In Black America; The Case of Lacresha Murray, Part 2

For more information, just check out our site till the end. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. Every right imaginable was violated with this child. And this is an 11-year-old child, this is America. It shouldn't have happened here.

You know, whether people believe that she did it or not, and I'm going to say something. You know, this case was not investigated, it was never investigated, and the bottom line is, there is a person walking the streets right now who beat a two-and-a-half-year-old baby to death, and he's free. Barbara Taft, President, People of the Heart. On August 9, 1996, the Travis County, Texas jury found 11-year-old Patricia Mary guilty of criminally negligent homicide and intentional injury to a child. She was sentenced to 40 years in prison. In a second trial with no physical evidence, no reasonable explanation of opportunity or motive, no witnesses, and no history of violence, Murray trial should have resulted in a direct verdict and acquittal where at the very least, a hung jury. That was not the case, for the second time she was found guilty of the death of two-year-old J. LaBelton. But there are still a number of unanswered questions relating to Murray's interrogation, trial, and conviction.

I'm John L. Hanson, Jr., and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, the case of Patricia Mary with Barbara Taft, part two, in Black America. There is no possibility of rehabilitation because Patricia Mary is never going to admit to doing something that she did not do. So at 17, 18 years old, when they asked her, once again, see for a while, they had her saying, every day, all day long, I did it, I did it, I killed J. La, I killed J. La, I killed J. La. And she would tell her grandmother, I don't know why they're making me say this, you know, but they're making me, they're forcing me to say it, well, she's older now. She's almost 13. And no, she is 13. And she's almost 14, they can't do that anymore, you know, she's growing up in jail. In 1997, the story of a 17-year-old English girl who was convicted of killing a child, she was babysitting, gang national attention, and stark contrast, a similar story about 11-year-old Patricia Mary of Austin, Texas.

First sentence to 40 years in prison and later resentance to 25 years, received no national attention for an entire year. A report examining the two cases suggests that the difference appears to be due to the fact that 11-year-old is an African-American. The case against Lucretia Murray, a child with an IQ of 77 and a fourth grade reading level, leave one to wonder why this child was treated the way she was. There are a number of issues still unanswered, which include the actions of the Austin Police Department, the DA's office, the medical examiner, the prosecution, and the judge. On this week's program, we conclude our conversation with Barbara Taff, president of People of the Heart. He didn't do that. He did not determine how old her bruises were. He did not determine whether she had any old bruises or any old broken bones. He didn't weigh her. He didn't x-ray her. He didn't measure the fist mark. He did not perform an autopsy to determine what happened to J. LeBelton. He performed an autopsy that would back up, shore up, the police department's theory

because they had no case. So he was the only witness against her in the first trial. Cameron Johnson did ask for a medical expert and judge John Deats denied him that. He denied him that. It is the law that she should have been provided with a medical expert. But he denied him that. Another thing, and see, this is another thing about this case. It's such a mess. John Deats, judge John Deats, was Ronnie Earl's former campaign manager and friend of 20 years. That is called a conflict of interest. He should have excused himself from this case. But I've worked for lawyers for 30 years. I started when I was 17 years old. I know how it works. What you do is you go get a judge who is friendly to your cause.

So when they got this case, they went and got John Deats. They got him. And he helped them in every way he could. One thing that he did, and this is, this is typical of the first trial. He talked Cameron Johnson into allowing, um, and Cameron Johnson is a defense attorney. Cameron Johnson is a public defender, defending Lucretia Murray. He talked Cameron Johnson into allowing psychiatrists to examine Lucretia Murray. That's right. And he induced him into doing this by signing an order saying that they would not be allowed to testify against her in the trial. Okay. They examined Lucretia Murray. He rescinded that order. He allowed them to testify against her in the trial. He allowed an illegal, invalid, coerced confession into evidence.

He allowed that abomination of an interrogation into evidence. You know, they had an, you know, talking about investigating this case, look, Jala Belton was beaten to death. Her clothing would have been important in investigating this case. Jala Belton's clothing wasn't sent to a crime lab until a week before the second trial, which was January 7th. And then standing ahead to cut the clothes off of her once she arrived at Black River. Yeah. When she arrived at Black River, they cut her clothing off her. Those were not the clothing that they produced in court. They did not produce the clothing that she had on that they in court. What happened to that clothing? I mean, this case is rife with, I don't even know what to call it, but the other thing is in the, they had no murder weapon.

