Site Presented By
Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Unlike the Lucas case, in which the Texas attorney general presented Bush with all-but-incontrovertible evidence that the condemned man could not have committed the specific murder for which the state sought to execute him, the Spence case required a bit of rumination. More than any other execution to date, however, Spence's raises questions as to whether Bush really takes his responsibility in the clemency process at all seriously.
Spence was tried and convicted by two separate juries in connection with what were known as the "Lake Waco Murders." The three teenage victims, Kenneth Franks, Jill Montgomery and Raylene Rice, were brutally stabbed to death at a Waco, Texas, park in July, 1982. The two girls had also been sexually assaulted.
On its face, the state's evidence against Spence seems overwhelming. It included, most importantly, testimony from two of Spence's co-defendants, who pleaded guilty to two of the murders in exchange for life sentences, and testimony from a forensic odontologist who said that bite marks inflicted on the two girls could have only come from Spence. The state also presented seven jailhouse informants who claimed they heard Spence talk about or confess to the murders, and a friend of Spence who said he'd told her that he and "some friends" had raped some "chicks" at Lake Waco.
But in the years following Spence's convictions, Spence's lawyers uncovered an astonishing body of potentially exculpatory evidence that had been withheld from the defendant's trial lawyers. Police investigative files discovered by Raoul Schonemann, who represented Spence post-conviction, from 1991 until his execution, showed that the state falsely informed the court that no other suspects had been identified by police.
In fact, police records showed that although not one of the 20-odd Waco citizens who were at the lake on the night of the murders had mentioned seeing Spence or his co-defendants, they had identified several other potential suspects, among them one Terry Lee Harper, who the same police files showed had actually boasted about having committed the murders.
Seven witnesses reported that Harper had told them of his involvement in the murders and no less than three said they had heard Harper make the statement before the murders were publicly reported on the radio. Harper also had a rap sheet listing 25 assaults, including several against teenagers at Lake Waco. When police tried to interview Harper, he refused to cooperate. When Spence's lawyers did question him, Harper denied any involvement, and signed an affidavit saying he was home watching "Dynasty" at the time of the murders. But "Dynasty" wasn't shown that night. When police finally went to arrest Harper in 1994 in connection with another crime, the fatal stabbing of an elderly man, he killed himself with a shotgun.
There are other reasons to doubt Spence's guilt. Given the grisly nature of the murders, the multiple stab wounds and extensive loss of blood, one might have expected police to find some physical evidence from the assailants.
Yet pubic and head hairs found on the victims' bodies matched neither Spence nor the state's other suspects. And the hairs were never tested against any of the other suspects identified in the police investigation. No hair sample was taken, for example, from Harper.
The only forensic evidence the state ever produced linking Spence to the crime was so-called bite marks on the two girls, which an expert state witness testified could only have come from Spence's teeth. But the state didn't bother to take bite-mark impressions from either of the other two suspects allegedly at the crime scene.
And the "bite marks" were only discovered a year after the victims were buried, when the prosecutor examined photos of the victims and concluded that faint markings described as lacerations in the autopsy were actually made by teeth. A blind panel of scientific experts brought together by Spence's lawyers, years after his trial, concluded that it was not even clear that the marks in the photos had been caused by teeth -- but if they were, they were not consistent with those of Spence.
