Executions And The Youth Excuse
A convicted killer is scheduled to be put to death in Texas Wednesday night for the murder of a San Antonio woman 21 years ago when he was 17 years old. His supporters say death is too high a price to pay for a crime committed as a juvenile.
CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod reports that Joe Cannon is set to die for a murder he says he barely remembers and was too young to understand. Cannon was 17 when he killed Anne Walsh, a mother of eight he shot seven times.
Walsh's brother, also an attorney, had represented Cannon in a burglary case. He convinced his sister to let Cannon live at her home so he could remain on probation and avoid prison.
A week later, Walsh was shot repeatedly by Cannon after she came home for lunch. Under the influence of alcohol and drugs, he also tried to rape her before driving away in one of the family's cars.
Cannon's supporters are telling the Supreme Court: Don't execute a man for what he did as a boy.
But Anne Walsh's daughter Stephani says Joe Cannon behaved like a man when he murdered. He should be punished like one.
"The system has declared this is justice," she says, "and this will happen."
Cannon is one of 70 men on death row in the U.S. for a crime committed as a juvenile. Currently, the youngest someone can be sentenced to death is 16. For some wrestling with issues of crime and punishment, that's not young enough. Texas state representative Jim Pitts wants children as young as 11 eligible for execution, an idea born with the schoolyard shootings in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
"We've got to do something. It's out of hand," says Pitts. "They are going to have to be shocked into knowing, 'By golly, I can't hide behind that I'm 12 years old or 14 years old. I'm going to have to account for what I do'."
In Florence, Ariz., Wednesday morning, Jose Roberto Villafuerte was executed by injection despite pleas from Honduran President Carlos Flores Facusse and confirmation by U.S. officials that he was denied rights spelled out by an international treaty.
Villafuerte, 45, was condemned for the 1983 murder of Amelia Schoville, who suffocated after she was left bound and gagged in his Phoenix trailer.
Villafuerte looked around at the witnesses before he died and said through an interpreter: "Well, I guess we're all here. I love everybody. Tell Amelia's son that I will be with the Lord. Tell my son not to worry. I will be with the Lord."
The State Department has acknowledged that Arizona officials violated the Vienna Convention treaty, which spells out how countries should treat foreign nationals who are arrested, by failing to notify Honduras of Villafuerte's arrest. The department urged a clemency panel to consider the violation, but stopped short of asking officials to halt the execution.
It was the third time in eight months that a foreign government has tried to stop an execution in the United States because of treaty violation. Virginia has executed the other two inmates.
Earlier Wednesday, a man who shot and killed a state trooper who had pulled him over for speeding was executed by injection in Potosi, Mo.
Glennon Paul Sweet, 42, was convicted of shooting trooper Russell Harper, 45, with an assault rifle in 1987 after Harper stopped him near Springfield, in southwest Missouri.
"I didn't shoot the trooper," Sweet said in his final statement. "This isn't justice, but I forgive everyone."
Sweet had admitted that he was out for a drive on the night of the killing, but said he was on different road when Harper was shot point-blank in the head. Authorities said 20 shots were fired at the trooper, and testimony at Sweet's trial showed he was delivering drugs.
©1998 CBS Worldwide Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report