Jaturun Siripongs
nick
CALIFORNIA:
For Gov. Gray Davis, the case of condemned murderer Jaturun Siripongs
already was shaping up as a rigorous first test of his political will on
the explosive capital punishment issue. Just 3 weeks in office, Davis
would have to decide quickly whether to spare a convicted killer's life.
But Pope John Paul II last week may have made Davis' indoctrination even
tougher.
With Davis set on Tuesday to consider Siripongs' closely watched bid for
clemency, the pope turned a national spotlight on the death penalty when
he whispered a plea for mercy that persuaded Missouri's governor to
spare
the life of a triple murderer.
Now, Davis -- a Roman Catholic but an ardent supporter of the death
penalty -- will have to decide Siripongs' fate as the pope stumps once
again for an end to capital punishment in the United States. It will be
a memorable baptism for Davis, who in the coming years is expected to
review more requests for clemency from death row inmates than any
governor since Edmund "Pat" Brown Sr.
"The difficulty is coming out of the box and having a case like this,"
said former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp, who opposes
the
death penalty. "It puts a heavier burden on him."
There is little doubt that Siripongs will need Davis to grant clemency
if
he is to avoid becoming the sixth inmate executed in California since
1992.
Siripongs, a Thai national, was convicted in 1983 of killing 2 people
in an Orange County market where he once worked. He has essentially
exhausted his legal appeals, although he has asked the state Supreme
Court to block his Feb. 9 execution. The court has rejected his appeals
in the past.
Former Gov. Pete Wilson denied clemency for Siripongs last year, but
the federal courts intervened just hours before his November execution,
concluding that the clemency process was flawed. Now, Davis has the
final word.
Davis spokesman Michael Bustamante had little to say about the clemency
process or whether the pope's recent pronouncements about the death
penalty might influence the governor. Orange County prosecutors
vehemently oppose clemency, filing papers with the governor Friday
saying "the time has come finally for justice to prevail."
Still, Siripongs, 43, has enlisted broad support for leniency, from the
government of Thailand to jurors who sentenced him to death and even San
Quentin's former warden. Members of the victims' families appear
divided
over Siripongs' execution. And his jailers at San Quentin have praised
him as a model prisoner who quietly studies Buddhism and helps educate
fellow death row inmates.
In addition, Siripongs asserted in a 41-page clemency petition filed
earlier this month that while he deserves to be imprisoned for his role
in the murders of 2 people, he was an accomplice in the crime, not the
killer.
"This is not a case where there has been a vocal movement to have
someone executed," said San Francisco attorney Michael Laurence, one of
Siripongs' lawyers and head of a new state agency that represents
condemned inmates. "That is in large measure reflected in the wide
range of support for Mr. Siripongs in his clemency petition."
But even with support, Siripongs may wish for papal intervention --
clemency is a rarity nationwide in capital cases. In fact, the pope's
pleas for leniency have always been ignored by governors and the U.S.
Supreme Court until last week's break for Missouri death row inmate
Darrell Mease. Mease, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death
Penalty Information Center, was only the 38th condemned inmate granted
clemency in the past 23 years.
Despite broad powers to commute death sentences, governors are generally
reluctant to run the political risk. When lame duck Alabama Gov. Fob
James, a Republican with a history of supporting the death penalty,
pardoned a woman on that state's death row earlier this month, he was
vilified by victims' rights groups, politicians and law enforcement
officials.
Governors with a long track record of denying clemency do occasionally
pardon an inmate, including Texas Gov. George W. Bush, a presidential
prospect, and Missouri's Mel Carnahan, who spared Mease.
But "people will forget about it," Cathy Burnett, president of the
Western Missouri Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said of
Carnahan. "They'll just remember the 20 executions he has already
presided over."
In California, legal and political experts say it will be particularly
difficult for Davis to grant clemency in his 1st case as governor,
given that he has not had a chance to establish a tough record on the
issue. Davis emphasized his support for the death penalty in his
successful gubernatorial campaign against Republican Attorney General
Dan Lungren.
"If he granted clemency now, he'd have political hell to pay," said Dan
Schnur, a political strategist and former spokesman for Wilson and
Lungren. "He used the issue to convince voters that he would be just as
tough on crime as Dan Lungren. If Davis flipped on this, he'd go into a
political free fall."
