Death Sentence (41 page)

“I’ve never done anything like this in my life,” Alice told the reporter, Michael Wade, “and I’m sitting here last night trying to think of things to put on signs. I’ve tried to run from it, and I can’t run. It’s in the news, it’s in the house. You’re sitting there as it comes out. Your heart starts pounding, and all this you relive over and over and over again. We’re asking as victims, when can it end for us?

“I have two small children. I had one come up to my husband the other night and he says, ‘Daddy, will that lady get out?’

“And Bill looked at him and said, ‘Bryan, honey, I don’t think so. We have our laws. We hope justice will be done.’

“And he says, ‘But Daddy, if she gets out, will she kill my granny?’”

On the day that story appeared, Monday, July 2, the unexpected occurred. In a two-line order, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger granted Velma another stay of execution. The court asked the state to respond to the issues in the petition for rehearing filed by Velma’s lawyers after the court had refused her last appeal. Normally, the state would not respond to such a petition unless requested by the court, and the request and accompanying stay of execution caught both sides by surprise.

The issue that concerned Burger was that of juror disqualification, whether a potential juror who said he was opposed to the death penalty but didn’t specifically say that he would always vote against it could automatically be excluded.

Warden Nathan Rice went to give Velma the news and to tell her that she would be transferred back to Women’s Prison.

“Don’t bother packing my things,” she told him with a laugh. “Just get me out of here.”

Velma returned to Single Cell at Women’s Prison. But she soon would be placed back in Dorm C, which had been reopened and was being used for overflow. Only a few other inmates would ever be in the building with her, and life would be far quieter. Velma got a corner cell and quickly recreated her cozy nest. She was receiving nearly a hundred letters a week now, most from strangers, and just keeping up with her correspondence took most of her time.

On the day after Velma’s return, Jennie Lancaster was summoned to a meeting with the Secretary of Correction, who wanted to make clear that Velma was to receive no special privileges. The rules for meeting with reporters that had applied at Central Prison would remain in effect, and no longer would reporters or photographers be allowed to take pictures of Velma in her cell, or to sit in on visits with her family or others.

Nevertheless, reporters continued to flock to Velma. Her name and face were becoming familiar all over the country, and in many other places around the world—in England, Germany, Holland, France, Spain, Norway, Brazil, Australia, Mexico. “Death Row Granny,” she usually was called, and the image sparked reaction. Letters arriving at the governor’s office were four to one in favor of sparing her and coming in ever increasing numbers.

But Alice Storms and the daughters of John Henry Lee were keeping the media campaign on Velma’s behalf in check. In more and more interviews Velma was having to respond to their criticisms. And Jimmie Little and the support committee realized that they had made a mistake in overlooking the victims.

Even the
North Carolina Catholic
was now taking note of them, quoting Little in the July 8 edition. “The victims are suffering greatly,” he said. “Every time they see an article in the newspaper about the case, they are reminded of the hurt and tragedy. They are living through a different kind of grief than Velma’s family, who are no less victims.”

Sister Teresa, who had quit her job at Women’s Prison on June 30 to devote all her time to the support committee, was also quoted on the subject. “When a loved one is a victim of murder, the grieving process is much more involved than after a death by natural causes. I feel deeply for the families, but I also feel that their resolution must come from within, not from taking another life.”

“Ultimately, we have to ask what is served by Velma’s execution,” Little added. “Will it stop the hurt of anybody? Will it be a deterrent? Or will it simply be revenge?”

On Thursday, August 16, the Supreme Court dismissed Velma’s petition for rehearing without comment. Jimmie Little got the call shortly before five p.m. and headed to Women’s Prison in rush-hour traffic to tell Velma, but she heard about the rejection in a radio bulletin before he could get there. Little had done his best to prepare her for this, and he found her in a mood of resignation, concerned only about how Ronnie and Pam would take the news. She wanted to call and let them know that she was okay and that she was trusting in clemency.

The governor still wouldn’t comment about Velma’s case, but the new development brought more questions at every campaign stop. “Everyone knows my position on capital punishment—I favor that law,” he said in Charlotte. “But every case needs to be looked at individually and given full consideration.”

Gary Pearce, Hunt’s former press secretary, who had left that position to become co-director of his campaign, bristled when a reporter asked about the effect the political race would have on the clemency decision, calling the question “offensive.” He hadn’t discussed it with the governor, he said. “And I don’t intend to.”

The court’s refusal to reconsider Velma’s case automatically dissolved her stay, and on Friday Britt asked that a hearing to set a new execution date be held on Wednesday, August 22, at 10:30 A.M.

Because the law dictated that the date had to be from sixty to ninety days following the hearing, it also meant that the execution could be as late as November 20, two weeks after the election, thus allowing the governor to delay a decision on clemency until after his race for the Senate had been decided. Certainly, reason dictated that would be the case.

The hearing began the following week in Elizabethtown before Judge Giles Clark. As before, Britt wanted sixty days, but precedent called for setting executions for Fridays, and the first Friday after sixty days would add five days to the total. He asked for that tradition to be ignored.

Little, of course, pleaded for the full ninety days, as he had in June before a different judge, saying he needed time to prepare the clemency appeal. He was to meet with the governor’s office next week to set a timetable, he said. He and Dick Burr also needed time to look into other avenues of appeal, and Velma and her family needed time to prepare in case all of their efforts failed.

Judge Clark stuck with the Friday tradition and set the execution for November 2, seventy-two days hence— four days before the election. Instead of lifting the clemency decision above politics, the judge had thrust it even deeper into the mire.

