Dixie Chicks Start Defense Fund for Murderers

Fox.Com ^ | Dec 3, 2007 | Roger Friedman

[Badeye]

I do the same with the radio, on the very rare occasions around here they get on.

[fleagle]

Sounds interesting. I’m a big fan of well-done documentaries. I’ll check out Paradise Lost.

And continue to boycott those dixie broads...

[weegee]

From wikipedia:

“On September 20, 1996, Huckabee publicly announced his intention of commuting Dumond’s sentence based on the commutation given by Jim Guy Tucker, who had served as governor during Clinton’s presidential run and had overseen the case”

On October 31, 1996, Huckabee met privately with the parole board to talk about the Dumond case. On January 16, 1997, Dumond was granted parole, just five months after he had been rejected. Huckabee released a statement saying, “I concur with the board’s action and hope the lives of all those involved can move forward. The action of the board accomplishes what I sought to do in considering an earlier request for commutation ...In light of the action of the board, my original intent to commute the sentence to time served is no longer relevant.”

Dumond had been sentenced to life in prison until 1992, when Tucker reduced the sentence to 39 1/2 years which made Dumond eligible for parole. The parole was granted on the condition that another state take him. Wayne Dumond moved to Kansas City in 2000 and was convicted there of sexually assaulting and murdering a woman that lived near his home. Wayne Dumond died in prison in 2005.

---

The sentence had already been commuted by the previous governor and he was paroled by a parole board.

Someone made the claim that he’d castrated himself. Did his testes ever turn up in a jar in the posession of the sheriff?

[donna]

The story:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/memphis/index_1.html

[citizen]

I hope O’Reilly will do this story.....I do pause though because it’s an Arkansas crime/conviction. Who knows what the truth is?

[cpanter]

I know of that situation. Being here in Middle TN, I had my full of Steve. I used to love his music, but he has really embraced the liberal elite. So much so that he got pissed off at all the “rednecks” here and moved to downtown NY. After he moved, he vowed to never come back to TN. Don’t let the door hitya!

Anyway, I went to a free concert once in Nashville about 8 years ago that took place in a small venue downtown. Earle was there mc’ing the whole thing and what it turned out to be was a concert to raise awareness of how wrong the death penalty was. He went into this rant about the state of Texas and then he went into this thing about Nobles being his brother after he met him.

Well, during the rant, he made the mistake of taking a breath. We were only about 15 ft from him when the guy that went with me yelled “WHAT ABOUT THE VICTIMS STEVE!” Steve glared at him and snorted. He ignored the comment, and got back on his highhorse. The pro-Steve crowd didn’t even blink. That is the last time I spent money on anything with his name on it.

[avacado]

Tell your friend thank you for shouting at Earle about the victims. Those victims were/are nameless to Earle but to me they were my best of friends.

RIP: Kelly Farquhar, 24 years old
Mitzi Johnson-Nalley, 21 years old

And: Ron Ross (stabbed 17 times, lost an eye, but survived)

When asked of Nobles if any of his victims said anything he replied: "she just screamed, and screamed, and screamed, and screamed. And then the next thing I remember somebody else was screaming so I ran into another room. And it was another girl who started hitting me. And I remember this girl had dark hair because somebody had kept the lights on. And she was hitting on me. I was lunging at her with the knife." The first girl he butchered was Kelly Farquhar then he went and brutally butchered Mitzi along with stabbing almost to death Ron Ross. He got what he deserved.

[cpanter]

The animal got his just desserts.

[kcvl]

Jonathan Nobles was a death row inmate whom Earle corresponded with since the songwriter started working against the death penalty in the early ‘90s. Nobles was convicted of the 1986 murders of Mitzi Johnson Nalley, 21, and Kelly Farquhar, 24, in their north Austin, Texas, apartment. Nobles was sentenced to die by lethal injection. On Oct. 7, 1998, Earle sat with a small gallery in a Texas prison. Nobles, 37, expressed his remorse to the onlookers and his love for one of his victims’ boyfriend, Ron Ross, whom Nobles stabbed 19 times during the botched robbery and who was present for the execution.

