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#Post#: 613--------------------------------------------------
~ Brent Brewer, 09Nov23, (TX) ~
By: BuzzC Date: October 27, 2023, 9:57 pm
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Brent Brewer was sentenced to death by the State of Texas for a
robbery murder. According to court documents Brent Brewer and an
accomplice asked the victim for a ride to a Salvation Army.
Along the way Brent Brewer would pull out a knife and told the
victim to pull over which the victim did and Brewer proceeded to
stab him to death.
#Post#: 614--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Brent Brewer, 09Nov23, (TX) ~
By: BuzzC Date: November 8, 2023, 9:20 pm
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HTML https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/brewer-tx-death-row-execution-18475562.php
#Post#: 615--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Brent Brewer, 09Nov23, (TX) ~
By: BuzzC Date: November 9, 2023, 9:12 pm
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Texas man who said death sentence was based on false expert
testimony is executed for 1990 killing--
Thursday, November 9th, 2023
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HTML https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/BWN3DXD6XYI65NOMM3BQUO53SE.jpg&w=916[/img]
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A Texas man who said his death sentence was
based on false and unscientific expert testimony was executed
Thursday evening for killing a man during a robbery decades ago.
Brent Ray Brewer, 53, died by chemical injection at the state
penitentiary in Huntsville for the April 1990 death of Robert
Laminack. He was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m. local time, 15
minutes after a lethal dose of pentobarbital began flowing into
his arms.
Prosecutors had said Laminack, 66, gave Brewer and his
girlfriend a ride to a Salvation Army location in Amarillo when
he was stabbed in the neck and robbed of $140.
After a spiritual adviser standing next to Brewer in the death
chamber said a brief prayer, and Brewer responded, “Amen,” the
inmate told the warden also next to him that he wanted to make a
final statement.
“I would like to tell the family of the victim that I could
never figure out the words to fix what I have broken,” he said
as members of the Laminack family quietly watched through a
window just feet from him.
“I just want you to know that this 53-year-old is not the same
reckless 19-year-old kid from 1990,” he continued, his voice
cracking. “I hope you find peace, and I mean it.”
As the drugs took effect, he gasped twice, snored several times
and then took a few quiet breaths. Within 30 seconds, all
movement stopped.
“Brent Ray Brewer was in prison more than 33 years,” Debra
Corbin, whose father was killed in the attack, said after
watching Brewer die. “Our mom says our family has been in prison
33 years.
“We have been released today.”
The execution came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court declined
to step in over the inmate’s claims that prosecutors had relied
on false and discredited expert testimony at his 2009
resentencing trial. Brewer’s lawyers had alleged that a
prosecution expert, Richard Coons, falsely claimed Brewer would
be a future danger — a legal finding needed to impose a death
sentence.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday had dismissed an
appeal on that issue without reviewing the merits of the
argument, saying the claim should have been raised previously.
“We are deeply disturbed that the (appeals court) refuses to
address the injustice of allowing Brent Brewer to be executed
without an opportunity to challenge Dr. Coon’s false and
unscientific testimony,” one of Brewer’s attorneys, Shawn Nolan,
said afterward.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Tuesday voted 7-0
against commuting Brewer’s death sentence to a lesser penalty.
Members also rejected granting a six-month reprieve.
Brewer had said he has been a model prisoner with no history of
violence and has tried to become a better person by
participating in a faith-based program for death row inmates.
And he had long expressed remorse for the killing and a desire
to apologize to Laminack’s family.
In 1990, Brewer and his girlfriend had first approached Laminack
outside his Amarillo flooring store before attacking him,
prosecutors had said.
Laminack’s son took over his father’s business, which was
started in 1950, and has continued to run it with other family
members.
Brewer was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in
1991. But in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death
sentences Brewer and two other Texas inmates had received after
ruling the juries in their cases did not have proper
instructions when they decided the men should be executed.
The high court found jurors were not allowed to give sufficient
weight to factors that might cause them to impose a life
sentence rather than death. Brewer was abused as a child and
suffered from mental illness, factors jurors were not allowed to
consider, his lawyers argued.
Brewer was again sentenced to death during a new punishment
trial in 2009.
Brewer’s lawyers allege that at the resentencing trial, Coons
lied and declared, without any scientific basis, that Brewer had
no conscience and would be a future danger, even though Brewer
did not have a history of violence while in prison.
In a 2010 ruling in the case of another death row inmate, the
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals called Coon’s testimony about
future dangerousness “insufficiently reliable” and that he
should not have been allowed to testify.
Randall County District Attorney Robert Love, whose office
prosecuted Brewer, denied in court documents that prosecutors
presented false testimony on whether Brewer would be a future
danger and suggested Coon’s testimony “was not material to the
jury’s verdict.”
Brewer is the seventh inmate in Texas and the 21st in the U.S.
put to death this year.
8)
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