HUNTSVILLE — David Lee Powell (left), the once-promising University of Texas honors student who fatally shot an Austin police officer 32 years ago, has been executed by lethal injection.
Powell, 59, was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m.
He declined to make a final statement.
David Lee Powell spent his final day packing personal property and meeting visitors.
Powell’s day began before dawn, and guards reported that he was eating breakfast at 3:48 a.m. By 6:15 a.m., guards noted that he was packing his personal property before being escorted to a visitation area before 9 a.m.
His visitation period ended at noon.
By 4 p.m., Powell was scheduled to eat the final meal he requested.
Prison officials this afternoon also released the names of family members of slain police Officer Ralph Ablanedo who planned to witness the execution, as well as those who would attend for Powell.
The list also included prison officials, clergy and media representatives.
At 4:10 p.m., Huntsville police escorted a chartered bus containing retired and current Austin police officers in a procession followed by about more than 40 cars and motorcycles to the Walls Unit, where the execution chamber is located.
David Lee Powell received lethal injection about 30 minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt his punishment Tuesday evening.
He was the longest-serving inmate executed in Texas since the state resumed carrying out executions in 1982. He's also one of the longest-imprisoned in the nation to die. In 2008, a prisoner in Georgia was executed after spending more than 33 years on death row.
Powell's attorneys had argued unsuccessfully his exemplary behavior on death row over the past three decades showed jurors were wrong when they decided he would be a continuing danger and should die for killing 26-year-old Ralph Ablanedo.
Asked by a warden if he had a final statement, Powell gave no response.
As the drugs began flowing into his arms, he gasped slightly, began snoring quietly, then showed no movement. Nine minutes later, at 6:19 p.m. CDT, he was pronounced dead.
Some 150 retired and active police officers from Austin traveled 135 miles east to Huntsville and waited outside the downtown prison in the 90-plus-degree heat as the punishment was carried out. Several officers in the group knew Ablanedo.
There were about a dozen death penalty opponents outside the Walls Unit in the hot sun. The protesters were kept apart from the supporters of Ralph Ablanedo.
The Austin police outside the prison assembled in lines after Powell's execution to act as an honor guard when Ablanedo’s family exited the building.
In May 1978, Ablanedo pulled over a car driven by Powell's girlfriend, Sheila Meinert, because it had no rear license plate. A background check showed Powell, riding in the passenger seat, was wanted for theft and passing bad checks. Powell shot the officer 10 times with a Chinese version of a Soviet-made AK-47.
He was sentenced to death three times, most recently in 1999. The Supreme Court overturned his original conviction from 1978, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals threw out his death sentence from a 1991 retrial.
"I am infinitely sorry that I killed Ralph Ablanedo," Powell said in a December 2009 letter, intended for the officer's family and kept in the inmate's court file.
Powell grew up on a dairy farm near Campbell in Hunt County, graduated a year early as valedictorian from his small high school and went into the honors program at the University of Texas at Austin. He was majoring in physics and math and aspiring to be a doctor when he got hooked on methamphetamines and never finished college.
Powell was on his way to a drug deal when Ablanedo pulled over the car, said authorities, who later found .45-caliber handgun and about $5,000 worth of illegal drugs in the vehicle.
Meinert received 15 years in prison for attempted capital murder, served just over four years and was paroled in 1989.
Powell becomes the 13th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 460th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on Dec. 7, 1982. Powell becomes the 221st condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas since Rick Perry became Governor in 2001.
Powell becomes the 28th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1216th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
The Supreme Court has turned down David Powell. Things look grim but we can't give up yet.
The D.A. in Austin has an office that practices restorative justice. David's case should be perfect for this. Call Tuesday and remind Rosemary Lehmberg to have the courage to do the right thing and ask the judge to withdraw the execution order.
Appeals Court Denies David Lee Powell Bid for Life Sentence
An appeal from convicted murderer David Powell has been denied by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Powell, who was convicted of killing Officer Ralph Ablanedo in 1978, had appealed to the court to give him a life sentence instead of death by lethal injection.
Austin police officer Ralph Ablanedo had just let a driver go with a ticket for having no rear license plate when the reply to his background check came through, revealing her passenger had outstanding warrants for theft and passing bad checks.
When Ablanedo again pulled over the red Ford Mustang, passenger David Lee Powell grabbed an AK-47 and fired through the rear window. Ablanedo was hit 10 times, his protective vest no match for the firepower of the Soviet-made assault rifle.
32 years later, Powell, now 59, is scheduled to die Tuesday evening for killing the 26-year-old officer.
"We're looking forward to it finally being over, no question about that," said Bruce Mills, who was Ablanedo's backup that night in May 1978 and accompanied his mortally wounded partner to the hospital. "The word we keep describing is relief."
Only five of the 322 prisoners now on Texas death row have served more time there than Powell. The lethal injection would make him by far the longest-serving inmate executed in Texas and one of the longest-serving in the nation put to death. A Georgia inmate, Jack Alderman, spent more than 33 years on death row before he was executed in 2008.
Powell would be the 13th Texas inmate to die this year and the 460th since the state began carrying out executions again in 1982. Back then, Powell already had been on death row 4 years.
"The senseless death of Ralph Ablanedo has weighed heavily on my soul always," Powell said in a handwritten letter to the officer's family that is part of his court file. "When I killed Officer Ablanedo, I killed some part of myself. I have known no peace since."
Powell's lawyers say he has had an "exemplary life on death row," showing a positive attitude, helping other inmates and protecting corrections officers from assault by other inmates. In a last-ditch bid to courts to save him, they argued Powell's good behavior during more than 3 decades in prison shows jurors erred when they decided he would be a continuing threat to society and should be put to death.
But a plea for clemency from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles was unsuccessful. After the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected an appeal Monday, Powell's attorneys turned to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court rejected an earlier appeal from Powell last year.
"Certainly it is an uphill battle when you have the offense alleged being the death of a police officer, especially in the manner this police officer was killed," Gerry Morris, one of the defense attorneys at Powell's 3rd trial, said last week.
Powell has been sentenced to death 3 times, most recently in 1999. The Supreme Court had overturned his original conviction from 1979, and the Texas appeals court threw out his death sentence from a 1991 retrial.
Powell grew up on a dairy farm near Campbell in Hunt County, graduated a year early as valedictorian from his small high school and went into the honors program at the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in physics and math and aspiring to be a doctor. Court records show he got hooked on methamphetamines and never finished college.
"I was infected with the spirit of the times," Powell said in a video made recently to advocate for keeping him alive. His actions, he said, were a "betrayal of all my values."
