Posted on 11/03/2005 11:26:55 AM PST by Dubya
HUNTSVILLE — Condemned killer Melvin Wayne White doesn't want to die but figures the state is doing him a favor if he's executed tonight. "I look at it as relief, just to get out of here," White, 55, said last week from a tiny cage in the visiting area of death row, where he was sent for the 1997 abduction, sexual assault and fatal beating of a 9-year-old West Texas girl. "I've got to live with this for the rest of my life. It's not an easy deal to do.
"If they put me to death, it's going to be the easy way out. The hard way would be to have me live here with that."
White blamed a drinking problem that started when he was a young teenager for the slaying of Jennifer Gravell, who lived in his neighborhood in Ozona, about 200 miles west of San Antonio.
"I messed up, that's all there is to it," he said.
White's scheduled lethal injection would be the 16th this year in Texas and the first of four set for over the next two weeks in the nation's busiest death chamber.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, in a pair of 6-0 votes Tuesday, denied requests that his execution be put off for 90 days and that his death sentence be commuted to life. The U.S. Supreme Court last month refused to review his case, although lawyers had before the high court an appeal that challenged the procedures barring them from filing a suit related to the constitutionality of the drugs used in the injection by authorities.
David Dow, a University of Houston law professor involved in the appeal, described his chances of success at "somewhere between zero and less than zero percent."
"The way I look at it, I hope for the best and expect the worst," White said. "That way you're not disappointed. But in my frame of mind, if it goes through, I'm ready for it."
Ori White, the district attorney in Crockett County who prosecuted the case, called the murder a heinous crime.
"Melvin White deserves the death penalty, absolutely," Ori White said.
Melvin White, who lived two houses from the girl's family, attended a neighborhood barbecue the evening of Aug. 7, 1997, and went home after downing several drinks. Testimony at his trial indicated the girl showed up at his house after another neighbor declined her request to go for a ride.
White took her in his pickup to a roadside rest area outside Ozona where the girl was bound with black electrical tape, had a sock stuffed into her mouth and was sexually assaulted with a screwdriver. Then she was hit repeatedly with a tire iron before her body was dumped behind a water tank.
Authorities later found in a trash can in White's house the girl's underpants, sandals and a ball of tape with her hair on it. White confessed to a Texas Ranger and told where the body could be found. A witness had told authorities, after the girl was reported missing, that he saw White in his truck with what he believed was a blond person. The victim had blond hair.
"I don't remember much about it because I was drinking," White said.
White, who grew up in Big Lake, about 70 miles west of San Angelo, had lived in Ozona since the early 1970s and worked at a gas plant. The day of the slaying he'd been drinking all day.
"I always bought vodka in half gallons," he said. "I'd drink one of those every three days, and that doesn't count when I'd go to the bar. I'd done some serious drinking. ... At the rate I was drinking, if I hadn't come to prison, I'd probably killed myself, drink myself to death."
White said he succumbed to peer pressure and began drinking as early as age 13 or 14.
But prosecutor Ori White told jurors at the trial the alcohol explanation was a convenient excuse to cover up Melvin White's history as a pedophile. Testimony showed White had assaulted an underage daughter, forced her to perform oral sex, raped her and offered to pay her $50 a week to perform sexual favors.
Next on the execution schedule is inmate Charles Thacker, facing injection Nov. 9 for strangling a Houston woman while attempting to rape her. Two more Texas inmates are set to die the following week, another in December and five have execution dates for early next year.
The only innocent people who get executed are in the movies.
Please don't throw me into the brier patch.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We're Know We're Dead Wrong.")
You almost have.
From the description of his crime on the State's page is sounds like he getting exactly what he deserves.
Meanwhile Jeffery Curly's killers get Gay Porn in jail.
In 1997 he killed the girl, and 2005 it's his turn. That's about the fastest I've ever noticed a death penalty case going from crime to punishment. Wish it would happen more often.
This is not a far fetched analogy, when you note Sadaam committed many murders of rivals personally, and that his sons were psychopathic sexual deviants.
Again he partially blames this on drinking. Lethal injection is not justice this guy needs to have the same torture that he enacted on the girl committed to him. Its for God to judge his heart we are commanded to judge his actions and this guy needs to die slowly and painfully.
Yep, it was the peer pressure to drink, the drink itself and everything else that forced him to perpetrate this perversion and murder. Get ready for the long ride my friend.
Timothy McVeigh, 1994 crime and 2001 punishment. That was pretty fast as well.
Bye Bye. Have anice time in hell.
"White blamed a drinking problem ..."
Sure. All alcoholics have a problem beating up and raping little girls (sarcasm).
**sniff**..I love happy endings..
True.
Very soon, Mr. White is gonna have himself a drug problem.
A fatal one.
I say they deserve a cell like the ones in Turkish prisons. Small room, no window. Solid door with just a food slot. No human contact. You slide the food into the slot and take the old tray. If the food stops disappearing for a week or so, you peek in. If the scumbag is dead, you haul his sorry carcass out, hose the joint down, and throw another scumbag in there.
The girl he killed is in heaven. I would send him to hell right here on earth. God can have his turn whenever he decides it's time.
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