Wilson, in his 2 terms in office, rejected all five clemency petitions
he reviewed, including that of Robert Alton Harris, the 1st inmate
executed in California since the state revived the death penalty. But
with more than 500 inmates now on death row, many of them getting
further along in the appeals process, clemency requests are expected to
rise dramatically.
Siripongs, experts say, will be the 1st of many condemned inmates
asking Davis for a reprieve, which in most cases would mean life in
prison without the possibility of parole.
Eric George, deputy legal affairs secretary under Wilson, handled
Siripongs' original clemency petition, but declined to discuss it.
However, he stressed that Wilson took the entire process seriously.
"I venture to say it is one of the most solemn obligations that the
governor takes, and he really puts an enormous amount of time and
thinking into it," George said.
At his clemency hearing Tuesday in Sacramento, Siripongs' lawyers are
expected to argue that he not only is deserving of mercy, but was
wrongfully sentenced to die at his 1983 trial. Specifically, papers
filed with the governor argue that prosecutors withheld information that
might have proven Siripongs was not the killer of store workers Packovan
Wattanaporn, 36, and Quach Nguyen, 52.
"We do not suggest this evidence absolves Mr. Siripongs of all
culpability," the petition states. "The punishment prescribed for this
crime by the electorate of California, however, is life in prison, not
execution by lethal injection."
Orange County prosecutors say there is no doubt Siripongs' was the
killer, and point out that various courts have described the evidence
against him as "overwhelming."
Lance Lindsey, executive director of Death Penalty Focus of California,
said Siripongs' case provides Davis with a perfect opportunity to prove
himself a centrist and grant clemency. But others say it will be hard
to
sway Davis and that Siripongs' timing, despite what happened this week
in
Missouri, is poor.
"What's happened across the country is that clemency has fallen into
disuse," said Santa Clara University law Professor Gerald Uelmen, a
death penalty expert. "Every politician is scared that an exercise of
political clemency will come back to haunt them in the next election."
(source: San Jose Mercury News)
CALIFORNIA:
In Oakland, when curator Laura Magnani looks at the unusual exhibit,
she sees an eloquent argument why the artist should not be executed in
California's death chamber eight days from today.
The serene still-lifes, the delicate penciled nude, the Masai warrior
rendered in watercolor, are all proof to Magnani that "there's something
else in the person that's worth saving. You can't really look at these
pieces without seeing that."
When victims' rights advocate Marc Klaas thinks about that same exhibit-
-
"Visions of Life: Art Out of Death Row" by Jaturun Siripongs, who was
convicted of a double murder in Orange County--he wishes the show was
more complete.
"If they show an exhibition of his artwork, they should also show an
exhibition of his crime scene," Klaas said. "That would allow people to
make a more balanced judgment."
Balanced judgment is hard to come by when considering the works of
prison artists. From the ghoulish clown art of John Wayne Gacy to the
paintings of "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez, this "outside art" or "raw
art" often raises hackles, sometimes raises money for art supplies,
occasionally even raises consciousness.
Magnani, program director for justice and youth at the American
Friends Service Committee, is hoping for changed minds. Siripongs is
scheduled for a clemency hearing before the Board of Prison Terms on
Tuesday.
Invitations to the condemned man's exhibit show a detailed portrait
of an Asian woman on the front--a black-and-white version of one of
Siripongs' 32 works on display. On the back, the cards exhort viewers
to "write now for clemency to Gov. Gray Davis."
"Visions of Life" went on exhibit Jan. 20 at the rambling YWCA
building in downtown Oakland, where plans are for it to remain until the
day after Siripongs' scheduled execution.
Jaturun "Jay" Siripongs, 43, faces execution for the strangulation
death of a food store manager and the fatal stabbing of a clerk during a
1981 robbery in Garden Grove. The Thai native was arrested 2 days after
the murders, when he tried to purchase a television with a victim's
credit card.
Siripongs was scheduled to die by lethal injection Nov. 16, when a
federal judge halted the execution to consider a claim that the former
Buddhist monk's civil rights were violated when Gov. Pete Wilson denied
clemency.
Many of those fighting against Siripongs' execution believe that he was
present during the robbery but did not commit the murders. Prosecutors
point to the cuts on Siripongs' hands, the dried blood in his car and
the knives and jewelry found in his home to underscore his guilt.