They had no murder weapon. This child. There was something in front towards the tennis shoes. That was the second trial. Okay. Right. In the first trial. There was no, there was no tennis shoes involved in the first trial. They didn't talk about tennis shoes. They didn't talk about clothing. They didn't talk about all they did in the first trial was they just stood up and said to the jury, she's guilty and with no defense by the public defender, the jury assumed that guilty. That's right. Okay. Founder guilty. Why was a new trial given? Okay. In, I'll use John Dietz's own words. In his own words, this is an adversarial system designed to establish the truth. And I have reason to question whether the truth has been established, new trial. Okay. Now, what he did was he got a new trial on his own motion. In other words, there was a motion file for new trial.

But John Dietz didn't want to entertain all of the charges in that motion, which were charges against him, as well as the police department, as everybody. You know, I mean, everybody who participated in the crucifixion of an 11-year-old child, he didn't want all of that entertained. So he granted a new trial on his own motion. On his own motion. Right. He granted it on his own motion, which was a master's stroke. I mean, the man is intelligent. Okay. So, new trial. New trial. We have a new trial. She had three attorneys. She had Keith Hampton, Linda Eisenhower Ramirez, and David Fanon, and they're working on the case. All of a sudden, we have another attorney. Nobody asked for him. Nobody requested him. Nobody wanted him to tell you the truth. John Dietz appointed him to the team, Bill White.

All the three previous attorneys were their court appointed attorneys, or were their her precia's private attorneys. These were court appointed attorneys, as well. In other words, they were attorneys that were recommended and petitioned the court, and they were appointed. Okay. They petitioned the court themselves to represent Lucretia. Right. Okay. So, they were appointed. And suddenly, we have a new attorney on a fourth attorney. Okay. And what he does from the very beginning is he threatens to have everyone fired by John Dietz, if he's not put in charge. Okay. Bill White is a friend of John Dietz. And you know, this whole thing has been so interesting because I worked for the wife of John Dietz.

Okay. Okay. As a legal secretary, and I had occasion to, over the years, I worked with her for six and a half years. Over the years, I had many occasions, I sung at her wedding, to meet with them socially, you know. Anyway, so John Dietz hires his friend, puts him on the case. He threatens to have everybody fired. I mean, this man is having tantrums on the court house steps. Okay. I reached a point where I suggested to Keith Hampton, who was the official lead counselor, that he needed to get rid of Bill White. And I went to, actually went to John Dietz's wife and asked her what she knew about him because I thought he was unstable. Well, any of these attorneys after the Americans? No. Okay. Oh, no.

No. No, the only African-American in this situation was prosecutor Gary Cobb, which benefited the prosecution because he knew exactly what to do to appeal to the bigotry of the jury. But anyway, we have four attorneys now, and the prosecution is nervous. So suddenly they come up with a murder weapon called the tennis shoes. Now the amazing thing about these tennis shoes, Lucretia Murray was barefoot. Lucretia Murray was always barefoot at home. She never wore shoes. None of the kids did. You know, they take off the shoes, the minute they hit the door. So she was barefoot that day. There were witnesses that testified that she was barefoot. She went to the store barefoot. She left that house that day with that baby and her grandfather, Barefoot. They interviewed her that night at the Child Advocacy Center barefoot. It's in the videotape.

She's on videotape with no shoes on at 9.30 that night. They take her from the Child Advocacy Center at approximately 10 something to the police department where they interview her again. And I'm sure that what happened there was someone noticed this child is walking around all over town with no shoes on. Somebody get her a pair of shoes. They found her a pair of boys, tennis shoes, three sizes too big for her. Nasty, dirty looking tennis shoes that no 11 year old would be caught dead in. And that's what she wore home. Those are the tennis shoes that they produced in court to say that she had those shoes on when she kicked this baby to death. Now the other amazing thing about those tennis shoes, they sent those shoes to their crime lab, the Department of Public Safety Crime Lab, which is the crime lab for the Austin Police Department. The Department of Public Safety issued a statement saying that there was no match between those

tennis shoes and any marks on the body of J. LaBelton. In other words, they, the police department eliminated their own murder weapon. John Deats suppressed that letter, suppressed it, would not let the jury see that letter, would not let the medical examiner who testified the pathologist who testified for the Christian Murray, look at that letter or discuss it in any way. So the only forensic evidence that they had about the murder weapon was eliminated by the prosecution. Our evidence was eliminated. And what they did was they put these two medical examiners on the stand who had eyeballed these tennis shoes. They hadn't measured them, they hadn't done any testing of them. They looked at the tennis shoes, they looked at some photographs and they said, that's a match.