Ablanedo, who had been a police officer for 5 years, described the car before he died. Powell and his girlfriend, Sheila Meinert, were arrested after a shootout with police. Meinert testified Powell gave her a hand grenade and told her to remove tape from it. She said she became hysterical and shoved it back at him.
Officers testified Powell threw the grenade and started running. The grenade, found about 10 feet from a police car, failed to explode because a safety clip hadn't been removed. Authorities later found Powell had a .45-caliber handgun in the car and about $5,000 worth of illegal drugs.
"If only I could go back and rewrite what happened that night," Powell said. "But I can't undo what I've done."
Meinert received 15 years in prison for attempted capital murder, served just over four years and was paroled in 1989. Mills eventually married his partner's widow and adopted their 2 sons. They all planned to be in the death chamber Tuesday evening to witness Powell's execution.
"The whole thing about such a model prisoner and great behavior, that is absolutely irrelevant," Mills said. "It's appalling to me to say the jury was wrong.
"The sentence needs to be carried out. It's time."
Austin police Officer Ralph Ablanedo didn't deserve to die. He was doing his job when he made his last traffic stop, on May 18, 1978.
David Lee Powell legal case May 18, 1978 Powell fatally shoots Austin police Officer Ralph Ablanedo with an AK-47.
The officer had been tailing a red Ford Mustang that had no rear license plate. Had he known a heavily armed methamphetamine dealer was in the car, Ablanedo might have waited for backup before pulling it over. Had the officer known an AK-47 was trained on him, he would have taken cover. He wouldn't have died before his wife and two young sons could reach the hospital to say goodbye.
Killer David Lee Powell's cruelty destroyed a life and a family. Jurors at his 1978 murder trial – the first of three – had no trouble establishing guilt and imposing a death sentence.
Today, he is scheduled for execution in Huntsville, more than 32 years after the murder. That is a state record for length of time between crime and execution, casting Texas' system of putting murderers to death in bizarre light.
Powell's record stay on Death Row mocks society's expectation that justice be sure and swift. His case is by no means an anomaly: Eight other Death Row inmates committed their heinous crimes in the 1970s, and 26 more in the 1980s.
Supporters of the death penalty cite its deterrent value, but it's a strange argument to make if the state struggles for decades to finally send people to the executioner's chamber. That struggle is necessary when the criminal justice system appears uncertain, uneven and error-prone in capital cases – so much so that this newspaper finds it impossible to support capital punishment.
As a presidential candidate, Gov. George W. Bush said in a debate that he supported the death penalty, because, "If it's administered swiftly, justly and fairly it saves lives." Today, death row in Texas holds 51 people who were sent to death row in Bush's first term – as governor. A more swift system, though, is unlikely to be just or fair.
Powell's three-decade stay on death row also draws into question the legal requirement that jurors must find that a defendant possesses "future dangerousness." Powell's attorneys argue that since he has been a model prisoner with a record of helping others behind bars, jurors reached the wrong conclusion on the threat he poses.
If the death penalty erases no real threat and fails as a deterrent, it serves no purpose other than retribution.
There is no debate that Powell's crime was a cruel act and he should pay an extraordinarily high price. Today, jurors have an option that juries didn't in Powell's 3 trials: life without the possibility of parole. Essentially, that's a sentence of death by prison, a punishment that better fits his crime.
Source: Editorial, Dallas Morning News, June 15, 2010
'Exemplary' inmate to be put to death in Texas
WASHINGTON — Death row inmate David Powell, 59, is scheduled to be executed in Texas on Tuesday for a murder he committed 32 years ago, despite calls for clemency from supporters who say he has repented his crimes and reformed his life.
Powell was deemed a dangerous criminal when he was arrested in 1978 at the age of 27 for the murder of police officer Ralph Ablanedo.
Powell's unusually long stay on death row is a result of various legal proceedings in his case, all of which have affirmed his death sentence.
But supporters said that David Powell's 32 years on Death Row have proved the power of human redemption.
Amnesty International is one of many advocate groups pleading his case, saying in a report that over time, Powell has become "a model prisoner and an extraordinary human being."
"For more than three decades he's lived an exemplary life on death row, embodying and living human virtues as few of us do," the human rights group said urging state officials to commute his death sentence to life in prison.
"People can change. Will Texas?" the report asked, saying that now elderly, Powell poses no danger to anyone and has shown deep remorse for his crimes.
Defense attorneys said that Powell at the time of the murder was a high on drugs and that he kicked his habit once in prison.
The Amnesty International report also cites testimony gathered from prison guards, inmates and a psychotherapist -- all attesting to the genuineness of Powell's transformation.
Even an Austin Texas policeman in letter to Powell's attorney, wrote that "the man who will be put to death... is not the man who committed the crime."
"This David Powell is an elderly man who has shown what I believe to be true understanding and remorse for the crime," the officer said.
But so far, the pleas for clemency have not been heeded by penal officials in Texas, the state with the most executions and which currently has more than 300 inmates on Death Row.
If his execution goes forward, Powell will be the 28th person put to death in the United States in 2010.
David Lee Powell, convicted and sentenced to death in 1978 for the murder of Austin Police Officer Ralph Ablanedo, is scheduled to be executed in Huntsville on June 15, 2010.
In other words, they will be celebrating the death of David Lee Powell.
The Austin Police flooded the courtroom with up to 100 uniformed officers every time David Lee Powell was sentenced, showing the jury that they lived for his death. Now, 32 years after the first trial, even though many officers were not even born when this crime occurred, the torch has been passed.
The Police Association is out of step with the community that its members serve. As police officers, the members of the Association serve with dignity and honor and provide a critical and much appreciated service to the community. As people who celebrate the death of another person, out of some sense of getting even, they bring dishonor to themselves and Austin. Though they will not string David Powell up in a tree, the revelry they plan conjures up those haunting images.
There has been a spirited movement to try to halt David’s execution, spearheaded by a group calling themselves Let David Live. The idea that, after 32 years of living in desperate conditions on Death Row, after his case has been reversed twice, the State of Texas still means to execute this man is intolerable to many people in Travis County. Those people have mobilized to flood the DA’s office with letters and calls, asking her to withdraw the death warrant.
David is an extraordinary human being, as the video “Saving David Powell” and his website will attest. See David’s story at
David held all the promise and hope of the gifted college student that he was in the late 60s. He was an idealist who fell into using methamphetamines, became addicted, and lost his way. By 1978, he was struggling inside a deep speed psychosis, and in this state – frightened and paranoid -- he killed Ralph Ablanedo after a traffic stop. David has expressed deep remorse, managed to find ways to invest his life with meaning, served innumerable needs of others on Death Row, teaching and mentoring scores of people, and apologized to Officer Ablanedo’s family. Except for the terrible murder of Officer Ablanedo, David has no history of violence, before or after this incident – even during his 32 years on Death Row.
