HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- Texas authorities Monday rejected convicted killer James 'Cowboy' Autry's request that his execution by injection be televised and refused to commute his sentence to life in prison.
Later in the day, Autry joined television reporter Don Kobos to file a lawsuit in a Houston federal court seeking to force prison officials to allow videotaping of the death.
Kobos complained restricting him from taking recording devices into the death chamber violated his constitutional rights.
Meanwhile, two sets of lawyers pressed separate efforts in Austin, Texas, and Washington to prevent his death sentence from being carried out at 12:01 a.m. CST Wednesday.
The Board of Pardons and Paroles in Austin rejected requests that Autry's sentence be commuted to life in prison or that he get a 45-day stay. Gov. Mark White still could issue a 30-day delay without board recommendation.
Other lawyers for Autry awaited Supreme Court action on their Friday appeal to halt his latest scheduled execution based on arguments the state delayed taking him off the death needles last October, when he won a last-minute stay from Justice Byron White.
The Board of Corrections decision against television in the death chamber was a unanimous voice vote by the eight members present. One member was absent.
'I have many concerns, not only in the propriety and decency of such an act, but in the possibility of televising this thing having an eventual effect on the death penalty itself,' said Corrections Board Chairman Robert Gunn.
'One of the board members made the comment that maybe we should have closed circuit TV and show it to the inmates, but I don't want to show it the public. I don't feel this is anything that children should be watching,' Gunn said.
The board stressed its decision will apply to all executions unless the Texas Legislature enacts a change.
An informal poll by KTRK-TV in Houston indicated 59 percent of Texas stations would not televise the execution, 27 percent said they would and 14 percent were undecided.
Autry, 29, was sentenced to death for the April 1980 robbery-shooting of Port Arthur, Texas, convenience store clerk Shirley Drouet, 43, a mother of five. Police said the shooting was over a $2.70 sixpack of beer.
Neither Autry's father, Jim Autry of Amarillo, Texas, nor his mother, Mrs. Shirley Stucker of Florence, Colo., will witness the execution.
'I have not a penny to my name. I don't have any friends. I hope to hell them jerks find out what they're doing over my kid,' Ms. Stucker said. 'I've been awful tore up lately.'
Shirley Tadlock, a Fort Worth area housewife who started writing Autry in October, said she will attend the execution so Autry can have someone sympathetic nearby.
'I don't want anyone to get the idea that there's some love-sick relationship here,' she said. 'That's not the story at all.'
Larry Scott, another pen pal who befriended Autry through an ex-convict who once shared his prison cell, said Sunday Autry wrote him a letter saying he has accepted his fate.
'He's made his peace with God. That is something he had not done in October,' said Scott.
