On a summer’s day in 1991, Richard Stokley and Randy Brazeal picked up two 13-year-old girls from a fair in Cochise County, Arizona and drove them to the desert. There they raped them, then stomped, strangled and stabbed the two to death and dumped their naked bodies in a flooded mineshaft.
Today, Richard Stokley is set to bewas executed for that double homicide.
His accomplice Randy Brazeal is a free man living in Arkansas.
And little but the chance progress of justice and the human judgment calls that officers of the court make every day will distinguish the fate of two men, even though their trial judge has said that he “didn’t have a feeling that one was less culpable than the other.”
Brazeal, a 19-year-old troublemaker new to the area, and Stokley, a local brute twice his age, would spin different stories about exactly what happened in the desert that night to Mandy Meyers and Mary Snyder: about how the attacks began, and who particpated in what.
Long story short: Stokley’s version had both men as full participants, raping at least one girl apiece and each strangling a different victim. Brazeal’s version had him basically just giving people a ride and Stokley committing the crimes. (It’s not clear whether the victims were abducted from the fair, or went along willingly only to be attacked later.)
Forensic DNA testing was only just emerging in 1991, and it required months to process … months that the state did not have before Brazeal’s murder trial was set to begin. Even then, the state’s attorney worried that “the status of the law is in some question as to whether the DNA evidence would be admissible.”
This uncertainty set the parameters for a plea deal in which prosecutors took the guaranteed conviction and Brazeal dodged the needle. He was released in 2011 after serving concurrent 20-year sentences for second-degree murder.
But weeks after that deal was sealed (and before Stokley’s trial) DNA tests on semen retrieved from Mandy Meyers showed that both men had indeed raped her.
The DNA evidence helped seal Stokley’s conviction, even though it and other forensic evidence around the scene also tended to buttress Stokley’s “equal partners in the crime” story to the detriment of Brazeal’s version.
The net outcome* doesn’t necessarily look like justice. Mandy’s devastated mother, Patty Hancock, has been vocal in the run-up to Stokley’s execution about her disgust with the sentencing disproportion.
“With the evidence that they did have, Randy Brazeal should be sitting right next to Richard Dale Stokley,” she told one reporter. “And I will say that until the day I die.”
Stokley, for his part, filed a similar appeal in the courts as grounds for reducing his own sentence. But even though he’s availed every legal avenue possible, he didn’t bother trying the long odds at a gubernatorial reprieve — instead writing the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency:
I am also sorry I was mixed up in those awful events that brought me to this. I have been sorry for the victims and the victims’ families. But no one wants to hear of my miserable sorrow, they just want for me to get dead, which is vengeance. They think it will bring ‘closure.’ But there is no healing in that. Ever.
I have decided to decline a clemency hearing. I don’t want to put anyone through that, especially since I’m convinced that, as things stand now, it’s pointless. I reckon I know how to die, and if it’s my time, I’ll go without fanfare. And if it ain’t, I won’t. God’s will be done.
God’s will is scheduled for 10 a.m. Mountain time today. (Update: Stokley was executed as scheduled.)
* It’s particularly striking that the man who was more forthcoming and cooperative with investigators ended up with the heavier sentence.
Xu Maiyong (left), former vice mayor of Hangzhou in Zhejiang and bearer of the Santa Claus-esque nickname “Plenty Xu”, was on the hook for $30 million of embezzlement as part of a wide-ranging campaign of public graft in service of a suitably luxuriant lifestyle filled with homes and mistresses.
Jiang Renjie, deputy mayor in charge of urban planning, construction, transportation, communications and housing in Suzhou, had made about half that much in bribes from developers around 2001-2004.
United States
On July 19, 2011, Arizona executed 52-year-old Thomas Paul West, a mere 24 years after he beat a man to death while robbing his Tucson trailer in June 1987.
West had the depressing background so common to condemned prisoners, a litany of childhood sexual abuse that drove him to drug abuse and a PTSD diagnosis: he would claim that he “freaked out” when the homeowner Donald Bortle surprised him and started yelling at him, and that he didn’t think he’d killed Bortle at all.
The public triple-hanging in Azadi Square in the ethnically Kurdish west Iranian city of Kermanshah on this date was just a drop in the bucket relative to Iran’s hundreds-strong annual execution toll. But this one made the headlines.
Fazel Hawramy of Kurdishblogger.com provided the following video of the public hanging to Amnesty International, which helped focus worldwide attention on the event … although to what real consequence for “the continuing horror of the death penalty in Iran” (Amnesty’s words) is harder to say.
Equally hard to say from here is what relationship the hanged men’s rape conviction had to reality.
After he axed her position, she axed the rancher, ransacked his home, stole his car, and fled to New York.
A mysterious teenage accessory, “Jack”, was never found. Eva was picked up and extradited after the missing rancher’s remains turned up in a shallow grave.
The grizzled former frontierswoman — she followed the Klondike gold rush in her youth — took her fate nonchalantly.