The public needs to know that the man they are killing has moved in the direction of redemption for three decades and is an immensely valuable and productive human being. They should know that, in the waning years of the death penalty in the history of our country, they are putting to death a man who is utterly unworthy of execution and indisputably worthy of life. They should know that putting David Powell to death is as much a testament to the non-viability of the death penalty as is the execution of people who have been wrongfully convicted.
And the people of Travis County, the most progressive county in Texas, need to know that they are supporting a policy of vengeance instead of true justice.
David has expressed remorse for his actions in 1978. Because of the sincerity of his remorse and the compassionate life he has led while on death row, David deserves to have his sentence commuted from death.
If David Powell is executed, he will be the 460th person executed in Texas since 1982 and the 221st person executed since Rick Perry became governor. He will be the 13th person executed in Texas in 2010.
Members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole unanimously voted today against commuting the death sentence of David Lee Powell (pictured), who fatally shot an Austin police officer 32 years ago.
Powell's scheduled execution by lethal injection is set for Tuesday in Huntsville.
Powell is among the state longest-serving death row inmates; the state has never executed an inmate who has served so long behind bars.
Powell, 59, was convicted and sentenced to death in the May 18, 1978 death of Police Officer Ralph Ablanedo during a traffic stop in South Austin. Ablanedo was shot 10 times with an AK-47.
Powell's supporters have said that in his time behind bars, he has counseled fellow inmates and helped others learn to read.
This week, Powell's attorneys filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus to state District Judge Mike Lynch and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, saying that jurors inaccurately predicted his future dangerousness. Lynch has said that he will let the Court of Criminal Appeals rule. That court has not yet made a decision.
The recommendation of the board of pardons and parole now goes to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who can accept it or grant a 1-time 30-day reprieve.
With his execution date drawing near, David Lee Powell says he hopes to 'connect with family and loved ones outside family — let them know what they've meant to me, apologize for my departure and say goodbye.'
Heavily armed, deeply paranoid and strung out on drugs, David Lee Powell was a nightmare personified in 1978.
Sitting in a car that had been pulled over on a dark Austin side street, Powell sighted his AK-47 through the rear window. Police radios caught officer Ralph Ablanedo's scream as the first bullet penetrated his bulletproof vest. Nine more shots found their mark.
The well-liked father of 2 young sons died shortly after the 12:30 a.m. attack .
Barring the unexpected, Powell will be executed for that crime on June 15 — 32 years, three weeks and five days after Ablanedo was buried with honors.
Texas has never executed a man after so much time has passed, giving rise to a question that speaks to a basic concept of punishment and justice: Has Powell's execution been robbed of its meaning and purpose?
The clean-cut 59-year-old man who will be strapped to the Huntsville gurney to receive a trio of lethal drugs is nothing like the nightmare from another era. Powell's time in prison long ago removed the methamphetamine taint that helped turn a promising honors student into a jittery, lank-haired killer, and a fiercely loyal group of supporters insists that putting him to death now would be a travesty.
"He's the old David Powell" — intelligent, compassionate, articulate and thoughtful — and no longer poses a danger to society, said attorney David Van Os, who befriended Powell in 1968. "This is not how the death penalty was intended to be used."
But for those most touched by Ablanedo's murder, Powell's execution remains a meaningful — and desired — goal.
Irene Ablanedo, Ralph's sister, plans to stand at the window in the Huntsville death chamber to watch Powell die from 5 feet away. She will be thinking about her brother, what he meant to his family and how he was taken away too early. The pain of loss still burns.
"I can't wait for that bastard to take his last breath," she said. "That is what he deserves."
For some officers, Powell's death is a matter of fairness — an eye for an eye — that validates their service in a dangerous profession and adds a measure of protection by sending a clear message: If you kill a cop, you die.
More than 100 current and retired Austin police officers — including Ablanedo's friends and some who weren't even born when he died — will drive or take a chartered bus for an execution-day trip to Huntsville, which they're calling the Journey to Justice. Those who can't make it will toast Ablanedo in a downtown Austin bar at 6 p.m., the time set for Powell's execution.
"It is a matter of unfinished business," said retired police Lt. George Vanderhule, who helped Ablanedo's widow plan his funeral. "This has gone on for 32 years, and he has managed to evade justice."
But defense lawyer Richard Burr argues another perspective. Powell, he said, has led an exemplary life in the harsh conditions of death row — teaching illiterate inmates to read, defusing guard-prisoner tensions and offering true friendship to many in the "free world."
"Powell is someone who contributes much more to life than his execution would contribute to the symbolic goal of retribution 32 years after the murder of Ralph Ablanedo," Burr wrote to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles in hopes of getting Powell's sentence reduced to life in prison.
Speaking recently from death row, Powell said he wants to live. "I think I still have something to offer in this life," he said. But he's also begun preparing for an execution that appears increasingly likely.
Saying he is horrified to have caused Ablanedo's murder, Powell has tried to apologize to the officer's family and to express regret for the pain he caused by "an act that was a betrayal of everything I believed in and aspired to be."
"I had wanted to do it for decades," Powell said of his December 2009 letter to Ablanedo's family. "Although it was obviously too little too late, it seemed like the right thing to do. It seemed like a small, tentative first step towards healing the tear in the social fabric that was caused" by the murder.
'You'll be all right'
It was shortly after midnight on May 18, 1978.
Powell — carrying an automatic rifle with 38 rounds in the clip, a .45-caliber handgun, a hand grenade and $5,000 in methamphetamine — was on his way to Killeen for a drug deal. Girlfriend Sheila Meinert was driving his red Mustang, which was missing its rear license tag.
Ablanedo — a five-year officer who loved fishing, married his high school sweetheart and had two boys, ages 5 and 1½ — was patrolling South-Central Austin. He pulled the Mustang over on Live Oak Street and ticketed Meinert. Computer trouble prevented dispatchers from checking on Powell, so the officer let them go.
But before the Mustang had traveled half a block, the computer sprang to life and revealed that Powell was wanted for theft and writing bad checks to dozens of Austin merchants. Ablanedo again signaled Meinert to pull over as the dispatcher alerted officer Bruce Mills to provide routine backup.
Mills heard a scream over the police radio — it sounded like Ablanedo, but he wasn't sure — and arrived a short time later to find his friend bleeding on the street.
