No Mercy

By Jordan Smith, Austin Chronicle. Posted August 23, 2004.

On August 26, Texas is scheduled to execute James Allridge III for the 1985 murder of 21-year-old Brian Clendennen, who died from two gunshots fired in the course of the botched robbery of a Fort Worth-area convenience store. At his trial, Tarrant Co. prosecutors argued that Allridge, then 21, killed Clendennen on Feb. 4, 1985, while on a "crime spree" with his 23-year-old brother, Ronald. (Ronald, implicated with James in a string of area robberies, had been sentenced to death in 1986 for the murder of Carla McMillian, killed during the robbery of a Whataburger a month after Clendennen's death. He was executed in 1995.)

In 1987, after finding James Allridge guilty of Clendennen's murder, his trial jurors were faced with choosing a punishment: life in prison with a possibility of parole (after 20 years), or a death sentence. Allridge had no prior criminal record, but the jurors were not instructed to consider his past, or his troubled relationship with his brother Ronald. Instead, their determination would be based solely on their answers to the two "special questions" asked of Texas' capital-case jurors prior to 1990. First, they were asked, was the crime deliberate? And, second, did they believe "beyond a reasonable doubt" that "there is a probability" that Allridge would commit additional "acts of violence" in the future, making him a "continuing threat" to society?

If the jurors had answered "no" to either question, Allridge would have received a life sentence; but following deliberation, the jurors answered "yes" to both, and James Allridge was sentenced to die. (In 1993, Allridge also pled guilty to four counts of aggravated robbery stemming from the 1985 crimes. He received a life sentence.)

After reading the verdict, District Judge Joe Drago III asked Allridge if there was anything he wanted to say. Allridge turned to face the Clendennen family and apologized for killing their son. "The only thing on my mind at the time wasn't what the jury had decided what they were going to do to me or what my future might hold, none of that," Allridge recently recalled. "It was that I wanted to say I was sorry to Brian's mom; that's what I wanted to do."

A Question of Clemency

Seventeen years later, James Allridge and his supporters – including four of the original jurors, his family, attorneys, two former death row prison guards, a retired prison system administrator, a Fort Worth city councilman, one of Allridge's former employers, and a handful of others – have joined forces to ask that the state Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry commute Allridge's death sentence to life behind bars.

Allridge's bid for a life sentence is not based on a claim of innocence or on a lack of due process. Instead, his plea for commutation is based on his apparent rehabilitation while in prison and his quest for redemption – two factors that Allridge's supporters, criminal-justice reformers, and policymakers say should play a key role in Texas' clemency decisions, especially since the state's capital statute emphasizes, as it did in Allridge's sentence to death row, the "future dangerousness" of the accused.

"[W]e ask that you consider whether the interests of the criminal justice system – including deterrence and rehabilitation – are best served by executing a rehabilitated person who, while carrying responsibility and remorse for his actions in his heart, is trying to give something back by furthering the safety and stability of the prison environment and struggling to redeem himself," attorneys Jim Marcus and Lisa Fine wrote in Allridge's petition to the BPP. "Our request for mercy is premised on the belief that the open-ended ability to commute a death sentence in Texas ... should be exercised in the extraordinary rare instance that a compelling record demonstrates true rehabilitation."

Allridge's supporters say that in the 17 years he has been in prison he has become a model inmate – that he accepts responsibility for Clendennen's murder and strives for redemption, in behavior that he models for other inmates. He is a calming force on the row, and former guards say he has made the unit a safer place. He has honed his writing skills, teaches other inmates to read and write, and has taught himself to paint and draw. Allridge's art – primarily brightly colored, highly professional renderings of flowers in full bloom against a deep black background – has been featured in art shows across the country and in Europe and have attracted considerable attention – both positive and negative. To his supporters, Allridge's art is a symbol of his rehabilitation – a tangible and graphic example of the man he has become. "It's quite natural that when people get out of a certain environment, they change," said Richard Deiter, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center. "It is particularly important in Texas that a person show that [change], because the death penalty statute is focused on 'future dangerousness.' That is the key. When that [prediction] turns out to be wrong, it seems like good grounds for clemency."

Although the question of whether a defendant poses a continuing threat to society – both outside and inside prison – is integral to deciding a death sentence in Texas, rehabilitation has not played a correspondingly significant role in deciding clemency. Indeed, since the reinstatement of the death penalty, Texas has never once granted a commutation based on rehabilitation or in the interest of redemption.

Jordan Smith is a staff writer at the Austin Chronicle.

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