"I don't have no poetry in my soul"

Eric John King, Dead Man Walking

Eric John King, 47, is scheduled to be executed in Arizona on March 29, 2011, but this case may be a tragedy in the making.

On December 27, 1989,  witnesses say that two black men robbed the Short Stop convenience store on the corner of 48th and Broadway in Phoenix, Arizona. A total of $72.00 was taken. One of the men obtained the security guard's gun and shot and killed both the store clerk, Ron Berman, and the security guard, Richard Butts, with that gun, a .357 revolver. Witnesses say the shooter went back to Butts' body and brushed fingerprints off the gun's holster. Then the two men fled. One of the men was wearing a sweater with a white diamond design. One witness described a black man with high cheek bones.

The next day Eric John King and Michael Page Jones were arrested and charged with the crime. King was already a felon, having only recently been released after serving 7 years for rape and kidnaping in what activists have call a shaky conviction.

There is no physical evidence against King. The gun was never found. No witnesses could identify him, and the stores security tape was so distorted that no identification could be made from it. All relevant witnesses were interrogated by Detective Armando Saldate. Saldate neither audio nor video tapes his interrogations. He paraphrases them.

Jones was allowed to walk provided he would testify against King. Jones' testimony was clearly given under duress as he would be charged with capital murder if he did not testify, yet his testimony did not fit the known facts. Jones and Saldate claimed that Jones waited outside in the parking lot while King went into the convenience store, never even entering the store, and that he had no idea what King was going to do until he heard the gunshots. He then ran alone away from the scene. But witnesses all say that 2 men were in the store, and 2 men ran away together.

A second piece of questionable evidence against Eric King came a few days after the crime when his girlfriend, Renee Hill, told police, after watching a TV news report of the crime, that she had seen King throwing a clear plastic bag containing a gun and a sweater with a diamond design into a dumpster. No such bag, no gun, no sweater were ever found. The girlfriend tried to retract her testimony and she, too, testified under duress, bound by Saldate's paraphrased statements.

The third piece of evidence, the store's security tape is a copy, not even the original. It is so distorted that no reasonable evidence can be gleaned from it.

The prosecutor was so unsure of Hill's and Jones' testimony that he laid the groundwork for it in his opening statement. He told the jury that there was no telling what these witnesses might do, whether they would come through for the State or not.

That's it. A black man with high cheek bones that don't even look that high to me.

Eric King was convicted on September 5, 1990, and sentenced to death on March 4, 1991. In his appeals, King's attorneys have claimed that there was insufficient evidence to convict. Just an "accomplice" who walked for testifying and whose testimony contradicts the facts, a girlfriend claiming a gun and a sweater went into dumpster, although there were not found in that dumpster, and Saldate's "paraphrase" of King's own statement. They are arguing that some of the evidence was improper in their attempt to be heard before Arizona's highest court. The most recent motions were filed on March 3 and March 11, 2011.

King stated, "I am an adult and is responsible for my situation of caged like a beast, who the government feel they have the right to murder me." He claimed he was being railroaded because of his race. But he maintains his innocence.

"As you know I'm Eric, age 42, basically no education at all, have always tried to be fair and honesty. I got put on death row in 1991 and so for no break with my appeals and I don't have no poetry in my soul--but I have an an opinion on every topic," Eric posted on the internet in 2005. "We all make mistake some costier than others everybody should seek safety and happiness?" He reads the Bible and the Quran occasionally.

"Where is the forgiveness?," he asks. Death row has been so bad that at times he thinks his execution would be a blessing compared to the loneliness of his situation. He feels abandoned by his family, but says he knows they love him; they're just busy with their own lives.

And so are we all while an innocent man may die in Arizona on March 29, 2011, for being black and having high cheek bones.

ADDENDUM: They did it. The state of Arizona executed Eric John King right on time.