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Toronto Patterson - Juvenile Death Penalty

Juvenile Death Penalty
Toronto Patterson

The State of Texas executed Toronto Patterson at 6:20 p.m. Central time on August 28, 2002.

JUVENILE OFFENDER
TORONTO PATTERSON
FACING EXECUTION
IN TEXAS
AUGUST 28, 2002

Toronto Patterson -- who had no criminal record and who was just 17 years old at the time of his offense -- is now scheduled for execution in Texas on August 28, 2002. He was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of three of his cousins in Dallas, Texas. Because he was a juvenile at the time of his crime, Toronto's execution would be contrary to American standards of justice, fairness, and decency as well as international law. This is a call for his sentence to be commuted to life in prison. In appealing for clemency on behalf of Toronto, we do not, in any way, seek either to excuse the crime or to minimize the pain and suffering it caused the family and friends of the victims.

I. CASE SUMMARY

On June 6, 1995, Valarie Brewer discovered the body of her sister, Kimberly, in a recliner in front of the television set. In a bedroom of the house, the bodies of Kimberly's daughters, six-year-old Jennifer Brewer, and three-year-old Ollie Brown were discovered. There were no valuables taken from the house. Upon searching the garage, three of the four wheels on the BMW automobile belonging to Valarie's brother were found missing. It was apparent someone had tried, unsuccessfully, to remove the fourth wheel.

Aware her cousin, Toronto Patterson, recently had his own wheels stolen, Valarie immediately thought of him as a suspect and informed the police. Patterson told police that two Jamaican men had threatened him and his girlfriend, forcing him at gunpoint, to assist one of the men in removing the wheels from the BMW, while the other man distracted Kimberly. Toronto continues to maintain this account of events, asserting that he was not the person responsible for the murders. The identity of the killer was a hotly contested issue at the trial.

II. TORONTO PATTERSON

With the support of his grandmother, Toronto Patterson was raised by his teenage mother. He proved to be a promising student when he was in grade school. However, his home-life became increasingly erratic. Toronto Patterson took the brunt of his mother's frustration in the form of whippings. Drug and alcohol abuse were pervasive within Toronto's world--it was an accepted way of life. Even though drugs and gangs surrounded Toronto, he never became a gang member or used drugs. When Toronto was nine years of age, his baby sister, Kenisha, was born. She suffered from a serious brain defect. Toronto was left to care for her and became increasingly fond of his sister who died just before the age of two. Kenisha's death deeply impacted Toronto.

Despite, his troubled home-life, Toronto still achieved in school, receiving grades that placed him on the honor roll. However, in order to provide even the most basic of necessities Toronto began to sell drugs for his cousin. The selling increased and his school attendance fell, until he dropped out of the school system. In spite of the profound neglect and abuse, many positive aspects of Toronto Patterson's personality were preserved. An examination of his social history and background would have revealed a more human face, but regrettably, the jury was never given the opportunity to know and maybe to understand the real Toronto Patterson.

III. PATTERSON'S CONFESSION WAS EXTRACTED BY QUESTIONABLE INTERROGATION TACTICS THAT WERE WITHHELD FROM THE JURY

Toronto Patterson was taken into custody, placed in a small interrogation room and left to wait for half an hour. When the detective first entered the room, he was friendly and Toronto testified that he felt he could trust him. He admitted to being scared because he had never before been interrogated by a police officer. Toronto gave the detective a statement in which he admitted his presence at the crime scene, but not to the murders themselves. Shortly thereafter, the detective re-entered the room after consulting with another officer and began to shout. Forcing Toronto to sit in the corner of the room, the detective spat in his face and accused him of lying in his first statement. He falsely told Toronto that he had recovered the murder weapon and the Dayton wheels.

The detective then described the murder scene to Toronto, which he states was the first time he had heard details of the shootings. The detective accused Patterson of killing his three cousins and then punched and pushed him with his finger in various places to illustrate where the victims had been shot. These accusations persisted for half an hour. At one point, the detective's beeper went off and after looking at the display, he again misleadingly informed Toronto that his fingerprints had been found on the murder weapon. Toronto was held incommunicado for over four hours, scared and confused. Toronto Patterson signed a statement in which he admitted to shooting his cousin, Kimberly, and then shooting into her children's room with his eyes closed. The detective denied punching Toronto in the head and forcing him into a corner of the room during the interrogation. He did admit that he had been trained to make a suspect uncomfortable during an interrogation.