“Wal, I’ll die with my boots on, an’ in full health,” she scolded her jurors. “An’ that’s more’n most of you old coots’ll be able to boast on.”
Eva Dugan’s health may have been full — though she bid unsuccessfully for clemency claiming mental illness — but her body was halved.
At 5 a.m. this date, wearing a homemade silk shroud, a composed Dugan mounted the gallows at the state prison in Florence.
Her death was instantaneous, for the rope, when it snapped at the end of the drop, severed her head from her body.
Five witnesses, two women, fainted. Altogether there were five women in the chamber at the time of the execution. It was the first time in the history of Arizona that an execution was witnessed by women.
Thanks in part to this ghastly scene, Arizona in 1934 replaced the gallows with the western states’ hot new killing technology, the gas chamber … leaving Dugan the last female client of that state’s hangman.
(Another woman, Ruth Judd, narrowly missed swiping Dugan’s distinction; Judd’s hanging sentence was commuted for insanity just days short of her scheduled 1933 hanging.)
Border-related violence and crime due to illegal immigration are critically important issues to the people of our state, to my Administration and to me, as your Governor and as a citizen.
In February 1903, two Mexicans shot up Goddard Station stagecoach stop, for motivations that were never plain. (There was no robbery, but it might have been revenge.)
The shooters got away, but law enforcement soon enough decided that a couple of railroad workers on the Mexican side of the border matched their description, and contrived to lure them into Arizona where they could be arrested.
Hilario Hidalgo and Francisco Renteria, were put on trial for their lives in Prescott, Ariz., in June 1903, where they were doomed to hang on the strength of eyewitness testimony and thirty minutes of the jurymen’s time. Appeals forbidden, the sentence was executed on this date — not six months after the crime.
With feelings of profound regret and sorrow, I hereby invite you to attend and witness the private and decent and humane execution of two human beings, namely: Richard Roe and John Doe. Crime — Murder.
Said men will be executed on July 31, 1903 at 12 noon. You are expected to deport yourself in a respectful manner and any flippant or unseemly language or conduct on your part will not be allowed. Conduct on anyone’s part bordering on ribaldry and tending to mar the solemnity of the occasion will not be tolerated.
The men cracked wise at the reading of their death warrant — “I have heard that repeated so often that if it was a song I would sing it to you,” reported the Los Angeles Times (Aug. 1, 1903) — and with “perfect nerve” checked out, calling only “Adios! Adios!” from the scaffold.
(Thanks to German political scientist Matthias Lehmphul for the guest post -ed.)
The last man — so far — to die in the gas chamber, Walter LaGrand, was executed by the state of Arizona on March 3rd, 1999. He was one of just 11 prisoners gassed among the 1,099 executions to date since the U.S. death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
The United States introduced the gas chamber as an execution method in the beginning of the last century. The first death row inmate ever executed with poisoned air was Chinese migrant Gee Jon, who died at the Nevada State Prison in 1924. Relative to the other methods in use at the time — the electric chair, hanging, and the firing squad — gas was believed the most humane way of taking a person’s life.
It took 70 years for a court to finally recognize it as cruel and unusual punishment. In 1994 a federal judge ruled that the gas chamber violated the eighth amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Shortly before Walter LaGrand’s scheduled execution, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay whose logic would have banned lethal gas forever. This was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court, leaving it as it remains today -– a backup or secondary option for putting a delinquent to death in five states: Arizona, California, Maryland, Missouri and Wyoming.
Death penalty for a murder in a bank
Walter LaGrand (top) and his brother Karl.
Walter LaGrand was following his brother Karl LaGrand, who Arizona had executed by lethal injection a week earlier. The brothers were sentenced to death on December 14th, 1984 for stabbing to death an employee of a bank in Marana, Arizona.
On January 7, 1982, 19-year-old Walter and 18-year-old Karl drove from Tucson to Marana to rob the Valley National Bank. Brandishing a toy gun, they ordered the bank manager, Ken Hartstock, to open the vault. Mr. Hartstock, however, did not have the complete combination. The brothers bound Mr. Hartstock’s hand together with electrical tape. When he attempted to shout at Karl, he was stabbed to death with a letter opener.
Another bank employee, Ms. Lopez, was in the room at the time of the murder. Her hands had also been bound, and she too suffered several stab wounds. She later became the state’s key witness.
When they were arrested, Karl LaGrand confessed to the killing and tried to shield his older brother from a capital murder charge by stating that Walter was not in the room when the stabbing occurred.
Ms. Lopez, however, testified that both brothers were surrounding Mr. Hartstock at the time of his death.
Between different worlds: A childhood without a home
At the time Walter and Karl LaGrand were born, their mother, Emma Maria Gebel, lived in Augsburg in what was then West Germany. The boys were cared for either by Emma’s mother or a babysitter. When Emma’s mom became ill and could no longer handle the children, the two kids were put into an orphanage.
