EXECUTION FACT SHEET: SHARP
FERRANTE
This is for your continued edification.
MArk Ferrante
FACT SHEET ON MICHAEL EUGENE SHARP
Texas Attorney General Dan Morales offers the following
information in the case
against Michael Eugene Sharp, scheduled to be executed after 6
p.m., Wednesday,
November 19, 1997.
FACTS OF THE CRIME
Michael Eugene Sharp was convicted for the capital murder of
Brenda Kay
Broadway during the course of committing or attempting to
commit kidnaping in
Kermit, Texas.
Sharp was a supervisor at Rod Ric oil rig number seven, which
was located
approximately 10 miles east of Kermit, Texas. When he left the
rig at approximately
8:30 p.m. on Friday, June 10, 1982, he told one of his
drillers, Joe Almager, that he
was going to Kermit. He drove away in a company vehicle, a blue
Ford pickup truck
with a club cab and a white tool box in the back. In Kermit,
Sharp met a female
business acquaintance, Lee Armijo, in a bar from approximately
8:30 to 9:30. He left
the bar after arguing with Armijo.
Later that night, at around 11 p.m., Sharp followed Diane Stout
and a friend,
engaging them in conversation. At approximately 11:30-11:40
p.m., Sharp asked
Irene Phillips, whom he had just met, to go riding around with
him in his pickup; she
declined. Sometime after 11:30 p.m., Sharp introduced himself
to Kelly Sawyer and
her sister as "Mike" or "Ike", engaged them in conversation and
asked them to ride
around and drink beer with him. They declined.
Some time after 12:30 a.m. on June 11, 1982, Brenda Broadway
and her two
daughters, 14-year-old Salina Elms and 8-year-old Christy Elms,
went to a car wash
in Kermit. When they arrived, a blue pickup truck with white
tool boxes pulled up
behind them. The driver of the truck, whom Salina identified as
Sharp, introduced
himself as "Mike from Odessa" and stated it was his first time
in Kermit. Sharp
offered to help wash the car, and Brenda agreed.
After the car had been washed, the girls got inside, and Salina
heard Brenda suggest
to Sharp that they all get something to eat at a nearby deli.
In response, Sharp
"grabbed her [Brenda] by the back of the head, her hair, and
took a knife and stuck it
to her throat and told her to tell the kids to get into the
pickup truck." Although
Brenda did not do so, Salina was afraid Sharp would hurt or
kill her mother or all
three of them. Accordingly, she and her sister got into the
truck while Sharp kept the
knife to Brenda's throat. Sharp then pushed Brenda into the
passenger side of the
truck, climbed into the driver's side, and drove east down the
highway.
As he drove, Sharp made Christy, who was crying, get into the
back of the cab
behind the front seat. He also threatened to kill them if
anybody had seen them or if
they tried anything. At one point, Sharp made Brenda and Salina
get down on the
floor board and covered them with a parka. After allowing them
to get off the floor
and sit on the seat, Sharp forced them to undress, ostensibly
so that they would not
run away.
Sharp eventually turned off the highway onto a dirt road. When
he reached a gate, he
stopped the truck, removed the keys, and used a hammer from the
back of the truck
to loosen the gate. He opened it, replaced the hammer, and
drove through. A couple
of minutes later, Sharp stopped the truck. Taking rope from the
glove compartment,
he tied Salina's arms behind her back, above the elbows and at
the wrists, and also
her feet. Because he used up all of that rope, he obtained more
from the back of the
truck; he used this rope to similarly bind Brenda. Sharp
restarted the truck and drove
approximately two miles to a cattle watering tank.
Sharp then turned on the interior light and stared at Brenda
and Salina with a funny
little grin. Salina testified that he sexually molested the two
women and forced them
to perform various sexual acts on each other. Christy watched
from the floor board
behind the seat of the truck, whimpering almost continuously.
After Sharp allowed them to stop, he retied Brenda's legs. He
then took off his shirt
and placed it behind the seat. Sharp had Salina get out of the
truck, and he got out
and used the bathroom at the water tank. When he had relieved
himself, he returned
and retied Salina's legs. He then dragged Brenda out of the
truck, threw her on the
ground, and stabbed her two or three times.(1) As Brenda cried
out to God, Sharp
pulled Christy from behind the seat.
It was at this point that Salina escaped, having managed to
work loose the ropes that
bound her feet. She ran into a barbed wire fence, which knocked
her down. She
crawled under the fence and ran some more and then hid behind a
big bush, trying to
cover herself with tumbleweeds and dirt. She could see Sharp
driving around, and
she was afraid he had seen her at one point because the lights
shone directly on her.