The homicide detective who interrogated Toronto has a history of using questionable tactics to extract confessions in high profile crimes. One month after Patterson's interrogation, but before the trial, the detective was involved in the interrogation of another capital murder investigation, that of Michael Martinez. After taking Martinez's initial statement, the detective obtained two subsequent statements. Between statements, the detective confronted Martinez with "new facts" and told him, "We know you are lying." He threatened to charge Martinez' girlfriend unless he signed the subsequent statements. Another individual was ultimately charged with the capital murder to which the detective had compelled Martinez to confess. The evidence of the detective's coercive interrogation tactics in the Martinez case was excluded at Toronto's trial.

IV. THE SENTENCING JURY NEVER HEARD EVIDENCE ON THE MITIGATING FACTORS OF CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE AND HOW THEY PERTAINED TO TORONTO

Seventeen-year-olds are still developing cognitive abilities, judgment and character. They are less mature than adults in their identity development, moral judgment, assessment of risk and consequence, understanding of emotions and in their abilities to control impulses and regulate behavior. Each of these factors can substantially affect how an adolescent thinks, appears and behaves; these are powerful mitigating factors in a death penalty case. Normally, defense lawyers retain experts to evaluate an adolescent defendant and to present and explain this information to sentencing juries. No experts were retained by the defense, and none of this mitigating evidence was ever presented or argued to the jury.

The defense failed to investigate, present and argue the mitigating factors of Toronto's youth and adolescence. Five witnesses (4 of them members of his family) were called to very briefly testify simply that he was loving, obedient, and kind in their presence. A subsequent, and only preliminary, evaluation by a forensic psychologist revealed that Toronto came from an unstable, neglectful and abusive home environment. The evaluation concluded that critical systemic intervention never occurred in Toronto's life.

According to the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, these kinds of untreated abuse, neglect and abandonment "further exacerbate the existing vulnerabilities of youth." Through no fault of its own, the sentencing jury was not adequately and fully informed as to many of the powerful mitigating factors in Toronto's life which it should have had the opportunity to consider. This constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel.

V. THE "BUILT IN" SAFEGUARDS OF THE CAPITAL JUSTICE SYSTEM BROKE DOWN COMPLETELY IN TORONTO'S CASE

Not only were Toronto's trial counsels ineffective, but the lawyer that was supposed to investigate and raise this issue with the courts was also ineffective. In capital punishment cases there are supposed to be numerous layers of legal protection to ensure that a person receives full and adequate representation before being subject to execution. One of the most critical areas is for a "post conviction" attorney to reinvestigate the case and review the performance of trial counsel. The purpose is to ensure that a defendant received his constitutionally entitled "effective assistance of counsel" at trial.

Toronto's post conviction counsel also failed to review, reinvestigate and raise the issues regarding the ineffectiveness of Toronto's trial counsel. In an affidavit, his post conviction counsel acknowledged that this was his first capital post-conviction habeas case, and that he conducted no meaningful investigation into possible deficiencies of trial counsel at the punishment phase of Toronto's trial. Under the strict rules of death penalty law, Toronto is now legally and procedurally barred from having a court consider these critical issues. Moreover, there may well be much more mitigating evidence pertaining to Toronto that will never be uncovered or presented to decision-makers. Now, only the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles can consider and rectify this mater.

VI. TORONTO HAD NO PRIOR CRIMINAL HISTORY, HAS NOT BEEN VIOLENT SINCE BEING IMPRISONED AND WAS SENTENCED TO DEATH BASED ON INHERENTLY UNRELIABLE EVIDENCE THAT HE POSED A CONTINUING DANGER TO SOCIETY

Under Texas law, the most critical factor that a jury must consider in imposing a sentence of death is "whether there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society" -- otherwise known as future dangerousness. Texas juries are permitted to consider this factor notwithstanding scientific and medical proof that "future dangerousness" is impossible to predict on an individual basis. Given this inexact and speculative task, experts most often rely on prior criminal history and subsequent behavior. While Toronto had been involved in selling drugs and had sometimes carried a weapon, he had never been convicted (or adjudicated a delinquent) and had no meaningful history of violence. Most importantly, in the seven years since his arrest Toronto has never been involved in any violent act in the jail or prison systems. Even the prosecution presented no expert testimony at trial that Toronto would commit more criminal acts of violence.

VII. EXECUTING JUVENILE OFFENDERS RUNS COUNTER TO BASIC AMERICAN STANDARDS OF JUSTICE AND FAIRNESS

The execution of a juvenile offender is contrary to fundamental principles of American justice which punishes according to the degree of culpability and reserves the death penalty for the "worst of the worst" offenders. By their very nature, teenagers are less mature and, therefore, less culpable than adults who commit similar acts but have no such explanation for their conduct. Adolescence is a transitional period of life when cognitive abilities, emotions, judgment, impulse control, identity -- even the brain -- are still developing. Indeed, immaturity is the reason we do not allow those under eighteen to assume the major responsibilities of adulthood such as military combat service, voting, entering into contracts, drinking alcohol or making medical decisions.

