Emanuel Kemp

Case identification

Emanuel Kemp Jr. was convicted in the stabbing death of Johnnie Gray, 34, and was sentenced to death.

The offence

One night in May 1987, Emanuel Kemp, an ex-con with a history of armed robberies, pulled a knife on a Fort Worth bus driver and forced him to drive to Trinity Park. At the time of the assault, Johnnie Gray, 34, was the only other person aboard the bus.

At knifepoint, Emanuel Kemp robbed the bus driver, and ordered the bus to be driven to a local park. After they arrived at Trinity Park, Emanuel Kemp raped and slashed to death Johnnie Gray. He also stabbed the frightened young driver, David Jeanfreau, in the neck; Jeanfreau fled and survived.

Jeanfreau remembered staring at a knife with “a blade more than 6 inches long” and that Kemp told him, “This is a robbery.”

Victims

Johnnie Gray was 34 and was a medical clerk at a local hospital.

David V. Jeanfreau was the bus driver and a witness; he fled after being stabbed in the neck and survived. He later quit driving city buses and worked for the U.S. Postal Service in the Denver area.

Gray’s parents won a $90,000 judgment in 1990 against the Fort Worth Transportation Authority.

Investigation

Johnnie Gray was found to have been stabbed and assaulted on the bus.

Trial

A jury convicted Emanuel Kemp of capital murder in the stabbing death of Johnnie Gray. The jury deliberated three hours.

Emanuel Kemp was convicted of raping and stabbing to death a female passenger on a city bus and received the death penalty.

State District Judge Bob Gill, then a Tarrant County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Kemp, said:

“He behaved himself during court proceedings, consulted with his attorneys and answered appropriately when asked for the record.”

State District Judge Bob Gill also said:

“I remember after the trial, he appeared at a hearing. He wanted to represent himself on appeal. He explained very lucidly to the trial judge how he would go about researching and constructing an appellate brief.”

Sentencing

Emanuel Kemp Jr. was sentenced to die on July 5, 1988.

State District Judge Don Leonard, the veteran judge of Criminal District Court No. 3, ordered periodic mental evaluations of Kemp beginning in 1994.

Appeals

A May 16, 2004 discussion described ongoing debate about executing mentally ill Death Row inmates and Kemp’s situation.

U.S. District Judge Terry Means in Fort Worth granted a stay on June 23, 1999 so Kemp could obtain new attorneys to file a federal appeal.

Defense attorneys Bill Harris and Greg Westfall filed Kemp’s federal appeal. When Harris and Westfall last visited Kemp, in December 1999, he picked up the phone on his side of a glass divider and pantomimed having a conversation with them and did not utter a single word.

Westfall said:

“Before the ink on the court papers has dried, we would ask the trial judge to order a new mental evaluation.”

Prosecutors said Kemp and other Death Row inmates may exhibit signs of mental illness but may be faking symptoms to avoid execution. Tarrant County assistant district attorney Edward Wilkinson said:

“Let’s face it. This is their last shot to avoid execution. They have exhausted all other claims. They have nothing else to bring.”

Wilkinson said:

“Kemp is the only one coming close to being found incompetent to be executed.”

Kemp’s attorneys argued he was too mentally ill to be executed. Bill Harris said:

“When we last visited him, it was surreal. He’d look at you, and he looked right through you. It was a blank stare.”

Mental health and competence to be executed

The debate referenced Ford v. Wainwright, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it is unconstitutional to execute people who do not understand that they are being executed or why.

Texas Tech University law professor Brian Shannon said:

“It’s a low standard,”
and described it as a low standard in relation to the Supreme Court’s competence requirement.

Laurie Young, vice president of the National Mental Health Association, said:

“People with mental illness in prison deserve treatment, but it’s unfair to restore them to a rational state so they can be executed,”

Kemp did not appear to suffer from any major mental illness on the night of May 28, 1987.

A psychiatrist’s report in April 1988 concluded that Kemp was competent to stand trial, and found that he understood the proceedings and could cooperate with his attorney.

Prison psychiatrists documented Kemp’s mental deterioration in a series of psychiatric evaluations starting in the early 1990s. The first diagnosis, on Nov. 8, 1991, was chronic paranoid schizophrenia. The report described chronic paranoid schizophrenia as involving loss of touch with reality and being haunted by hallucinations or delusions of persecution or grandeur.

In 1994, Leonard appointed psychiatrist Ann Turbeville of Fort Worth to determine whether Kemp was competent to be executed. Turbeville examined Kemp in 1994, 1996, and 1997, and noted delusions and bizarre behavior. After the first two evaluations, Turbeville determined Kemp was incompetent to be executed.

Kemp told Turbeville that lethal injection could not kill him but that “he might spoil.” Turbeville wrote in the 1996 report:

“he might spoil.”

Turbeville also wrote in the 1996 report:

“did not believe anything would happen since he had died some six times previously,”

Turbeville wrote that Kemp told her he was ageless and that he had created himself. Turbeville’s November 1997 evaluation found that Kemp had improved enough to be executed, though he maintained that he was ageless. She found him more coherent and noted that he remembered being convicted of murder.

