BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, CLICK, WHACK, WHACK, WHACK, WHACK

During the 1996 robbery of a Houston convenience store, Robert Lee Thompson, 34, shot store clerk Mubarakali Meredia four times but failed to kill him. After Meredia opened the cash drawer, he placed his pistol to the clerk’s neck and pulled the trigger a fifth time. The gun was out of bullets. Thompson then clubbed the wounded clerk with his pistol.

As they were fleeing the scene of the robbery, Thompson’s crime partner, Sammy Butler, 32, fired one shot, killing Mansoor Rahim, another store clerk. Butler was tried for capital murder but because the prosecution could not prove that he intended to kill Rahim, he received a life sentence rather than a sentence of death.

Thompson was tried for capital murder under Texas’ “Law of Parties” which holds all participants in such crimes equally responsible for any killing. Thompson was sentenced to death and after numerous failed appeals, he is scheduled to be executed next month.

Thompson and his attorneys are crying foul. Thompson says that his case “shows why the death penalty in Texas is corrupt. They’re trying to justify capital murder. Where is the capital murder?” His attorneys have petitioned the Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend that the governor commute Thompson’s death sentence because the prosecution was unable to prove intent in Butler’s trial.

Please give me a few moments to wipe away my tears. Poor old Robert Thompson is going to be topped for a murder committed by his partner in crime who did not intend to kill the store clerk, while all he did was to shoot another clerk four times, tried a fifth shot not knowing the gun was empty and then pistol whipped his badly wounded victim.

The law of parties is a good one. When someone is killed during a robbery, all parties to the crime should be held equally responsible, and that includes the getaway driver. And if one of the robbers happens to get killed by a victim, all the other participants should be held responsible for their crime partner’s death.

As to Sammy Butler, I am at a loss to understand how any jury could arrive at a decision that he did not intend to kill his victim. The mere fact that Butler shot at Rahim shows intent! What part of that did the jury not understand?

Butler deserved to get the death penalty. He lucked out because he had some really stupid idiots on his jury. Thompson was not so lucky. Barring an adverse recommendation by the pardons board or a last minute reprieve, Thompson will be put to death next month. Justice demands that this piece of shit be executed. Thompson is another poster boy for the death penalty. And when he's gone, I'll shout: GOOD RIDDANCE!