"He got me with a shotgun. He got me," Ablanedo told Mills, also describing the weapon as a machine gun.
Trying to sit up, Ablanedo asked how badly he was hurt. Running a hand over his stomach, he felt blood and lay back down.
You'll be all right, Mills replied.
As paramedics arrived, other officers cornered Powell in the parking lot of a nearby apartment complex. Somehow, nobody was hurt in the shootout that followed or when the grenade with a 16-foot kill radius, its pin pulled but a safety device still engaged, failed to explode after being thrown near police.
Meinert was quickly arrested. She served four years of a 15-year sentence for being a party to attempted capital murder. (Now living near Seattle, she hung up on a reporter who recently contacted her by phone.)
Powell ran. Police, believing they had him boxed into a wooded area, sent in 6 officers and 2 bloodhounds. Everyone else was told to stay out; anything moving would be considered a target.
About the same time, Ablanedo, 26, died on a hospital operating room table.
Powell, only one year older than Ablanedo, was found hiding in bushes at Travis High School about 4 a.m. and arrested without incident. His capital murder conviction four months later prompted this line in the American-Statesman: "Given the long, complex appeal process that is automatic upon conviction of capital murder, Powell probably will remain in a cell \u2026 for several years."
It was a lot longer than that. Powell's appeals resulted in 2 new trials, in 1991 and 1999. Both times, Powell was returned to death row after jurors concluded he still posed a threat to society.
'Not a troublemaker'
Before the death penalty can be imposed — today and when Powell was first convicted in 1978 — jurors must find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant will probably commit future acts of violence that pose a "continuing threat" to society. Powell's supporters say it's absurd to believe the gentle, intelligent man of 2010 poses any such risk.
While on death row, Powell was disciplined a few times, but only for minor rules infractions such as having too many prison-issued socks or refusing to remove a poster from his cell wall, prison officials said. 4 guards and a supervisor, testifying at Powell's 1999 retrial, called the inmate respectful and nonviolent.
"He was very quiet, always well-mannered," Mark Morrow, a 14-year guard, testified. "Not a troublemaker, by any means."
Psychiatrist Seth Silverman of Houston has concluded that Powell poses "virtually no risk" of future violence.
Powell has no history of violence beyond that one horrific act in 1978, understands the string of bad choices that led to Ablanedo's murder and displays a superior intellect that allows him to learn from past mistakes, said Silverman, an expert in addiction and forensic psychiatry, in an affidavit supplied by defense lawyers.
In addition, Powell's age adds an element of safety, Silverman said, pointing to research showing that arrest rates fall 90 percent from age 20 to 60.
Silverman began treating Powell about three years ago when the inmate became convinced that voices from androidlike robots were telling him to commit suicide. Aided by his intellect and ability to form healthy relationships, Powell quickly responded to psychotherapy, and the symptoms disappeared within several months, Silverman said.
Longtime friend Genevieve Hearon of Austin said Powell has kept a remarkably even temperament and displayed consistent concern for others despite living in harsh conditions, including confinement in a 60-square-foot cell since death row moved into new quarters in the Polunsky Unit in 1999.
Hearon's nonprofit, Capacity for Justice, works on behalf of prisoners with disabilities and presented Powell with its first Brothers' Keeper Humanitarian Award in 2008. Powell, she said, helped speed accommodations for deaf and wheelchair-using prisoners at the Travis County Jail, where he was held during his retrials, and worked to connect disabled death row inmates with outside help.
"In all of my contact with him, he's been helping other prisoners," Hearon said.
Van Os, who befriended Powell when they were University of Texas freshmen in 1968, believes Powell could safely be released from prison.
"Everything that is known about David Powell demonstrates that the horrific act of violence that he perpetrated against officer Ablanedo and the Ablanedo family is an anomaly in his life. He is a very peaceful, nonviolent person," said Van Os, a former Austin lawyer who now practices in San Antonio.
"I'm not trying to excuse what he did. I don't excuse it. It was a murder, and it was horrible," Van Os said. "But the death penalty is supposed to be imposed only on a person who's a continuing danger to society \u2026 and in his case, that is being made into a farce."
'Just really scary'
With details of Ablanedo's murder still fresh in 1978, Travis County prosecutors had little trouble arguing that Powell posed a lasting threat. And during the 1991 and 1999 retrials, with defense lawyers presenting evidence that Powell had appeared to reform while behind bars, prosecutors never wavered.
"I want you to picture the blood of Ralph Ablanedo seeping through his bulletproof vest," prosecutor Robert Smith told jurors in 1991. "David Powell is here because of a character disorder that cannot be rectified."
Lead prosecutor Terry Keel placed Powell's handgun on a table in front of Powell and asked jurors: "Does this make you feel safe? \u2026 The death penalty is society's self-defense. You have a very manipulative, very dangerous individual here."
Jurors in the 1991 trial deliberated for 10 hours. 9 of those hours were spent on Powell's dangerousness, said Charles Carsner, the jury foreman who still lives in Austin.
The turning point was a psychologist's notes discussing Powell's vision or dream "where he was driving at night on a lonely road, and a cop pulls him over, and he kills the cop," Carsner recalled recently. "It was just really scary."
After jurors in the 1999 retrial came to the same conclusion, Powell's appeals argued that his death sentence was unconstitutional because there is no evidence that he still posed a danger. U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Austin disagreed.
"Powell contends that he was 'a different person' when he was retried in 1999. Regardless of whether this court might agree with that statement, the jury \u2026 was not compelled to accept that contention, and it plainly did not," Austin wrote in 2005, adding that a federal appeals court has "explicitly rejected the argument that improving oneself after committing a heinous crime prevents a jury from concluding that one is a future danger."
Powell supporters remain convinced that such a legalistic argument ignores Powell's character, contributions and contrition.
But Ronnie Earle, the former Travis County district attorney who prosecuted Powell in 1978, is unconvinced.
"There was never any doubt about the applicability of the law and the appropriateness of the sentence. It was an ambush totally out of nowhere," Earle said. "His soul is between him and his own personal higher power. His actions are between him and the law."
'He was a genius'
Powell was a fish out of water when he arrived at UT for the fall 1968 semester.
Described as shy and naive, he came to Austin from his family's 80-acre dairy farm near Campbell, a town of fewer than 500 about 60 miles northeast of Dallas. He had been voted most likely to succeed at Campbell High School and was valedictorian of his 15-member graduating class even after skipping his junior year.
"He was the class nerd; he was a very bright man," former classmate Karen Hair testified at Powell's 1999 trial. "We thought he was a genius. He had very thick glasses, and he walked around with a smile on his face all the time."
