Texas executes Betty Lou Beets for husband's murder

Witness: She died peacefully

February 24, 2000
Web posted at: 9:54 p.m. EST (0254 GMT)

In this story: 'All my mama's life, she's been abused' Letters to Bush 'I don't remember what happened' RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (CNN) -- Despite her pleas that she was a battered spouse who killed in self defense, 62-year-old Betty Lou Beets was executed Thursday night by the state of Texas.

Beets, who was convicted of murdering her fifth husband in 1983 to collect his life insurance and pension, was put to death by lethal injection at 6:18 p.m. CST at a state prison known as The Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas.

She did not make a final statement.

A reporter who witnessed the execution said Beets "seemed to die peacefully" with almost a smile on her face, dressed in prison whites and with the chaplain by her side.

VIDEO Rodney Barker and James Beets, sons of two of Beets' husbands, express their feelings Windows Media 28K 80K Associated Press reporter Michael Graczyk describes the lethal-injection death of the convicted murderer. QuickTime Play Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K CNN's Charles Zewe provides an overview of the Beets execution. QuickTime Play Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K     MESSAGE BOARD Death penalty

Beets' attorneys exhausted their last legal recourse about an hour before the execution, when Gov. George W. Bush declined to stop it.

Under Texas law, Bush could have granted Beets a one-time 30-day reprieve. He decided instead to follow the recommendation of his 18-member Board of Pardons and Paroles and let the execution take place. Bush has never gone against the board's recommendation.

His decision came just minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court declined a request by Beets' attorneys to step into the case.

"She's very scared," Beets' attorney Joe Margulies had told CNN earlier in the day. "She doesn't want to be strapped down to that gurney all alone."

A federal appeals court on Thursday afternoon denied a motion to stop the execution. In its ruling, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld a lower court ruling issued Wednesday rejecting a plea from Beets' attorneys that her case be re-examined by Texas officials because she was a battered wife.

Beets is only the fourth woman executed in the United States since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. Karla Faye Tucker was the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War, when she was put to death on February 3, 1998, for a 1983 pickax murder.

Beets, who had five children, nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, is the oldest person put to death in Texas since the state resumed executions in 1982.

Texas, which leads the nation in capital punishment, has now executed 208 people since then.

Beets was convicted of murder for the 1983 shooting death of Dallas fire captain Jimmy Don Beets, her fifth husband, in what prosecutors said was a scheme to collect his life insurance and pension.

She also had been convicted of shooting and wounding her second husband, and charged -- but never tried -- in the 1981 shooting death of her fourth husband.

In Austin, U.S. District Judge James Nowlin said the motion to stop the execution, filed as part of a lawsuit seeking to have Beets' case reviewed because she was a battered wife, was "yet another example of a prisoner attempting to delay execution just prior to the execution date."

The judge also dismissed the lawsuit, which argued that Beets' civil rights were violated because she was not given a chance to present evidence that she suffered years of domestic abuse in her five marriages.

On Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, dominated by Bush appointees, rejected Beets' pleas for a 180-day reprieve and commutation of her sentence.

Beets' daughter, Faye Lane, told the parole board her mother had suffered lifelong abuse

Beets' legal team and a coalition of supporters including domestic-violence awareness groups and Amnesty International USA wanted her death sentence commuted to life in prison.

They said Beets, who has been in jail since 1985, was damaged both physically and psychologically and that she had poor legal counsel because the jury that sentenced her to die was not told about the abuse.

"Betty's daughters went to (a previous defense attorney) ... and gave him pictures of Betty taken after she had been beaten up, horribly battered," Margulies said. "Had he looked, he could have amassed the information that we eventually got ... and asked the (parole) board to review, but they declined.

"What we're saying is, 'Give us the opportunity to present our evidence on battering that the jury didn't hear.'"

Beets' daughter, Faye Lane, told the parole board Tuesday: "All my mama's life, she's been abused. I've seen it with my own eyes. And I know that if the jury heard the truth about my mama, she only could have done something like this if she'd been very scared or threatened.

"I'm not saying that my mother should go free, but to be allowed to live out her remaining years in prison."

Beets was executed by lethal injection

Two U.N. experts on human rights had appealed to Bush in a letter Thursday to spare Beets from execution.

Asma Jahangir and Radhika Coomaraswamy of the U.N. Commission on Human rights expressed their concern that "abuse and extreme violence" suffered by Beets were not considered by the investigating authorities or the courts when convicting and sentencing her for murder.

The two U.N. officials urged Bush to consider the specific circumstances of the crime, "and in particular the violent abuse which Betty Lou Beets suffered at the hands of her spouses and the effect of this abuse on her state of mind and her actions."

In another letter Wednesday, the group Human Rights Watch had called on Bush to grant Beets a 30-day reprieve, with senior researcher Allyson Collins citing "a perfect opportunity for Governor Bush to display his much-touted conservative compassion."

Bush, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, had said he would not decide what action to take until the matter had run its course in the courts.

"The question I'm going to ask is, 'Is she guilty of the crime?'" said the governor, who returned to Austin late Wednesday.

Texas has carried out 120 executions since Bush took office in January 1995 -- the latest on Wednesday night when Cornelius Goss, 38, was put to death for a 1987 murder.

Bush has never granted a 30-day reprieve, but he commuted one death penalty to life in prison, citing flimsy evidence against the inmate.

The bodies of Beets' fourth and fifth husbands were found under a wishing well in the yard of her mobile home at Gun Barrel City, Texas. They had been shot in the head, execution-style.

Prosecutors say she murdered Jimmy Don Beets, a Dallas fire captain, but she says she doesn't know how her husband was killed.

"I wouldn't willingly do that," Betty Lou Beets said in a death row interview. "But I don't remember what happened then ... it's just a blank to me."

Correspondent Charles Zewe, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Tucker dies by lethal injection
February 3, 1998
Karla Faye Tucker's final statement
February 3, 1998
Tucker loses clemency bid; Bush reprieve still possible
February 2, 1998
Clemency decision due Monday for woman on Texas death row February 1, 1998
Attorney for woman on death row challenges Texas procedures
January 20, 1998
Texas prepares to execute woman
January 15, 1998

Death Penalty Links
ACLU - The Case Against The Death Penalty
Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

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