After father's plea, Texas board
recommends clemency for death row inmate
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[February 21, 2018]
By Jon Herskovitz
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Death row inmate
Thomas "Bart" Whitaker, convicted of hatching a plot that left his
mother and brother dead and his father with a gun wound to the chest,
received a unanimous clemency recommendation on Tuesday after his father
pleaded for his life.
Whitaker's father Kent Whitaker broke down in tears when he heard that
the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles gave what amounted to its first
clemency recommendation to come primarily at the request of a victim's
forgiving family.
"Victim’s rights should mean something in this state even when the
victim is asking for mercy and not vengeance," Kent Whitaker later told
a news conference.
Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, will make the final decision on
whether to dispense a life sentence and halt the scheduled execution by
lethal injection planned for Thursday.
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Whitaker was put on death row after being convicted of masterminding the
deadly 2003 plot near Houston that left his mother Tricia, 51, and
brother Kevin, 19, dead.
The father, a 69-year-old devout Christian and retired construction
company executive, has said if the death penalty is implemented, it
would only intensify his pain.
In the clemency petition, he recalled lying in his hospital bed and
facing the choice of slipping into despair or offering his son
forgiveness. He said his faith led him to the latter option.
Kent Whitaker said his son has been a model inmate and has provided
letters from death row prison guards to back him up. According to the
clemency petition, Kent Whitaker, his relatives and his wife's family do
not want Texas to execute Bart.
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![](../images/022118pics/news_J13.jpg)
Kent Whitaker, whose son is on death row, speaks at a news
conference as he waits for a decision on a clemency request at the
Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas, U.S. February 20, 2018.
REUTERS/Jon Herskovitz
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Money may have motivated Bart Whitaker to plan to murder his family
with the help of two other men, court documents showed. One of those
men, his roommate Chris Brashear, shot the father, mother and
brother after the family returned from a dinner out.
He shot Bart in the bicep to make it look he had also been attacked.
The two other men helped prosecutors pin the crime on Whitaker and
were not sentenced to death. Neither co-defendant received the death
penalty.
Local prosecutors said they considered the family's views but stood
by Whitaker's sentence as appropriate for such a brutal crime.
"Legally, justice says that he should be executed," Fred Felcman,
first assistant district attorney for the Fort Bend County District
Attorney's Office said in an interview last week.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by David Gregorio)
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