His SAT scores were almost perfect, and officials with Plan II, UT's honors program, were excited to have him, UT adviser Donette Moss testified in 1999.
After initial trouble adjusting, Powell's grades and schoolwork improved — but trouble arose during his sophomore year, Moss said. Powell got involved in the anti-war movement and began experimenting with drugs. He dropped out of UT in 1970 and slid deeper into addiction over the next 8 years.
In the years before Ablanedo's death, Powell's family was alarmed to find the calm, responsible boy replaced by a flighty, fast-talking man with paranoid delusions. Former friends had trouble recognizing him in his thin, disoriented, disheveled state.
"He called me once and said he had to be careful talking to me because the CIA was after him," uncle Clem Struve said.
"I've had mental illness in my family, and I thought he was having a nervous breakdown," Marjorie Powell, his mother, said recently from her Dallas home. "I called a psychiatrist, different people for help."
Powell, however, disappeared. No amount of searching could turn him up, Struve said.
Then came the phone call from Austin about Ablanedo's death. "I remember screaming. Nobody could stop me from screaming," Marjorie Powell said. "It destroyed me, really. I love him with all my heart, of course. And I have never stopped loving him."
Marjorie Powell spent her life savings on lawyers and sat through emotionally wrenching trials, crying out in anguish when her son was sentenced to death, again, in 1991. She and her husband divorced, and Bill Powell died in 2007.
If there has been any silver lining, Marjorie Powell said, it has been watching her son regain the sweet disposition he had as a child.
"He tries to help anybody that's around him, even the guards. One guard talked to me and said he was all for David, that David seemed like a wonderful person — and that's a guard," she said. "I've had mothers of different cellmates call to say how David has been so kind to their sons."
'What a hero'
Before he reported to duty for his final patrol shift, Ralph Ablanedo spent a few minutes sitting with his wife, Judy, on the front porch of their South Austin home. He was sniffling from spring allergies but eager to work, Judy recalled.
"He was absolutely the model that you would want a police officer to be," said former Austin police Sgt. Sam Cox, who was Ablanedo's supervisor. "He had an even temperament, a great family, a supportive wife and a bright future, and he loved what he was doing. He was just a good, decent human being."
Soon after her husband drove away, Judy Ablanedo put their children to bed. Several hours later, she was awakened by pounding on the front door.
The officer at the door had already summoned a neighbor to care for the Ablanedo children, and he whisked Judy to the hospital in his patrol car.
How bad is it? she asked.
It's serious, he told her.
They were at the hospital only a few minutes before Police Chief Frank Dyson and a doctor walked into the waiting room. Judy sank into a chair and sobbed.
"Nobody had to say anything," she said. "It was written on everyone's face."
Mills was already there, having ridden in the ambulance with his friend and patrol partner. Together, he and Judy took on the grim task of telling Ablanedo's parents, who had moved to Austin in 1964, that their son was dead.
Over the next 2 years, Judy Ablanedo and Mills spent a lot of time together. He'd listen to her anger and sadness in late-night phone calls. A relationship bloomed, and they married in October 1980.
David Ablanedo, only 17 months old when his dad was killed, has learned about the man through stories shared by other family members, from reading scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and from photographs. One of his favorite photos hangs on a wall at the Austin Police Department. He had seen it while visiting Bruce Mills, whose last name he assumed.
"You think about, 'Who was my dad?'" David Mills said. "Naturally, you want to know who he was."
Over the years, he has thought of his father as a hero, not just because of what happened that night, but because of his devotion to his family and desire to make the world a better place.
"He died in the line of duty serving the city, and as a boy, you look up to your dad," he said. "You look to Ralph and say, 'What a hero.'\u2009"
'Nobody wins'
For years, Ablanedo's family has watched in frustration as Powell's case, which they viewed as clear-cut, prompted new trials and appeals.
With Powell's execution now days away, they are making plans for their own journey to justice.
David, who works in the San Francisco area for a human resources consulting firm, is flying in for the execution. His older brother, Steve, a 911 dispatcher in Boston, also will attend.
Ralph's sister Irene, his brother Armand and their 87-year-old mother, Betsy, are driving to Huntsville a day early to make sure nothing comes between them and the execution witness room. Ablanedo's father died of natural causes in 1981.
They predict relief will be the prevailing emotion when the death sentence is carried out — mostly because it will mark the end of any legal proceeding.
"But it is one of those things where nobody wins," Judy Mills said. "He will be put to death, and Ralph will still be gone. It's not about feeling better. There is nothing to feel good about."
In recent months, Bruce Mills has pondered the death penalty and Powell's execution. He thinks that in this instance, part of the purpose of the execution has lost its meaning.
"I don't think it is about deterrent," he said. "It is about retribution."
Judy Mills said, "If it had been done in a timely fashion, it might have been a deterrent, but when you can play the system for that many years, I don't think it is."
But Bruce Mills said the passage of three decades doesn't make Powell's execution any less deserved. He said he supports Powell's rights, including his ability to appeal, but said the legal course that wound through 30 years has been unfair.
"That is the injustice to the family and what the death penalty was meant for," Bruce Mills said.
'Terribly sorry'
Hands cuffed behind his back and a guard at each shoulder, Powell is led into a cramped booth in the Polunsky Unit's visitor lounge. The cuffs are unlocked through a hole in the metal door behind him, and he smiles widely as he picks up the phone to begin his first-ever interview with newspaper reporters.
Powell at 59, his hair gone silver and his gaze steady, is a far cry from the dazed, unkempt man who appeared in photos after his arrest.
He pauses often to collect his thoughts, which tend toward the philosophical.
"32 years ago, I was responsible for an enormously evil act, and it must have affected most or all people who lived in Austin and their level of comfort, the way they saw themselves and their neighbors," he said. "And no apology I could give would be powerful enough to express my regret for that.
"But every person is more than the worst thing they have ever done, and I am no exception."
Powell's lawyers always advised him to avoid contact with Ablanedo's family and the media, but with his appeals exhausted, he is free to try to explain himself.
He's also free to pursue a goal he knows will be elusive: redemption.
Powell's letter to the Ablanedo family — the first time he publicly took responsibility for the officer's death — was meant to let them "know how terribly sorry I was." Powell also offered to meet with anybody who feels they might be helped by the conversation, but Ablanedo's family wasn't interested.
"I guess the question I'm asking myself is how much pain is sufficient to achieve redemption in the aftermath of irreparable damage. And I don't guess you can ever achieve redemption in this," he said.
