Last supper for boy killer on death row | World news

Last supper for boy killer on death row

Like lots of other people, Chris Thomas will settle down tonight in front of a dinner of fried chicken, French fries and apple pie. Unlike the others, though, Thomas does so knowing it is only a few hours until $86.06 worth of chemicals are injected into his veins to stop his heart.

"I've seen the [prison] officers eating fried chicken," he said yesterday, dressed in regulation orange jumpsuit and sitting 20ft from the execution chamber in Greenville prison, Virginia. "I acquired a taste for the smell of it."

Thomas was 17, still at school and too young to vote when he was convicted of murdering his girlfriend's mother and father because they wanted to keep the couple apart. Had he been born in almost any other country in the world he would not be facing death at 9pm (Eastern Time) near the heart of the Old South.

"I can't blame the United States; I can't blame Virginia," said Thomas. "In a sense, I put myself here. It was a childish decision. I was a child. I'm not a victim of my environment, I'm not a victim of drugs. In the US we live under a democracy with freedom of speech, freedom of choice. Unfortunately, I made a bad choice."

He is by no means the only one to have done so. About 70 death row inmates have been sentenced as juveniles in the US in the past 24 years and on Thursday Steve Roach is due to be executed in Virginia for murdering a neighbour when he too was 17. In Texas two more are soon to die.

"This would mark the first time since the death penalty was reinstated [in 1976] that so many juvenile offenders would be executed in so short a period," William Paul, president of the American Bar Association, wrote to Virginia's governor, Jim Gilmore. "In our view, the execution of people for crimes they committed while children is unacceptable in a civilised society."

Only Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Yemen appeared with the US on a list of countries that have executed juvenile offenders in the past 10 years.

Thirty-eight of the 50 states have the death penalty. It can be imposed at the age of 16 in 18 states, including Virginia; at 17 in five states, including Texas; and at 18 in 15 more.

Spoiled child

Mr Gilmore is the only person left who can prevent Thomas from dying tonight, by granting clemency. There is no reason to suppose that he will.

"I think Monday will be a glorious day, whatever way it goes," said Thomas, now 26. "If it's commuted, I get some sort of life back. If it's not commuted, then I move on to another life. I believe death is only the beginning."

He was raised by his grandparents in Chesterfield, about 100 miles from Richmond, the state capitol, where his mother Margaret lived, and he had no contact with his father until last summer.

"It was a pretty great childhood," said Thomas, allowing himself to laugh at how he believes his case confounds the stereotype of the criminal shaped by his miserable early years. "I was a spoilt kid. Anything I wanted, they gave me: toys, motorcycles, all the normal kid things."

He did pretty well at school and played baseball, basketball and soccer. But his grandparents died when he was 12 and he had to go to Richmond to live with his mother. "I was moving in with someone I knew was my mother but I didn't know her as a person. I was moving from my home town."

There were other changes: at 14, he was caught stealing music tapes from a shop; at 15, it was breaking and entering, possessing drugs, and then alcohol and trespass, which earned him three months in a special school for boys; at 16, he stole a car and spent four days in jail.

"Nothing violent - I never exhibited any violence to anyone." Not, at any rate, until he was 17 and back home, as he thinks of it, in Chesterfield. There he took up with 14-year-old Jessica Wiseman, whose parents disapproved of the relationship. The teenagers plotted to kill Kathy and James Wiseman, both 33, and they saw it through with a shotgun.

Jessica was tried and convicted as a juvenile, held in a correctional centre until she was 21 and released three years ago. Thomas was charged as a juvenile, tried as an adult and sentenced to death.

Search for identity

"She pulled the trigger," he said yesterday. "I should have said it during my trial. I told her I would take full responsibility." Two women came forward last summer to say they had heard Jessica say she killed her mother.

"I don't hold any animosity towards her," said Thomas. "At 17 I was impulsive. I was gullible, I was still searching for my identity, I was being who everyone wanted me to be. Now I've grown up. I've changed."

He has spent his years in jail reading, watching television, working out, listening to music from opera to rap, anything that would take his mind off where he was. "I like Frederick Forsyth. I read Andrew Morton's book about Princess Diana, but I'm a sceptical about Morton. She took her celebrity and made a difference."

Not much can make a difference now for Chris Thomas, though he has been here before, last June, when a stay of execution was granted five hours before he was due to die. He had fried chicken for dinner that night, too.

600 executed

Since 1976, when the US supreme court reinstated the death penalty, 600 people have been put to death. There are 3,600 on death row.

Two died this year: Malcolm Johnson by lethal injection in Oklahoma and David Duren by electrocution in Alabama.

Texas has been responsible for 199 of those executed since 1976. Virginia has put to death 73 people, Florida 44 and Missouri 41. Colorado, Idaho, Ohio and Wyoming have executed one each.

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