According to Death Penalty Focus of California, which is fighting
Siripongs' execution, the inmate has admitted involvement in the robbery
but contends that an accomplice killed the victims. Siripongs has
refused to identify the accomplice and none has been charged.
"In Jay's case we actually think he did not commit the crime," said
Magnani, whose organization has exhibited inmate art for decades. For
those who have committed crimes, the art they create is "a way for
people to see the human side of prisoners, to understand that people are
not the sum total of their worst act."
Siripongs began drawing as a teenager in his native Thailand. But he
did not "fully develop his artistic talents until he went to San Quentin
in 1983," according to the biography that accompanies the show.
He is self-taught, works in his death row cell and favors realism, the
biography says, "because it requires no interpretation and is consistent
with his Buddhist practice of seeing and accepting people and things as
they are."
Throughout his 17 years at San Quentin, Siripongs has created more than
600 pieces--almost all of which he has given away to friends and
attorneys. He has worked in a variety of media, including pencil, pen
and ink, oil and chalk pastel, acrylic, water color and origami. He
buys his materials from the prison canteen.
These days, though, as his execution looms and his life constricts,
"he's down to pencils now," Magnani said, as she walks visitors through
the spare room where Siripongs' works hang.
After a crowded opening-day reception, the free exhibit has drawn a
steady trickle of art lovers, attorneys and the simply curious who have
made the requisite appointment to view the condemned man's work.
So far there has been no organized protest, in part because activists in
the victims' rights movement don't want to draw even more attention to a
display they consider utterly insensitive, said Susan Fisher, state vice
chairwoman for the Doris Tate Crime Victims Bureau.
"There are always going to be people out there who buy or look at this
kind of stuff for freak value," said Fisher, who attended Siripongs'
first clemency hearing. "But the people who feel there's enough value
in this man that they put on an art show...are who I think are most
appalling."
Curiosity brought Winton McKibben out last week to see Siripongs' work.
He wanted to see how a prisoner might spend his confinement, wanted to
look for clues to what could possibly rehabilitate someone behind bars.
Siripongs' work, said the art docent and retired superior court judge,
is pleasant and colorful, technically well done, but "I wouldn't call
it great art...There's a lot of things he could do commercially. I'm
not advocating that he be released, but he could benefit from others,
and that's worth saving."
Siripongs paints, said Magnani, for the same reasons all artists work--
self-expression, self-discovery, the creation of beauty. But layered on
top of those traditional explanations are a few others. Prison is
boring. Death row is "horrendous."
"Having this outlet, he's just lucky," she said.
Alfred Dyer, who has spent 16 years on death row for killing 2 people,
likes to paint, he wrote, because it "helps me to feel free. My mind
is in another world then, not in lockup on death row."
Dyer's work hangs, along with the work of several prisoners and at least
1 other condemned man, at Expressions, a gallery of African American art
just off Oakland's main drag. In a 1996 letter to the gallery's owners,
Dyer wrote that "painting is therapy for me, helping my thoughts from
becoming over-stressed."
Although there is little mystery as to why inmates paint and draw, it
can be a bit more difficult to understand why anyone would want to own
the work of people behind bars.
The Rev. Alan Laird, owner of Expressions gallery, said some people
become intrigued by the artists' stories and see their purchase of
prison art as a kind of "reaching out" to the inmates.
In the case of the world's better-known criminals, simple notoriety is
often the explanation. Laird noted that there is a small core of
collectors who buy what he dubs "executed art."
"Once the prisoner is executed, the art will go up to maybe 10 times
the value," said Laird, who sells most artworks by prisoners for $300 to
$400.
Then there's Joe Roth, who spent $20,000 at a 1994 auction to buy more
than 2 dozen artworks by executed serial killer Gacy--so he could burn
them. "We wanted them wiped off the map," he said at the time.
Defense attorney Kendall Goh owns half a dozen of Siripongs' works, some
on display in the Oakland exhibit. She contends that the people who own
his works are not among the ghoulish or revenge-seeking.
They know the man. They care about him. As a result, none of the
pieces currently on display are for sale.
"His works are gifts of love," said Goh. "He gives them to people he
cares about. For the most part these are gifts from the heart."
