November 18, 2009

HUNTSVILLE, Texas -  A condemned killer who prosecutors said had been faking mental illness to avoid execution won a reprieve from a federal judge less than two hours before he could have been taken to the Texas death chamber Tuesday evening.

Gerald Eldridge, 45, was condemned for the fatal shooting of his ex-girlfriend and her daughter nearly 17 years ago in Houston. Attorneys contended he was too mentally ill to receive lethal injection and made those arguments in an appeal to the courts.

U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal in Houston agreed to delay the scheduled punishment for 90 days after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had rejected the appeal Monday.

Gerald Cornelius Eldridge was too intelligent for his own good. At least that is what the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded when it denied Eldridge's request for a certificate of appealability on the issue of whether mental retardation renders him ineligible for the death penalty.

A Houston jury voted to convict Eldridge and sentenced him to death for killing his former girlfriend, Cynthia Bogany, and her nine-year-old daughter, Chirissa. The case arose out of a shooting spree that took place on January 4, 1993, the day on which Eldridge shot Chirissa between the eyes at point-blank range and then shot Bogany twice in the head.  Eldridge also wounded his own son, Terrell, and another individual.

Eldridge broke into Bogany's apartment and shot Chirrisa as she slept on a couch.  After chasing Cynthia's boyfriend from the apartment he returned to the living room and shot his natural 7-year old son Terrell in the shoulder.  He then chased down Cynthia on a stairwell outside the apartment and shot her to death as she begged for her life.

After the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction and sentence, Eldridge unsuccessfully sought habeas corpus relief in state court. His lawyer then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The petition asserted that, under the U.S. Supreme Court's Atkins v. Virginia decision, the Eighth Amendment prohibited his execution because he was mentally retarded.

U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal denied the petition on March 13, 2008. In a lengthy written opinion, Judge Rosenthal concluded that Eldridge had failed to present enough evidence to support his claim of mental retardation.

Eldridge then sought a certificate of appealability from the Fifth Circuit, which denied his request in a written opinion. The opinion reveals the upside-down world of mental retardation claims in death penalty cases, where convicted killers repudiate their successes and achievements.

The Fifth Circuit noted that it was only after Eldridge scored 112 and 84 on two prior IQ tests that a score of 72 on a test administered by his expert witness placed him in the mildly mentally retarded range. Eldridge obviously had a motivation to score poorly on the third test.

The fact that he graduated in the seventieth percentile of his class at Jack Yates High School and passed a pipe-fitters exam undermined his claim of a deficit in academic functioning. Regular employment, good performance reviews, and pay raises doomed his claim that he was deficient in the area of work. Because he had girlfriends in high school, subsequent relationships with other women, and pen pals around the world, he did not suffer from a deficit in social functioning. Cashing paychecks, sharing living expenses, shopping for groceries, and performing household chores showed the absence of a deficit in the area of home living.

In the eyes of the Fifth Circuit, therefore, Eldridge's claim of mental retardation and his desperate attempt to avoid the death penalty could have succeeded only if he had shown himself to be a bigger loser than he actually is. In death penalty cases, intelligence can be fatal.