Governor Hunt and his campaign staff took the position that having to decide clemency prior to the election would have no political effect because it was not a political matter. A campaign spokesperson even went so far as to say that the matter was being given no thought at all, which, of course, was far from the truth.

Privately, Hunt’s aides and advisers were deeply concerned, and they couldn’t help but point out that they found the timing of the execution date “curious,” especially in view of the fact that the judge who set it had been the college roommate of Jim Holshouser, the former Republican governor, who had appointed him to the bench in 1975. The timing, without doubt, was to the advantage of Jesse Helms.

Hunt’s positions had been growing more conservative throughout the campaign, and if he granted clemency, he not only would be going against the grain of his own campaign, he would be defying the majority in the state who favored capital punishment. Helms could push that issue from the time clemency was granted until the election. If, on the other hand, Hunt allowed Velma to be executed, he risked offending those opposed to capital punishment, most of whom were likely to be his supporters. And while they probably wouldn’t retaliate by voting for Helms, they might choose not to vote, which could prove crucial in such a close election.

Velma, as reporter Jim Nesbitt of the
Orlando Sentinel
wrote in an article that also appeared in the
Boston Globe
and other newspapers, had become “a macabre wild card in the Deep South’s hottest political race.”

Thad Boyle, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told the
News & Observer
that Hunt was in “a lose-lose situation.”

“Whatever decision he makes will be read as a political decision,” Boyle said. “It will be viewed as being based on how he could maximize his potential at the polls.”

One of Hunt’s closest friends and advisers, Phil Carlton, a former state Supreme Court justice, agreed. “It lends itself to the public perception that the decision would be a political one,” he said. “That’s at a minimum. It’s beyond my comprehension as to why a judge would have set it the Friday before a Tuesday election.”

Judge Clark, who actually was a Democrat, responded that his decision had been “in no way political.” He said that he simply had followed the schedule decided by the judge at the previous hearing, setting the execution for the second Friday within the thirty-day frame.

Political or not, Hunt had to deal with the situation, and he decided to handle it forthrightly and put it behind him, hoping, no doubt, to give the appearance of decisiveness. A week after the hearing, on the same day that Alice Storms and others picketed a campaign appearance by the governor in Lumberton (“Victims don’t get a second chance,” said one of their placards), Hunt announced that he would devote two days in September, the 18th and 19th, to hearing from Velma’s supporters and opponents, and that he would make his decision as quickly as possible after that with no regard to politics.

For a story about Velma that had appeared at the end of July, reporter Lil Thompson of the
Winston-Salem Journal
interviewed Dr. Selwyn Rose, the psychiatrist who had testified on Velma’s behalf at her hearing in 1980. He described Velma as “weird” and called her “a cold, frightening lady.” The psychiatric examinations of Velma before her trial had been only cursory, he maintained, as had his own more than two years later. He had asked the court to provide for a thorough psychiatric examination at that time, he said, but had been turned down.

“That was the last chance in the legal process to raise the issue of her mental state,” he said. “The lady deserved a thorough examination and did not have one.”

Jimmie Little was preparing for the clemency appeal as if it were a new trial, and he wanted to make sure that Velma did have a thorough psychiatric exam. Richard Burr knew a psychiatrist in New York who was doing ground-breaking research with violent criminals. Her name was Dorothy Otnow Lewis, and she had worked with the defense on several Florida death-penalty cases. Burr asked if she would examine Velma.

Lewis, a graduate of the Yale University School of Medicine, a psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital in New York, a professor at New York University School of Medicine, had discovered while working with juvenile delinquents that many who were violent had suffered severe head injuries in childhood, and she thought there might be a correlation. She got a grant to conduct a study and, with Jonathan Pincus, a neurologist at Yale, began to develop evidence that damage to the frontal lobes of the cortex, the top layer of the brain, had a connection to violence. The frontal lobes control behavior and judgment, and if impaired, could create an inability to curb impulses or anger, thus leading to violence. Lewis and Pincus would come to believe that the most violent people were those who had damage to the frontal lobes, had suffered abuse in childhood, and had psychotic symptoms, particularly paranoia.

Not surprisingly, Lewis questioned Velma closely about head injuries and abuse in her childhood.

Velma related how she’d been knocked out when she and a boy ran into each other at school when she was ten, leaving her with a lasting knot on her forehead. She told of another head injury in a serious bike accident at age fourteen (something other family members would not recall), and of the numerous car accidents in which she’d been involved, at least three of which had caused blows to the head. She also told of her long history of headaches and occasional blackouts. “It is important to note that Velma’s episodes of blacking out … occurred prior to any drug history,” Lewis later wrote, although that would not be remembered by family members either.

Asked about mental illness in her family, Velma said that her mother had crying spells, episodes of depression and severe headaches. In her later years, Velma said, her mother would sometimes become extremely distraught and frightened, saying, “I feel like I’m going crazy.” One of her mother’s brothers had fits of violence, cursing and laughing, wouldn’t sleep in the house, and had to be put into an asylum when he was in his twenties, Velma recalled. Another of her mother’s brothers was completely withdrawn and would go days without speaking a word. And one of her mother’s sisters suffered convulsions and severe emotional problems.

Lewis traced Velma’s depressive behavior back to the second grade, but the first severe occurrence came in the sixth grade when Velma said she attempted to kill herself by drinking bleach (another incident that family members could not recall). Periods of deep depression continued through the ninth grade, Velma said.

The sexual abuse Velma had endured as a child had been far greater than she previously had made known, Lewis learned. But getting this information, she wrote in her report, was “extremely difficult.”