social Services. She was placed in two different foster homes by Protective Services.
“At age twelve, on December 29, 1967, again she was declared a runaway and referred to probation.
“At age twelve, on March 19, 1968, once again a runaway and referred to probation.
“And again on March 22, 1968, she was picked up as a runaway. Note this: she ran away five times in less than six months.
“Finally, the court docket caught up with her three weeks later, and at age twelve, on April 4, 1968, she was declared incorrigible and made a ward of the court and subsequently placed in a foster home. It did not take her long to be picked up as a runaway again, on May 15 of the same year. She is twelve years of age and has been picked up as a runaway on six separate occasions in just the space of seven months—only seven months. Able to adjust to rules? Able to obey the law? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you see a pattern here? And it gets worse.”
How can it get any worse? I thought. How can running from an oppressive environment be considered such a terrible crime?
“Ladies and gentlemen, on February 2, 1969, she was arrested on a petty theft charge, was counseled and released. It’s starting to go downhill now.
“On July 17, 1969, again she was picked up as a runaway minor.” And he continued with three or four more of the horrendous charges of runaway and curfew violations.
“When Ms. Perillo reached the age of fifteen, we see the ‘incorrigible’ label she received at age twelve starting to manifest itself in more egregious criminal arrests. On March 19, 1971, she and her friend Mary Swisher were arrested for DUI in South Gate Park being high on ‘reds’ and violating curfew.
“Still but fifteen years of age and on March 31, 1971, arrested for selling 120 capsules of Seconal to a state narcotics agent. And just four months later on July 6, she was arrested for possession of barbiturates. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it keeps going on.
“At the ripe old age of sixteen, on March 1, 1972, she is arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia and being under the influence of heroin.”
All the other incidents seemed a blur to me, but that one I remembered. That was the one where I took the rap for Sammy.
“And finally, the last arrest record from California, the last conviction before this one here in Texas for murder, on July 20, 1973, Ms. Perillo, now age seventeen, was arrested for possession of stolen credit cards. Of course, we already know about her warrant for theft in Whittier when she left that state for her transgressions here in Texas. If you were to plot a timeline for the severity of her criminal acts, you would see a steeply rising curve. I hope you will remember all of these facts when you answer the second question in rendering the death penalty, that you should do so, specifically in the positive, ‘If there is a probability that the defendant would commit acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society.’ Thank you.”
There was no one to testify on my behalf: no friends, no family member, no one to state that this was not the sort of act that we would have expected from a young, naïve girl who had never done anything violent in her entire life. I never heard what happened to Ronnie and David after they were released in Denver. Ronnie was a juvenile, just sixteen, and a runaway. Was he returned to California? I don’t know, but if he were, I know now that he didn’t tell Dad about me. Not that Dad or Helen could have come; they didn’t have the money. I was alone.
The jury returned the death penalty the next day. I understood later from media interviews of the jurors that much of their decision hinged on the fact that there was no one there to speak up for me.
I was stunned, walking around in an Elavil fog and not able to comprehend. Shortly after that, I insisted they take me off the Elavil. I needed a clear head to absorb the enormity of what had transpired. Once again—definitely for the last time—I went through drug withdrawal. Sleep was elusive, especially when I was worrying about a Houstonian cockroach crawling across my face.
Soon I would transfer to Huntsville along a now-familiar Interstate 45, past the ever-creeping tentacles of the expanding city of Houston, past the pine trees on a median-divided highway and into the Goree Prison Unit for Women, the place prophesied by Mike Briddle where I was to spend the rest of my life—ironically to await my execution to end the rest of my life. Perhaps not only the words from oneself, but those of others, are so powerful in manifesting reality.
CHAPTER 9
Even after the trial was over and I had already received the ultimate punishment, I had to wait a week before they transferred me to Goree. We left at midnight in a car with two detectives in the front; I was handcuffed in the back seat. The hour-long trip was devoid of conversation except, occasionally, between the detectives: work-related or trivial, certainly nothing to engage my contribution. I felt like I was some animal headed to market—inarticulate, uncommunicative, just
so much meat. They were large men with white shirts and poorly tailored sportscoats that failed to hide the bulges of their shoulder-holstered Colt revolvers. I assume they were Colt revolvers because, after all, Texas felt like a foreign land from out of the Old West, and the .44 Colt revolver was the gun they used in the movies.
Gradually, the officers defrosted and brought me into the conversation. They even stopped and bought me breakfast. As I wiggled awkwardly out from the back seat, one of them, the one with the shortest hair, unlocked my handcuffs. “Ms. Perillo,” he said unsmilingly, “if you try to run, you understand that we will have to shoot you.” Like where and why would I run? I was a naïve twenty-four-year-old kid in a surreal world. The breakfast was good; the Elavil withdrawal had subsided, and I could eat and sleep again.
At the Goree Unit, I was searched repeatedly to the point of absurdity. Where and what would I find to hide on my person? After being documented, I was handcuffed and led to my cell. The Death Row section was at a lower level, in a dungeon-type atmosphere. It was at the end of a long hall housing prisoners on Administrative Segregation (Ad Seg).(42) Presumably, Ad Seg is not meant for punishment, but one would never convince a prisoner otherwise. At the end of the Ad Seg cells, a red-painted board crossed the concrete floor and identified the last three cells in a row as those reserved for the Death Row inmates. Linda Mae Burnett was in the last cell. I was in the first, with the empty cell between us. My cell could not be next to an occupied one because of an automatic, mandatory ninety-day suicide quarantine as required by the prison system. I suppose an empty cell between us was as close to a quarantine as they could get.
Salvation on Death Row Page 7