"I hope I'm a better person now than I was then. But the truth is, most of my life I was a better person than what you know of me. Time has allowed my true character to re-emerge and show itself. That's how I understand it."
With his execution looking more and more likely, Powell said he hopes to "connect with family and loved ones outside family — let them know what they've meant to me, apologize for my departure and say goodbye."
Inmates can have up to five people at the execution chamber, where they gather in a separate room from the one holding the victim's family. Powell said he has tried to discourage family and friends from watching, fearing they "will be damaged by what they witness."
"I have encouraged everybody to stay away, to be honest. Nonetheless, there will be some there."
An indelible impact
Today, Ralph Ablanedo Drive runs more than a half-mile through a South Austin neighborhood.
The officer's name is read aloud at an annual ceremony commemorating fallen officers.
And sometime soon, a 5-foot-tall gray granite memorial will mark the site, near Live Oak Street and Travis Heights Boulevard, where Ablanedo was shot.
Powell has spent more of his life on death row than in freedom. Friends and supporters continue to rally on his behalf, primarily through the website letdavidlive.org, but his appeals are over. His lawyer, Burr, has compiled an extensive application asking the parole board for clemency, knowing that only five of 58 such petitions have been granted over the past 4 years.
The governor can accept or reject the recommendation of the parole board, which has not yet acted on the request.
However it ends for Powell, his case has left an indelible impact on Austin.
Carsner, the jury foreman from Powell's 2nd trial, recalls several jurors crying and others shaking their heads as they voted by rising from their chairs.
"Nobody verbalized, 'Let's get rid of this guy; he needs to die,' or anything like that," he said. "I was voting my own thoughts about the matter, and thinking about the community and how they felt about a police officer's death."
As for Powell, Carsner said he walked away disappointed in the man.
"It looked like he really could've made something of himself. He just really screwed up, and it didn't happen to him all at once," Carsner said. "He got into drugs, selling and using more, then got interested in guns.
"He was just going down this trail, and there didn't seem to be any way back for him."
Lives interrupted
Since Powell's 1st conviction in 1978, Texas has executed 459 inmates, including 6 from Travis County.
Of the 322 inmates on death row, only 5 have been there longer than Powell.
If executed, Powell will be the state's longest-serving member of death row to receive lethal injection. Excell White was executed in 1999 after 24 years, 3 months.
Source: Austin American-Statesman, June 7, 2010
The Austin American-Statesman is recommending clemency instead of the death penalty for David Powell. Specifically, they recommend that "life without parole would be fair punishment for David Lee Powell". Clemency means to moderate the severity of punishment, which is exactly what the Statesman is recommending.
The decision on clemency will be made soon from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which can be contacted using the email address: bpp-pio@tdcj.state.tx.us
The contact information for Governor Perry is: (512) 463-1782 or through his email form on his website.
After 32 years on America's most brutal Death Row, including 10 years in solitary confinement, David Lee Powell is set to be executed by the State of Texas on June 15, 2010. I made this film of David's mother just weeks before his scheduled execution.
Please share this link with your friends and social networks. If you are moved, please go to letdavidlive.org to take action. There is still time to save David Powell!
David Lee Powell (left) is scheduled to be executed in the US state of Texas on 15 June for the murder of a police officer committed more than three decades ago. David Powell, who was 27 years old at the time of the crime, is now aged 59.
Officer Ralph Ablanedo was shot dead in the state capital, Austin, in May 1978. David Powell was convicted of his murder in October 1978. He was sentenced to death according to Texas law, which stipulates that in order for such a sentence to be passed, a jury must decide that it is probable that he would commit future acts of criminal violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society. In 1989, the US Supreme Court overturned the conviction and death sentence. David Powell was retried in 1991 and again sentenced to death. In 1994, this sentence was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals because of an error in the judge's instructions to the jury.
In 1999, a new sentencing hearing was held. As evidence of David Powell's future dangerousness, the prosecution relied primarily on the facts of the crime committed over two decades earlier. It also presented evidence that in 1970, when Powell was a teenager (he was now approaching 50), he had stolen a car and used false identification. The prosecution also sought to boost its case by pointing to evidence that he had broken rules in prison: all were minor infractions spread thinly over the years since his conviction, such as having an extra pair of socks and shorts in his cell; not making his bed before 6am; playing his radio too loud; cursing at a guard when he was not allowed to have contact lens solution; and refusing to obey an order to remove a poster from the wall of his cell.
The defense presented evidence that before David Powell started using drugs at university, he had been a law-abiding promising student. His drug use led to increasing paranoia and irrational behavior, leading up to the crime. After he stopped using drugs, once he was in prison, he returned to something like his former self, and several prison guards testified that he was a model inmate. Nevertheless, the jury decided that he would pose a danger to society if allowed to live, even in prison, and sentenced him to death for a third time. His current lawyer has told Amnesty International that David Powell "is not the same person he was in May 1978. He is now (and has been for a long time) remorseful, humble, steadfastly non-violent, and a positive role-model".
In 1999, a US Supreme Court judge wrote that the longer the delay between conviction and execution, "the weaker the justification for imposing the death penalty in terms of punishment's basic retributive and deterrent purposes." In 2002, the same judge noted that the uncertainty and lengthy delays between sentencing and execution "can inflict horrible feelings and an immense mental anxiety amounting to a great increase of the offender's punishment."
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
In May 1978, David Powell asked his former girlfriend Sheila Meinert to drive him from Austin to the city of Killeen to conduct a drug deal. In the car was a large quantity of drugs, a handgun and an AK-47 rifle, both loaded, and a hand grenade. They were stopped by Officer Ralph Ablanedo when he noticed the vehicle had no rear license plate. He gave Sheila Meinert a traffic ticket and radioed in to see if there were any arrest warrants outstanding against them. He allowed them to drive off before the check was completed because the dispatcher informed him that the computer system was malfunctioning. The message then came back that there was an arrest warrant against David Powell (for theft), and Officer Ablanedo pulled Sheila Meinert's car over again. As he approached, he was shot from the back of the car.
Prior to David Powell's trial, the judge ordered that he be subjected to a psychiatric examination to assess his competence to stand trial and his sanity at the time of the crime. The defense was not told that the experts would assess the defendant's future dangerousness, and David Powell himself had not been advised that he could remain silent. Yet both experts testified at the trial that, based on their examinations, they believed that David Powell would commit acts of future violence. In 1989, the US Supreme Court overturned the death sentence, noting that "for a defendant charged with a capital crime, the decision whether to submit to a psychiatric examination designed to determine his future dangerousness is literally a life or death matter which the defendant should not be required to face without the guiding hand of counsel".