He turned away, however, and Salina ran and hid behind another
bush. Because she
heard coyotes getting closer, she finally climbed up the
biggest tree she could find
using her feet. Later, she got down from the tree and began
walking. It was daylight
when Salina finally reached the safety of a drilling rig. She
was naked, with her
mother's bra tied around her neck and her arms bound so tightly
behind her back that
her elbows almost touched, and dragged a mesquite branch to
ward off coyotes.
The physical evidence was consistent with Salina Elms'
testimony that Sharp was the
perpetrator. The blue truck Sharp was driving contained hairs
consistent with the
hairs of all three victims. The gearshift lever of his pickup
truck came apart in the
same way that it had occurred during the course of the
kidnaping of Brenda
Broadway and her daughters. Caliche mud that had been left at
the scene of the
crime was consistent with mud at the rig where Sharp worked.
Traces of blood,
which could have been human blood, were found on Sharp's knife,
and that knife
could have inflicted the fatal wounds to Broadway.
Sharp also resembled the composite drawing prepared from
Salina's description of
the man who abducted her. Sam Cubine, who had done welding work
on Sharp's rig,
recognized Sharp when the composite drawing was shown on
television. Members of
Sharp's drilling crew also stated that the composite drawing
looked like Sharp.
Finally, Sharp's conduct after the offense was consistent with
guilty knowledge and
desire to avoid apprehension. First, his behavior at the rig
was suspicious. Members
of the drilling crew that Sharp supervised testified that, on
the Sunday after the
offense, Sharp acted nervous and in a hurry. He was wearing
tennis shoes, which
they noticed because Sharp and the others normally wore boots
for safety reasons.
Joe Tienda, one of the crew members, saw Sharp leave the rig
that afternoon with a
pile of clothes. He never returned to the rig, but instead fled
to Denver City, Texas,
where he arrived at a friend's house without a vehicle and
discussed moving to
Louisiana. Sharp attempted to get rid of incriminating
evidence. He bought new tires
for the truck he had been driving, despite the fact that he had
purchased new tires
only two months earlier. In addition, the truck was unusually
clean for one that was
used around an oil rig, and there were no fingerprints in it at
all.
PROCEDURAL HISTORY
Sharp is in custody pursuant to a judgment and sentence of the
112th Judicial District
Court of Crockett County, Texas, Cause No. 1420. Sharp was
charged by an
indictment filed in Winkler County, Texas, with the capital
offense of intentional
murder of Brenda Kay Broadway during the course of a kidnaping.
Following a
transfer of venue to Crockett County, he was tried before a
jury upon a plea of not
guilty. On May 19, 1983, the jury found Sharp guilty of capital
murder. That same
day, after hearing additional evidence relating to punishment,
the jury answered
affirmatively the two special issues submitted pursuant to Tex.
Code Crim. Proc.
Ann. art. 37.071 (b) (Vernon Supp. 1983). In accordance with
Texas law, the trial
court assessed a death sentence.
Sharp automatically appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals, which
affirmed the conviction and sentence on April 9, 1986. Sharp's
conviction became
final on October 3, 1988, when the United States Supreme Court
denied his petition
for writ of certiorari.
On May 2, 1989, Sharp filed an application for state
post-conviction habeas relief.
The trial court, deciding most of the claims on the basis of
the pleadings and the
record, entered certain findings of fact and conclusions of
law. Following an
evidentiary hearing, the trial court on January 11, 1990,
entered supplemental findings
of fact and conclusions of law and recommended that relief be
denied. The Court of
Criminal Appeals adopted the trial court's findings and
conclusions in an unpublished
order.
Sharp filed a federal habeas petition on May 5, 1989. The
district court, awaiting
rulings by the state courts, took no action until July 19,
1990, when it granted Sharp's
request for a stay of execution. The case was referred to a
magistrate judge, who
conducted two evidentiary hearings and issued two sets of
findings recommending
that relief be denied. After considering Sharp's objections,
the district court adopted
the findings of the magistrate judge and dismissed the
petition.
Timely notice of appeal was filed with the United States Court
of Appeals for the
Fifth Circuit. The federal district court granted a certificate
of probable cause on July
16, 1994. After briefs were filed and oral argument heard, the
Fifth Circuit affirmed
the judgment of the district court on February 26, 1997. A
subsequent motion for
rehearing was denied on June 6, 1997. And, on October 14, 1997,
the trial court set
Sharp's execution date for November 19, 1997.
PRIOR CRIMINAL HISTORY
On January 9, 1976, Sharp was convicted upon a plea of guilty
for the offenses of
aggravated robbery by deadly weapon, which occurred on March 6,
1975, and theft
by check, which occurred on October 7, 1975. He was sentenced
to 15 years'
confinement in the Texas Department of Corrections, but was
released on parole on
July 31, 1979. Sharp was also convicted of murder for the
stabbing death of Christy
Elms, the 8-year-old daughter of the victim of the instant
offense, for which he
received a life sentence.