Two years later, Turbeville changed her mind due to her review of a transcript of a taped interview conducted by defense attorney David Pearson with Kemp on April 2, 1999 while preparing for a state appeal. Kemp said during the interview that prison authorities had replaced his blood with Kool-Aid.

In a May 14, 1999 letter to Pearson, Turbeville recommended another evaluation. She referred to Kemp’s prison psychiatric treatment records and noted signs including:

“... eating foreign objects, smoking and burning everything in his cell, difficulty keeping his clothes on, ... crawling around on all fours and making strange noises, refusing to speak at times and pantomiming out answers, and speaking nonsensically.”

Turbeville concluded:

“this patient continues to have a very chronic psychotic state despite massive amounts of medication.”

State District Judge Don Leonard said he had never observed a mental breakdown like Kemp’s. Leonard said:

“He has really gotten bad. His condition has deteriorated while in prison ... “
and also said: “I have no reason to believe he’s competent.”

Forced treatment

A central debate described whether prison doctors could forcibly medicate mentally ill inmates until they were sane enough to be executed.

Dr. Jeffrey Metzner of Denver, chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Psychiatry and the Law, said:

“Some psychiatrists have ethical concerns that they are contributing to the execution process if they find someone competent. But if it was officially declared unethical to do it, you'd find no expert to conduct such exams,”
and also said: “An exam may also find that the person is incompetent and contribute to that person not being executed.”

Metzner said:

“It is ethical to medicate mentally ill Death Row inmates if the purpose of the medication is to relieve or decrease suffering, but not to make them competent to be executed,”

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice banned the practice of involuntary medication to make inmates competent to be executed and stipulated that prison mental health professionals who treat Death Row inmates could not take part in evaluations to determine competence. Carl Reynolds, general counsel for the Criminal Justice Department, said:

“We treat people for mental illnesses, not for forensic reasons of getting them up to par to be executed,”
and also said: “That would be, I guess, an unfortunate outcome for the inmate,”

Greg Westfall said Kemp’s monthly Haldol injections amounted to forced treatment because Kemp was too insane to give consent. Westfall said:

“I'm worried they pump him full of Haldol every month until he reaches that fleeting moment where he understands what's going on so he can be executed,”

Westfall said:

“If Kemp refused the treatment, he would be strapped down and given the injections,”

Westfall also said:

“He really does not have a choice,”

Larry Fitzgerald, spokesman for the Criminal Justice Department, said prison officials could not discuss Kemp’s treatment due to privacy rules.

Kemp was transported once a month from Death Row near Livingston to the Jester IV psychiatric unit near Richmond, where he was injected with Haldol.

Confinement conditions

Kemp was alone round-the-clock in his 14-by-6-foot cell at the Polunsky Unit near Livingston in East Texas. He ate by himself, receiving his food tray through the “bean slot” in his cell’s steel door.

Kemp was 36 and approaching his 15th year on Death Row.

Defense attorneys Harris and Westfall said court records showed he had not been able to engage in a coherent conversation to assist his attorneys since 1994.

Civil case and victim impact

Huey Mitchell, attorney who represented Gray’s parents in a civil lawsuit against the Fort Worth Transportation Authority, said:

“The family is still grieving,”

Mitchell said Gray’s mother, Jimmie McKinney Crownover, was in bad health and could not be interviewed.

Diane Clements of Houston, president of Justice for All in Texas, said:

“The current system has enough safeguards,”

Jeanfreau said he was “lucky to be alive” and described hurt when driver colleagues taunted him and called him a coward for not fighting Kemp. Jeanfreau said:

“Some macho drivers said it wasn't even a gun, only a knife,”
“But a knife can kill, too. I'm terribly sorry I did nothing else. I was 22 years old. I was just a kid. I was not trained to defend passengers against assaults.”

Jeanfreau said:

“Without a doubt, the punishment fits the crime in this case,”

Jeanfreau said:

“I don't hate anybody,”
and: “but if you don't give him the death penalty, who do you give it to?”

Other comparisons and statements

The discussion included other mentally ill Death Row inmates used to illustrate the debate, including Alexander Williams, Monty Delk, and Alvin Ford.

In relation to Williams, the discussion said the Georgia parole board commuted the death sentence.

In relation to Monty Delk, the discussion said he was executed Feb. 28 after years of bizarre behavior, and that his attorneys had argued he was too mentally ill to assist in his defense. The discussion also stated state attorneys, county prosecutors, and the trial court found that Delk was feigning mental illness to avoid the death penalty.

Stanford University psychiatrist Ira D. Glick said:

“It's a lay concept of prosecutors who want to see defendants suffer for their crime,”
and also referenced the difficulty of faking psychosis consistently for several years.

Psychiatrist Terry Kupers said:

“Remember, most serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, first appear in the late teens and early 20s, and that's when most people enter prison for the first time,”

Harris County’s chief of post-conviction writs, Roe Wilson, said the Supreme Court’s standard led to few inmates being deemed so insane they met the standard. Wilson said:

“There are a lot of inmates who can have quite a few things wrong with them and still be found competent to be executed,”

Houston lawyer Richard Burr said it was difficult to succeed with a claim of mental incompetence unless prosecutors agreed with the diagnosis. Burr said:

“The test requires minimal understanding on the part of the inmate but not the ability to assist their lawyer in challenging their sentence or conviction,”