According to David Powell's current lawyer, at the 1991 trial, scores of police marched into the courtroom with black ribbons over their badges. The Austin Police Association (APA) continues to support David Powell's execution. On 18 May 2008, the 30th anniversary of Officer Ablanedo's death, the APA took out a full page advertisement in the Austin American-Statesman newspaper announcing that David Powell's federal appeal in the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Court would be heard in New Orleans on 3 June 2008. After the hearing, attended by about 25 Austin police officers, the APA president was quoted in the newspaper as saying "hopefully this last appeal will be done and we can move on with setting an execution date so we can move on and the family of Ralph Ablanedo can finally get closure". Today, the APA website carries the news of David Powell's execution date and that the APA has chartered a bus for "friends and fellow police officers wishing to travel to Huntsville" on the day of the execution.
The APA advertisement of 18 May 2008 also included the assertion that on the day of his death, Officer Ablanedo had "returned fire with nine shots." Until then, the state's case had been that he had not fired his gun before he was shot by David Powell. No trial witness had ever testified that the officer fired his weapon. Powell's lawyers filed a new habeas corpus petition on this issue, arguing that such information might have altered the sentencing outcome, and might provide evidence about the involvement of Sheila Meinert in the shooting. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals summarily denied the petition in September 2009.
Amnesty International unconditionally opposes the death penalty, in all cases and in all countries. The USA has carried out 1,206 executions since resuming judicial killing in 1977. Texas accounts for 456 of these executions. There have been 18 executions in the USA this year, nine of them in Texas. Today 139 countries are abolitionist in law or practice. More than 70 countries have legislated to abolish the death penalty since David Powell was first sent to death row.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible (include inmate No: #000612):
- Explaining that you are not seeking to excuse the killing of Austin Police Officer Ralph Ablanedo;
- Noting that more than three decades have passed since the crime, calling into further question any assertion by the state that retribution or deterrence will be served by this execution;
- Noting evidence of David Powell's rehabilitation, in contrast to the jury's finding of "future dangerousness";
- Calling on the Parole Board to recommend that Governor Rick Perry commute David Powell's death sentence;
- Calling on the District Attorney of Travis County to move to have the execution date withdrawn, and not reset.
APPEALS TO:
Clemency Section
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
8610 Shoal Creek Blvd.
Austin, TX 78757-6814
Fax 1 512 467-0945
Email: bpp-pio@tdcj.state.tx.us
Salutation: Dear Board members
District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg
Travis County District Attorney's Office
PO Box 1748
Austin, TX 78767
Fax: 1 512 854-9695
Salutation: Dear District Attorney
PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.
Check with the AIUSA Urgent Action office if sending appeals after 15 June 2010.
David Lee Powell has already served more than most do on a life sentence. Now they want to give him death.
In the early morning hours of May 18, 1978, Austin police officer Ralph Ablanedo pulled over a red Mustang on a minor traffic violation. The car was missing a rear license tag, and the driver, Sheila Meinert, was driving without a license. Ablanedo called to run a check on Meinert and her boyfriend David Lee Powell, the owner of the car, but the computer system was down. He let them go, but within minutes he was radioed that Powell had some outstanding misdemeanor warrants. He pulled the Mustang over again, got out of his unit and approached the car. Before the night was over, Ablanedo would be dead.
Early years
David Lee Powell was born in Texas on January 13, 1951. His family were devout Catholics, and were well known and respected in their rural community. As a boy, David excelled in school, earning high marks in all his subjects. He was liked and remembered by teachers even as long ago as the 2nd grade. He was remarkable in his gentleness, even refusing to go hunting with his grandfather because he felt shooting animals was cruel. By high school, he had developed into an exceptionally bright and gifted student, with aspirations of becoming a doctor or scientist. He graduated high school at age sixteen as valedictorian. He applied to the University of Texas’ prestigious Plan II program, designed for only the best and the brightest. One of the requirements for admission was an essay, in which David wrote how he wanted to become a doctor in order to help people, and he predicted with astonishing accuracy the fall of the Soviet Union, how, when and why. With the highest ever recorded SAT score, David had no trouble being accepted into Plan II.
Austin, Texas in 1968 was a big change from the country life David had been accustomed to. The world was changing, and Austin was the center of political unrest in Texas, with many students joining in the anti-war movement. Along with the movement came the subculture, and taking drugs was not only accepted but almost de rigueur within that society of youthful thinkers and activists. David’s sense of righteousness was ignited by the movement, and he was seduced by all the wildness that came with it, including drugs. There was a distinct feeling at the time of the students being divided from the rest of society -- the establishment – and David quickly became a true believer.
College and the counter culture
He left school at age eighteen to embark on a life on the road – a spontaneous decision that led him all over the country, landing in New Orleans. He returned to UT, but discovered that he had contracted hepatitis, and left school again to go home to recover. His family had been running a dairy farm, and it was in financial trouble. David was eager to help, and worked hard round the clock on the farm. He developed a system of milking that would be 30% more productive, and it began to show promise.
David would return to UT and Plan II again, but the life of the subculture proved too enticing, and he left school again. The 60s were over. Along with a sizable chunk of that generation, David got good and lost. He disappeared into the subculture, slipping ever deeper into the world of drugs, becoming addicted to methamphetamine. By 1978, he had a daily IV meth habit.
Struggles with addiction and mental illness
In spite of the common belief in the 70s that methamphetamine was non-addictive, David knew he had developed a serious addiction, and was desperately seeking a way to stop. This was before the age of rehab, and there were precious few resources or safe havens for drug addicts at the time. He went to a doctor who prescribed Cylert, a drug that has since been banned because of its side effects, which included psychosis in some patients.
David would most certainly have been at risk for negative side effects from the drug. He had a family history of serious mental illness. Schizophrenia, depression, and suicides were traced in his family back to the 1700s. A psychiatrist had diagnosed him with schizophrenia, probably beginning to show symptoms in his late teens to early twenties.
Between the street meth and the use of Cylert, the chemical malfunctions going on in his brain must have triggered serious instability. David became unmoored. He began to display extreme paranoia, experiencing vivid hallucinations and uncharacteristic behavior verging on madness. People who encountered him at that time, who had known him well from his time at Plan II, described him as "wild-eyed", "going a million miles a minute", "not making sense". They were disturbed by his behavior, and worried about him. Despite his obvious symptoms, the doctor continued to prescribe Cylert to David in large doses.