Earle has written 3 songs on the subject: “Billy Austin,’’ his first anti-death-penalty statement, on 1990’s “The Hard Way’’; “Ellis Unit One,” which empathizes with prison workers cast into the role of executioners and appears on the “Dead Man Walking” soundtrack; and, most recently, “Over Yonder (Jonathan’s Song).”

Over the past 13 years, Earle has given his time and energy to groups such as the Abolitionist Action Committee, the Journey of Hope From Violence to Healing (in Texas and Tennessee) and Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliaton, an organization of murder victims’ family members opposed to the death penalty.

“For 8 years, we had a president (Reagan) that, when the mentality around this was being formed, his favorite movie was “Rambo.’ He watched it over and over and over,” says Earle. “The winning formula for a film in this country is: You have a guy, he gets kicked around for 2/3 of the movie, and then at the end of the movie, he kills everybody. That’s our idea of a hero, so it’s not a big surprise that we come to this mentality after a while.”

Throughout the interview, Earle’s Texas accent rages on nonstop. He is emotional about the topic and articulate, to the point of occasionally losing his breath. He also admits that he’s tired, that his foremost calling is as a musician but that he won’t rest until the death penalty is abolished — largely because he believes it goes against human nature.

“The way death penalty cases work is, they need the victims’ families to get juries to convict people and sentence them to death. Talk to any prosecutor: If you don’t have a victim’s family member to sit on the stand and give that victim’s impact-type of testimony, you’re not gonna get a death penalty (conviction). People aren’t that willing to kill.

“And the forgotten victims are victims’ family members.”

http://www.abolition.org/steveearle.html

[Freedom2specul8]

I use to like their music....my relative, who has a great voice..refuses to stop “singing” their songs in COUNTRY singing competitions. I keep saying, “don’t you understand that your votes were lost as soon as you chose their songs?” Mind you, she remembers (and still agrees) when and why she and WE threw away their cd’s. I can’t for the life of me understand why she won’t quit.

[kcvl]

Jonathan Wayne Nobles, executed October 7, 1998. A resident of Austin, Nobles killed two young women in Austin, and later met with the parents of one of the women whom he had executed.

Steve Earle’s primary area of activism has involved his opposition to the death penalty, but he did not write a song on the subject until Tim Robbins asked him to do so for Dead Man Walking, the film based on Sister Helen Prejean’s book by the same name. The result was “Ellis Unit One” (Sidetracks), which is based on Earle’s father’s experience working in a Texas prison and is told from the perspective of a prison guard who has witnessed many executions during his career. Earle has also written songs told from the perspective of the condemned, such as “Billy Austin,” a brooding narrative on the album The Hard Way.

Jonathan Wayne Nobles, an inmate in Texas whom Earle befriended and whose execution Earle witnessed. Many of the words in the song are Nobles’s. “Over Yonder (Jonathan’s Song)” is about “giving Jon a voice,” explains Earle in the NPR interview.

[avacado]

Thanks for your two posts. We (Kelly’s, Mitzi’s, & Ron’s friends) celebrated here in Texas when Nobles was put to death.

I notice on the “abolition” post they only mention it as “murder” without any details and they say it was a botched robbery. Robbery? Hogwash! Botched? Hogwash! Nobles went their to BUTCHER those two girls! He had a jacket full of kitchen knives when he entered their place. And for them to make it seem like he (Nobles) and Ron Ross had some “love” between them!!! HOGWASH!

Steve Earle and the rest of them lousy sorts are sick.

[WV Mountain Mama]

I watched that years ago and the step father was guilty in my book. If memory serves, he had bad teeth and a broken one or soemthing. Then investigators started focusing on a bite mark, and looking at the stepfather. Guess who got all his teeth pulled....

Hate to say it, but I am inclined to agree with her on this one. Ick, I feel dirty just saying that!

[retrokitten]

Hate to say it, but I am inclined to agree with her on this one. Ick, I feel dirty just saying that!

It's okay. I won't tell. ;-)