Okay. And they put them on the stand. Now they did, did the defense have their expert? Yes. They did. Okay. And that was Dr. Lyndon Norton. Okay. Dr. Lyndon Norton spent over 100 hours examining the materials. Along with Dr. White, Dr. White was, he's a Nueces medical examiner, Nueces County Medical Examiner. He worked with Dr. Norton and in fact, he was on the black entertainment television show with Tava Smiley. And he says, you know, without a doubt that there is no way. There is no way that these tennis shoes had anything to do with the death of J. LeBelton. And furthermore, that J. LeBelton was a chronically battered child. The way that Dr. White described it was that J. LeBelton had been pounded upon for months before this day. And the other thing is J. LeBelton weighed less than 20 pounds.

She was a two and a half year old, weighing less than 20 pounds. She was starving to death. The pathologist who testified for the Christian Murray said that J. LeBelton was in the third stage of starvation. In the first stage, you lose body fat. In the second stage, you lose muscle. In the third stage, your bones begin to shrink. She said she was in the third stage of starvation. That is called child abuse. So if her mother was obviously starving her, the Christian Murray wasn't starving her. So if there is a question over here of child abuse, what is the problem? Let's make the connect the dots. In addition to the fact that witnesses testified in the second trial that Derek Shaw was violent. The Derek Shaw had violently abused J. LeBelton. The Derek Shaw was a crackhead, the Derek Shaw was an alcoholic. The Derek Shaw was unemployed most of the time and was responsible for these children.

The Derek Shaw would leave these babies in the house, especially J. LeBelton, by herself for hours at a time. And in fact, that Judy Belton and Derek Shaw would go off, they would take Jasmine. Jasmine was a younger child who was Derek Shaw's child. J. LeBelton wasn't his child. It would take Jasmine and leave J. LeBelton by herself. All of these witnesses testified and what you have, what you should have had there, was at the very minimum, a reasonable doubt, a reasonable doubt. If I've got no evidence against you, I've got no witnesses, I've got no forensic physical evidence that anything happened. And like I said, the kind of bruises and injuries and abrasions that this child had, somebody smashed her up against the wall. Where is the wall? You know, this baby, this 11-year-old didn't have time to clean up the house. And even if she did, are you telling me she defies our technology?

That's correct. An 11-year-old gave me a break. They had witnesses that presented, as I said, that Lucretia Murray had never done anything to anybody. They came up with the same conclusion in the first trial. Right. What they did was, and again, you know, it's called rigging, it's called a kangaroo court. So what they did was they eliminated every thinking, alert, educated, black person from that jury. They had 11 white people on that jury. The second jury. This is the second jury. The one black person they had on that jury was a woman who worked as a cook at Bracken Rich Hospital for 30 years and retired. She was uneducated, she was unintelligent, and she was sick. She was sick.

I mean, physically ill. On top of everything else, she just, and the last thing that this woman said, the last public statement that she made was that she believed that Lucretia Murray was innocent. She was the one holed out. When they retired to make their decision, they didn't deliberate. They took a vote. They didn't. I mean, they were back there 10 minutes and they went home. They took a vote. And she refused to vote with them. That was Friday. They came back on Monday, they took another vote. And her statement was she believed Lucretia was innocent. She just wasn't up to it. She wasn't up to doing battle with 11 white people. You know, part of the reason that Lucretia Murray is in jail right now, I say that if Lucretia Murray had been my daughter, she would not be in jail right now because I would not have allowed any police department to separate me from my child for four days. You know, but these people are afraid.

They were afraid of the system. They're simple people. You know, they're just simple working people. They've raised 18 children. Okay. That's their job. One of the things that Lucretia said was that on that videotape was that for the BET show was that she had been around kids all her life. She loves kids. You know, she'd never heard a child. And she had been. I mean, she, they're 18 children in that family. What can people do to assist you in your efforts? Well, what we're trying to do right now is to, is one, to get people to write letters, write letters to the governor, write letters to the... And that's governor Bush here in Texas. Right, governor Bush here in Texas, write letters to the attorney general here in Texas, write letters to the Civil Rights Division, the United States Civil Rights Division, because every right imaginable was violated with this child.