"That damn girl"
The fateful night in May 1978 came. David and Sheila were both by that time deep inside a heavy meth addiction, accompanied by a descent into extreme paranoia. They were pulled over with drugs and guns in the car. Shots were fired, and Officer Ablanedo was mortally wounded.
Sheila and David tried to flee, but the car had a flat tire, so they pulled into a parking lot. There they were surrounded by police cars, shots were exchanged, a hand grenade was thrown but the pin was not pulled on it so it did not explode. Sheila surrendered, David fled on foot. A huge manhunt was called, with police driving through the streets of Austin, announcing to residents via loud speaker to get down onto the floor, that there was a madman on the loose. Several hours later, David turned himself in to a school guard at Travis High School not far from the shooting.
Both David and Sheila were initially charged with capital murder for the death of Officer Ablanedo. After she testified for the prosecution against David, the capital murder charge against Sheila was not pursued. She was eventually convicted of attempted capital murder related to the shootout in the parking lot. She was sentenced to 15 years but was released after serving 4 years.
David pled not guilty by reason of insanity, but the court refused to acknowledge his drug addiction or mental impairment at the time of the murder. The impact of the tragedy hit the community hard. Officer Albanedo was a decorated officer, and had left behind a grieving widow and two young children. The families on both sides – David’s and the Ablanedos, were devastated.
It has never been entirely clear what really happened that night. The first person who came to Officer Abalendo’s aid after the shooting asked him who did this. Officer Ablanedo responded, "That damn girl". Several times to several other people, Officer Ablanedo repeated, "That damn girl" before he died.
Death Row Diplomat
David was convicted of capital murder, and sentenced to die in September 1978. He went to Texas’ Death Row, where he stopped eating and drinking. He refused any form of sustenance for 13 days, when they finally took him to Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He stayed there for some months, before returning to Death Row. After settling down in prison, David (pictured left, photo by Lou Jones) became a model prisoner. Death Row was then housed at the Ellis Unit near Huntsville, and even though its conditions were terrible by any standards, the inmates did have the opportunity to work at a garment factory, go to the library, and were allowed to socialize to a limited degree.
David became known as a kind of diplomat when dangerous situations arose between prisoners, able to defuse a potentially violent outcome. He helped the illiterate learn to read, he counseled those who were clueless to matters of the law, leading them to resources that could help their cases. His personal library was extensive and well-known within the Death Row community, and David shared it enthusiastically, exposing many on the Row to art, culture, and literature they may never had known about otherwise. He became an advocate for the mentally and physically disabled, tirelessly pursuing ways to improve their situations.
He continued to educate himself while behind bars, and engaged in the outside world in any way he could. He became friends with many prominent Texas citizens, including Sissy Farenthold, whose own step-son had been brutally murdered. When a filmmaker, Tassos Rigopolous, decided to film a documentary of Death Row, he featured David as the main interview, because of his compelling descriptions of life there.
While awaiting re-trial at Austin's Travis County Jail, David was chosen to speak to foreign dignitaries who were in the US studying our criminal justice system, via the Austin Pan American Roundtable. He also lectured at St. Edward’s University. He did all this while behind bars, of course, via teleconferencing. Also while at County, he came to the attention of the organization Capacity For Justice, and has just recently received their Brother’s Keeper humanitarian award for his advocacy on behalf of fellow inmates.
Trials and tribulations
David has gone through three trials, two complete trials plus a third sentencing trial, and numerous appellate and habeas corpus filings. During his third trial, a document was uncovered stating the facts of the case, written by current Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg, who was then the first assistant to the DA, Ronnie Earle, at the time of the first trial. This document contained information that could have affected his sentencing, because it strongly implied that his co-defendant, Sheila Meinert, may have also been a shooter. Also uncovered were documents pertaining to Ms. Meinert’s parole hearing, with petitions signed by many Austin Police Officers claiming that she had thrown the grenade and fired shots during the shoot-out. These documents had been withheld by the prosecution for all the trials up to that point, when David’s last trial was almost over. The papers came too late in this last trial to present to the jury, so they were never presented as part of his defense.
Many of David’s supporters testified on his behalf at that trial, including Ms Farenthold, Ronald Hampton (Executive Director of the National Black Police Association), and several prison guards from Death Row who had known David for years. They all attested to his upstanding character and firmly stated that he was no longer a threat to society. David had no history of violence before or since the crime for which he was convicted, and all the testimony proved this to be true. David was again sentenced to death.
Permanent solitary confinement
Death Row was moved to the Polunsky Unit (picture), a new Supermax prison outside Huntsville. David was sent there after his last trial, and has languished in solitary confinement for eight years, as have all inmates now on Death Row. He has had no human contact in that time, except for guards handcuffing and strip searching him, or doctors examining him. He is not allowed to keep a library, nor any number of books or property, and is kept in his cell alone 24/7. There is no TV, no internet, and very limited visitor privileges. They are not allowed to keep anything personal on view in their cells, including family photos. They are subjected to constant sleep deprivation and the most base level food sustenance. Supermax-type prisons have been proven to create unbearable psychological conditions in prisoners and guards alike, and have been outlawed in many countries as being inhumane.
After 30 years, execution?
In 2006, David filed an appeal with the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that his third trial was unconstitutional and unfair because of the concealment of the two-shooter theory supported in Lehmberg’s document, and because the protection against Double Jeopardy required that he be granted a whole new trial, not just a new sentencing trial, when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed his sentence in his second trial but left his conviction in place. In 2008, the 5th Circuit refused to grant him a new trial.
The United States Supreme Court refused to review his case in March 2009. This clears the way for David to be executed by the State of Texas.
David’s legal team challenged his conviction and death sentence, asking that the Court of Criminal Appeals consider recently discovered new evidence. The petition was denied, which officially clears the way for the execution of David Powell.
David could be executed within 90 days.
If David had been sentenced to life in 1978, he would have been eligible for release in 20 years. He has now served over 30 years, the last 8 years in solitary confinement. His case has been going on for decades because it is so troubling to the courts.
The Ablanedo family still grieves the loss of Ralph Ablanedo. The community and the police still bear the scars this crime left behind. The Powell family will never recover. The death of David Powell will not change any of that.
We pray that the grievous harm occasioned by the killing of Officer Ablanedo can be addressed without taking the life of David Powell, who has so much still to offer the living.
David Powell on Texas Death Row, Ellis Unit, 1993, photo courtesy Lou Jones, from his book "Final Exposure." For more about the photo, go here.
"When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody cries out 'Stop!'
When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible.
When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard.
The cries, too, fall like rain in summer." Bertolt Brecht
For more information on this case, please visit David's website.