This is not to say that juvenile offenders do not know right from wrong and should not be punished, but that we as a society and a legal system have deemed that juveniles are simply different from adults and should not be subject to the ultimate adult punishment.

A number of organizations such as the American Bar Association, The American Psychiatric Association, the Child Welfare League of America, the Children's Defense Fund, the Youth Law Center, the Juvenile Law Center, the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the National Mental Health Association, and the Constitution Project have come to oppose executions for crimes committed by offenders under the age of 18. Similarly, the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, the European Union, the Council of Europe, the Vatican and Nobel Peace Prize recipients such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama have expressed their strongest opposition to the execution of juvenile offenders.

VIII. A MAJORITY OF STATES HAVE RECOGNIZED THAT SUBJECTING ADOLESCENTS AND TO THE DEATH PENALTY IS CONTRARY TO BASIC AND EVOLVING STANDARDS OF DECENCY

Of the 38 states that permit the death penalty, only 22 permit the execution of persons who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes. Among these 22 states, only 15 have juvenile offenders on their death rows, while only 7 have carried out actual executions of juveniles since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. In 2002, Indiana abolished the juvenile death penalty while Florida came extremely close (a bill passed the Senate unanimously but died in the House, which had passed a bill the previous year, only because it ran out of time). In 1999, the State of Montana abolished the juvenile death penalty while the Florida Supreme Court raised the age of eligibility from 16 to 17. A growing number of states are considering such legislation. States considering this issue in 2001 and 2002 include: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas. Indeed, in the Texas 2001 legislative session, a bill to eliminate the death penalty for offenders under 18 passed the House and gained significant support in the Senate before it was procedurally barred from reaching a vote on the Senate floor. Moreover, a 2001 national poll conducted by the Houston Chronicle indicated that solid support for the capital punishment of juvenile offenders has fallen to only 26%. A May 14, 2002 Gallup Poll found the exact same figure.

IX. EXECUTING JUVENILE OFFENDERS IS CONTRARY TO INTERNATIONAL LAW AND FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS

In continuing to execute juvenile offenders, the United States acts in defiance of international law and global consensus. Indeed, such executions have all but ended around the world, except in the United States. The death penalty for juvenile offenders is expressly prohibited by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the American Convention on Human Rights and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The United States and Somalia (which has no recognizable government) are the only two countries that have failed to ratify the CRC -- 191 nations have adopted the fundamental standards articulated in this treaty.

Since 1990, only seven countries have reportedly executed juveniles: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Yemen, Pakistan and the United States. In the last three years this small number of nations known to have executed child offenders has further declined to only three: the DRC, Iran and the United States. In 1994,Yemen changed its law to prohibit the execution of juveniles. The Nigerian government has asserted to the UN Sub-Commission that the execution, which took place in 1997 was not of a juvenile and Saudi Arabia emphatically denies the 1992 execution of a juvenile. In July 2000, Pakistan moved to outlaw such executions under the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance signed on 1 July 2000. However, it has been reported that Pakistan executed Ali Sher on 3 November 2001 for a crime he committed at the age of 13. Since that time, President Musharrah of Pakistan has commuted the death sentences of approximately 100 young offenders to imprisonment.

In December 1999, the DRC called for a moratorium on all executions. However, in January 2000, a 14 year-old child soldier was executed in the DRC. Since that time, four juvenile offenders sentenced to death in the DRC in a military court were granted stays and the sentences were commuted following an appeal from the international community. Of the six countries, other than the US, that have reportedly executed juvenile offenders, all have either changed their laws or the governments have denied that the executions took place.

On June 10, 2002, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the monitoring body of the Organization of American States (OAS) which is responsible for furthering and ensuring observation of the inter-American human rights system, issued precautionary measures in the case of Toronto Patterson. In granting precautionary measures, the IACHR requested that the United States preserve Toronto's life pending investigation of the allegations raised in his petition. The United States is one of the 35 members of the OAS, a regional agency created by North and South American States to implement Article 52 of the United Nations Charter.

The execution of Toronto Patterson would further alienate the United States from the international community, thus damaging our legitimacy as a leader on the protection and promotion of human rights, particularly the rights of children.

ACTION AVAILABLE

Under Texas law, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has the exclusive power to commute a sentence of death to life in prison. Please write to:

Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
Attn: Executive Clemency Section
P.O. Box 13401, Capitol Station
Austin, TX 78711
fax: 512/463-8120

Governor Rick Perry
c/o Bill Jones, General Counsel
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, TX 78711-2428
fax: 512/463-1849

Additional Information:

Read a selection of clemency appeals:

Please review a selection of news coverage on this case [please note that many newspapers only keep articles on line for a short time, although they may be available from an archive]:

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