(source: Los Angeles Times)
--
JordanBKK
>Report from : San Jose Mercury News & Los Angeles Times
>
>
>CALIFORNIA:
>
>For Gov. Gray Davis, the case of condemned murderer Jaturun Siripongs
>already was shaping up as a rigorous first test of his political will on
>the explosive capital punishment issue. Just 3 weeks in office, Davis
>would have to decide quickly whether to spare a convicted killer's life.
PM Chuan also asked President Clinton to spare his life. Clinton is so busy on
his trial.
This prosecutor team should have prosecuted OJ.
nick
CALIFORNIA:
In San Francisco, a prosecution lawyer asked the state Supreme Court
on Monday to reject Jaturun Siripongs' bid to block his execution, and
denied a defense claim prosecutors concealed knowledge of an accomplice.
Siripongs is scheduled to die by injection on Feb. 9 at San Quentin
Prison.
Prosecutors have consistently expressed suspicion that the sister of
Siripongs' girlfriend was involved in a 1981 robbery and double murder,
but have never said they knew she or anyone besides Siripongs committed
the crimes, Deputy Attorney General Laura Hallgren said in court papers.
She said the latest appeal, filed last Thursday, was made "for the
purpose of defeating, embarrassing, and most particularly delaying
justice."
Siripongs, 47, was convicted of robbing a Garden Grove market where he
had worked part-time, strangling the manager, Packovan "Pat"
Wattanaporn, and fatally stabbing store employee Quach Nguyen.
He has admitted taking part in the December 1981 robbery but insisted an
accomplice, whom he would not identify, committed the murders. State
and federal courts have upheld his death sentence and rejected defense
arguments that his trial lawyer should have done more to investigate the
possibility of an accomplice.
In Thursday's appeal, defense lawyers identified the alleged accomplice
as Netnara "Noon" Vecharungsri, the 17-year-old sister of Siripongs'
girlfriend, and a prosecution witness at his 1983 trial.
Her bloodstained jacket was found in a dumpster and a letter to her was
found beneath one victim's body, circumstances she explained by saying
she had left the jacket at Siripongs' apartment. She said she was home
at the time of the murders, testimony corroborated by her mother.
In fact, defense lawyers said in court papers, Vecharungsri committed
both murders, and Siripongs, who had been stationed as a lookout, was
stabbed in the hands when he tried to stop her.
Attorney Michael Laurence said the information didn't come from
Siripongs, who is remaining silent out of fear for the safety of his
family in his native Thailand. Laurence said Vecharungsri is also in
Thailand.
The new appeal said prosecutors presented Vecharungsri as an innocent
witness while concealing knowledge of her role that would have persuaded
the jury to spare Siripongs' life.
Defense lawyers said they first learned of prosecutors' knowledge last
fall, when Deputy District Attorney James Tanizaki told a reporter that
"there was a strong suspicion that Siripongs had a female companion
nicknamed Noon." The trial prosecutor, Edgar Freeman, told another
reporter, "I believe the evidence shows there was a 2nd person."
After those disclosures, newly hired defense experts criticized the
failure of the sheriff's crime laboratory to analyze blood and hair
found at the scene that belonged to neither Siripongs nor the victims,
Laurence said. He said the court should order new testing of that
evidence, which has never been made available to the defense.
But Hallgren, the state's lawyer, said a prosecutor told the trial judge
in open court that Vecharungsri and her sister knew more than they were
telling, and the judge agreed. "This conclusion was obvious to all" in
light of the evidence about her jacket and her testimony about phone
calls from Siripongs, Hallgren said.
She also cited a Garden Grove detective's statement in a 1983 report to
the trial judge that Siripongs "probably had an accomplice," and
Freeman's statement at a December 1995 federal court hearing that he
suspected someone else was involved but "we had no evidence of it."
The prosecutors' recent comments to reporters are consistent with their
past statements and do not show any concealed knowledge justifying a new
appeal, Hallgren said. She said the prosecution cannot be faulted "for
not sharing its unprovable hunches with defense counsel."
"Siripongs' repetitive assertions that he was not the real killer have
been closely examined over the years by many courts," the state lawyer
said. "Each time the conclusion has been the same -- the evidence of
his guilt as the killer is overwhelming."
--