During the two years they remained at this place they suffered an egregious lack of care. Deprivation of food and blankets were common punishments at this institution. When Emma took the boys back they already suffered insomnia and post-trauma disturbances. In 1966 Emma married Masie LaGrand, an American soldier stationed in Augsburg. He adopted the two boys and their older sister Patricia. Together they moved to the USA in 1967.
Soon their new dad was send to Vietnam. After returning from this war he never was the same; Emma and Masie divorced in 1973. The boys’ delinquent record can be tracked back to 1978 — when they first ran away from home and shoplifted.
Though Karl and Walter were adopted, they never were naturalized by the national immigration service. They remained German citizens — and that set the stage for another legal controversy in the days before their execution.
Power Politics: How the United States overrules international law
In a personal meeting with President Bill Clinton, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder expressed his concerns about the fate of both brothers. However, the main argument was not the execution method but the lack of consular assistance by the time of arrest.
The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR) is one of the bedrock documents of international law. Under Article 36 of the VCCR any arresting authority is obliged to promptly notify a detained foreign national of his or her right to contact and seek assistance from their consulate.
This article does not exempt foreign citizens from prosecution, nor does it give special rights under the law. It only insures that foreign nationals -– including Americans abroad –- have the means to defend themselves in a uniquely vulnerable situation. The United States and Germany are among the VCCR’s 169 signatories.
On January 22nd, 1998 the Special Rapporteur to the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Bacre W. Ndiaye criticized the United States for its arbitrary disregard for treaty obligations like consular notification:
There seems to be a serious gap in the relations between federal and state governments, particularly when it comes to international obligations undertaken by the United States Government. The fact that the rights proclaimed in international treaties are already said to be a part of domestic legislation does not exempt the Federal Government from disseminating their provisions. Domestic laws appear de facto to prevail over international law, even if they could contradict the international obligations of the United States. (Extrajudicial summary on arbitrary executions, E/CN.4/1998/68/Add.3:C.108 — full document (.pdf))
Much too late, Germany opened a legal case against the United States on Walter LaGrand’s behalf at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands.
Karl LaGrand has been already executed when Berlin filed suit against Washington. Justice Christopher Weeramantry urged the United States to spare the life of Walter LaGrand. The White House argued it was a matter of the State of Arizona, outside the purview of federal authority. Under extreme international pressure, the Arizona Board of Pardons and Paroles took an unprecedented step: for the first time ever, it recommended an 60-day reprieve to await the decision of Germany’s suit against the United States at the ICJ.
Walter and Karl LaGrand always had a close relationship and that did not change during their trial or time on death row. Until the end of 1998 they were celled beside one another and enjoyed the ability to talk freely. They held mirrors through the bars of their cells, so that they could see the other while talking. The chance to go out together on a work crew (when they were allowed to work) always excited them due to the fact that they were then able to see each other. In fact, they were emotionally so close that, if they have to die, they had expressed a preference to be executed on the same day.
Given a choice in their method of execution, both brothers tactically opted for the gas chamber to give the legal challenges to lethal gas a chance to save them. With those challenges foundering, both were offered a late switch to lethal injection in exchange for dropping suit.
Karl took the deal. Walter, as the New York Times put it, “opted for the gas, with its resonance of the Holocaust for Germans.”
Before the executioner switched the lever to initiate a chemical reaction between cyanide pellets (KCN) and sulfuric acid (H2SO4) the inmate was given his last words. Walter LaGrand said:
To all my loved ones, I hope they find peace. To all of you here today, I forgive you and hope I can be forgiven in my next life.
This date’s gassing with hydrogen cyanide (HCN) took 18 minutes until the heart of Walter LaGrand stopped beating. While the execution took place witnesses left the room nauseated.
Will history repeat? There are some 125 foreign nationals on death row in the United States today. Another pair of German brothers, Michael and Rudi Apelt, are as of this writing waiting to be put to death in Arizona — perhaps, if they choose it, in the same gas chamber where Walter LaGrand perished.
Legal and diplomatic fallout
Still smarting from the LaGrands’ execution, German foreign minister Joschka Fischer said at the 55th Session of the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on March 23rd, 1999:
States whose justice system kill are not meeting their responsibility to set an example to society. Europeans believe that the death penalty cannot be justified either ethically or legally and has not proved to be an effective means of combating crime.
The ICJ ruled in favor of Germany‘s LaGrand suit on June 26th, 2001, more than two years after the brothers had been put to death. It was the first time that a country won a case against the United States on this matter.
In 2005, facing multiplying challenges from death-sentenced foreign nationals similarly denied their rights under the VCCR, the Bush administration formally withdrew the United States from the ICJ’s oversight for such cases.
And little but the chance progress of justice and the human judgment calls that officers of the court make every day will distinguish the fate of two men, even though their trial judge has said that he “didn’t have a feeling that one was less culpable than the other.”
On the morning of July 19, 2011, two Chinese politicians were 
On July 19, 2011, Arizona executed 52-year-old 
A 
Some stories are just plain classics.
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