And this is an 11-year-old child. This is America. It shouldn't, it shouldn't have happened here. You know, whether people believe that she did it or not, and I'm going to say something. There is not an 11-year-old female child on the planet who has ever perpetrated such a beating. There's no 11-year-old who's ever done that, especially 11-year-old female. So we should have needed all of the evidence in the world to convict her, and we had none. So you know, the NAACP has not made one single word on this case, the ACLU. Mostly what we're trying to do is to write a wrong. And I don't see that happening in Texas without some pressure from outside. I mean, the third court of appeals is faced with an illegal interrogation. They're faced with a statement that the child couldn't even read.

They're faced with a deceptively arranged interview in the first place. They're faced with no evidence. None. No evidence. They should throw this case out. They should throw it out again. But they may need help, you know what I'm saying? So write everybody, write the police chief. You know, this case was not investigated. It was never investigated. And the bottom line is, there is a person walking the streets right now who beat a two-and-a-half -year-old baby to death. And he's free. He's free. Where's the piece of Mary currently? She's at Corsicana State Home in Corsicana, Texas. And what was the verdict of the second trial? They found her guilty of two things, which again is not legal. They found her guilty of negligent homicide and injury to a child.

Now negligent homicide means that you didn't mean to do it. Correct. You know, you didn't mean to injury to a child means that you did. How can you, you can't find her guilty of both things at the same time. And what was the sentence? The sentence was 25 years, 25 years. No evidence, no witnesses, no history of aggression, but she got 25 years. And she is to serve that time until she's 18 at the Corsicana State Home. And then when she's 18, I'm not sure whether it's 17 or 18, they will, the state will meet to decide whether she has been rehabilitated and set her free or send her on to an adult institution. But there is no possibility of rehabilitation because Lucretia Murray is never going to admit to doing something that she did not do.

So at 17, 18 years old, when they asked her, once again, see for a while, they had her saying every day, all day long, I did it, I did it, I killed Jayla, I killed Jayla, I killed Jayla. And she would tell her grandmother, I don't know why they're making me say this, you know, but they're making me, they're forcing me to say it, well, she's older now. She's almost 13. And no, she is 13. And she's almost 14. They can't do that anymore, you know, she's growing up in jail. And they can write, actually, they can write letters to Lucretia as well at Corsicana State Home. I have her address. But to the police chief, to judge dates, to, as I said, the attorney general to the judge, to the United States attorney general, to the president of the United States.

We have a child in this country, this shouldn't happen in America. I was in Washington, D.C. for the first time in my life, to do the BET show, and it was astounding. I mean, it really moved me to know that, you know, I was in the seat. I was, the place where this all began and all of the, the dreams and the ideals of this country came at me, point blank range. And this should not happen in this country. This shouldn't happen. So anyway, she can be, and you can only send cards or letters because they won't let her, you know, take anything else. But they can write her at Corsicana State Home, PO Box 610610, Corsicana, Texas 75110. Okay. Any final comments, Mr. Staff? Just this, we have to, we have in, in other cities and, in other states, we have review

boards for the activities of police officers. We have review boards for the activities of judges and prosecutors. The problem in this case is there's no one to go to to correct this situation. And I think that we, we need safeguards against that. I think we need an independent medical examiner because an independent medical examiner would be committed to finding out what happened to a person and not necessarily committed to shoring up the police case. The other thing is this, we have a problem of child abuse in this country. One of the problems that occurred in this matter was that they didn't recognize this or they refused to accept this as a case of child abuse. This was a case of child abuse and, you know, at a, an headline, 11-year-old charged with capable murder got Ronnie Earl, the headlines he wanted. But again, we have a problem of child abuse in this country and until we address this problem,

the J. LaBeltons of the world are going to continue. The Joan Vene Ramses of the world are going to continue and domestic violence is something that we truly need to address children are safer in daycare centers than they are at home. And yet we have all this legislation flying all over the country about regulating daycare centers. What we need to do is regulate parents because children are in danger at home. They're not in danger in daycare centers. Anyway, child abuse, I just, I really can't emphasize that enough that we really need to address that as a country, as a nation, that we are abusing our children. We are killing our children and there doesn't seem to be any kind of stop cap to that because we're in total denial about it, total denial. Barbara Taff, president, people of the heart.

If you have questions or comments or suggestions as to future in Black America programs, write us, also let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer David Alvarez, I'm John El Hansen, Jr., thank you for joining us today and please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America cassettes, communication building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America cassettes, communication building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. In the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John El Hansen, Jr., join me this week on in Black America.

We have review boards for the activities of judges and prosecutors. The problem in this case is there's no one to go to to correct the situation. In the case of Lucretia Murray with Barbara Taff, part 2, this week on in Black America.